Elizabeth Bear: Hammered

The first book in the SF trilogy set in the year 2062.

Publication year: 2005
Page count: 324 + a preview of Scardown
Format: print
Publisher: Bantam Spectra

Genevieve, Jenny, Casey is a veteran of the Canadian Army. Twenty-five years ago she was in a helicopter accident which should have killed her. Instead, the army replaced her left arm with a metal arm, replaced her left eye with a targeting scope, and put first generation cybernetics into her. She still has flashbacks and nightmares about the accident.

Now, she lives in Hartford, runs a small mechanics shop, and goes by the name Maker. The local gangster boss, Razorface, is a good friend and when he brings in one of his boys who has taken tainted drugs, Jenny realizes that the drugs come from the Canadian Army and shouldn’t be on the streets in the first place. She starts to look into who had brought the drug to US and why. Also, her implants are starting to break down. She’s in constant pain and her neurologist is saying that she might have only five years left to live. However, what she finds out is that her former boss, Valens, wants her back, doing something that’s more dangerous than anything else she’s ever done. It might have something to do with a spaceship that the Canadians found on Mars ten years ago.

The plot follows a lot of other people and a bit fragmentary at first. Doctor Elspeth Dunsany has just been released from jail where she has been for the past 16 years because of her work with artificial intelligences. One of the AIs has become independent and is roaming the net, looking for information.
The AI has been modeled after the physicist Richard Feynman. Elspeth is also pressured into working for Valens on a top-secret project.

A 12-year old kid is playing a virtual reality game in the hopes of getting the grand prize: a full paid scholarship. The object of the game is to become a pilot.

Casey’s other friend is a cop who whose girlfriend has just been murdered and he’s looking into it even though it might cost him his badge.

Unfortunately, many of the characters start as clichés, especially the gangster boss who just wants what’s best for the people in his neighborhood. However, most of them evolve into more than a bag of clichés and become characters who the reader might care about. Unfortunately, the cop and the gangster boss never engaged me but apparently other readers liked them. However, for me Jenny and Elspeth are the most interesting characters.

Jenny is almost fifty and she feels that she has no business still being alive. People she cares about are dead and she isn’t really interested in living anymore. She thinks of herself as a cripple and when her old boss gives her a chance to upgrade the failing implants, she doesn’t want to do that. She’s trying to help Razorface and his boys, and is mostly interested in finding dirt about her former boss so that he can be brought to justice.

Elspeth is a scientist who is more interested in science than morals, mostly. She made several AIs based on famous scientists (one of the others was Nikola Tesla) but she was then a bit dismayed when she found out that one of them has grown to independence. She had a lot of time to think about in jail and now she’s working for the same people again.

The writing style is a bit choppy. The book doesn’t have chapters, just POV changes which are prefaced by time and date. Each POV is usually just a couple of pages long, resulting in really short scenes and then going to the next one. Jenny’s POV is in first person, present tense and the rest are in third person, past tense which didn’t really work for me because they drew too much attention to the tense and first/third person shifts and made the complex plot seem a little bit more convoluted.

Still, the pace is quick and we soon find out that the VR game is something more and that everyone is connected to each other. I liked figuring out the SF references and influences. The world feels very similar to BladeRunner and Casey lives in Sigourney Street and Canada has Clarke Station in orbit.

The world seems to be a dystopia. The weather patterns have changed and so the world has changed, too. US is no longer a world power but more isolationist. Canada has been more or less taken over by a big corporation which runs the country. Canada is in a space race with the Chinese who are presented as a threat.

Unfortunately, I’m not a fan of the cyperpunk style: a setting were everything is miserable and you’re going to die young, anyway. I was actually more interested in the side plot of the spaceship than the scheming. It seems like the sequel will have far more space travel.

 

Elizabeth Bear: The Sea Thy Mistress

My latest review: Elizabeth Bear’s The Sea Thy Mistress.

The third and final book in the Edda of Burdens trilogy based on Norse mythology. It has a different tone than the previous books but I loved it.

 

Elizabeth Bear: Chill

The second book in the Jacob’s Ladder SF trilogy.

Publication year: 2010
Format: Audio
Publisher: Audible
Narrator: Alma Cuero
Running Time: 11 hrs.

The book starts soon after the end of the previous book, Dust. At the same time, things have changed but some have stayed the same. The one of the main POV characters in Dust, Perceval Conn, is a POV character here, too, but to much smaller degree. Perceval’s uncle and father are the main POV characters this time, together with the Necromancer Mallory and a few other characters.

Even though the generational ship is under way, is badly damaged, has a new AI (called an angel), and has a new captain, there are still people who are trying to take over. The antagonist in Dust, Ariane Conn, is dead but her mother Arianrhod manages to escape her tank and is still determined to become the captain of her world. Another AI is helping her. Tristen and Benedick track her through the ship while Perceval and the AI are trying to keep the ship together and make some hard choices.

They barely escaped the sun going nova and are now speeding through space on the nova’s shock wave. Some of the ship is so badly damaged that it can’t be salvaged. Most of the passengers are sleeping in pods; they are needed to repair the ship but can the ship feed them? However, most of the story follows Tristen and Benedict.

Tristen and Benedick are both troubled characters. They have both done things earlier in their lives, in the service of their father, which they now regret. They both come face to faces with some of the consequences. They are quite introspective and are trying to behave now in a more moral manner. This time, Arianrhod is a POV character and we see what motives her, and the relationship she has with her rebel angel (fragment). We also get to know a few other Conn family members.

Mallory is a more enigmatic character. The Necromancer is more enigmatic character whose job is to take care of the memories of the dead people, so Mallory knows a lot and often advises the other characters. Gavin is a helper AI in the form of a basilisk. However, he has feelings and at one point he muses that humans realized that a brain without feelings wouldn’t function properly.

The characters are interesting but I didn’t really connect with any of them.

There are a lot of religious reference in the book: the AIs are called Angels and the ship itself if called Jacob’s Ladder. There are also quotations from the King James Bible and the New Evolutionist Bible. Some people consider the ship’s builder as gods while others consider them close to torturers. Some of the characters talk about the Christian God and what he apparently wants. This is rather uncommon for SF where religion is often left out, at least on the SF books I’ve read.

Like Dust, Chill also reminds me of Zelazny’s Amber books. Like in Amber, Bear’s trilogy has a feuding family at the heart of it. Perceval, Rien, Tristen, Ariane, Arianrhod, and Benedick are all part of the Conn family, and dangerous to each other. They also live a lot longer than the ordinary people, the means, around them. In this book, it’s because of science and not magic, though. They also have an absent father, dead in this case, who spawned the large family. The ship itself remind me of the way Corwin walked though the Shadow worlds. While Jacob’s Ladder doesn’t have quite as wide a range of different worlds as the Shadows, it’s still possible to encounter a mammoth and a snake cult in different parts of the ship. Also, the names, of course, reference Arthurian stories. Tristen goes through somewhat similar trials as Corwin and Benedick is a bit similar to Zelazny’s Benedict who also withdrew from his scheming family.

There are a lot of ideas in the book about human evolution, post humanity, immortality through technology, and artificial intelligences. Yet, the society in the ship is cruelly divided between the few immortals and the many means so only a few can enjoy the fruits of the high technology.

Chill builds on the characters and places seen in Dust so Chill doesn’t stand alone. Dust should be read first.

 

Elizabeth Bear: By the Mountain Bound

The second book in the Edda of Burdens trilogy. It’s set before the first book, All the Windwracked Stars.

Publication year: 2009
Format: print
Page count: 318
Publisher: TOR

The previous book in the series, All the Windwracked Stars, started with the aftermath of a battle and a world’s ending. In this book we find out the events which led to that battle and to the tarnished.

The einherjar and the waelcyrge, the Children of the Light, are living in relative peace in mead halls around the world. They have the ability to take a mortal’s dying breath and avenge his or her death but, at least according to this book, they don’t use it much. They are immortal, don’t sleep, and don’t require food so they each have their own interests to spend time on. For example, Muire is a historian and a poet, Ulfgar is a smith, and Mingan has his wolves. They can’t lie but they also don’t have to tell the whole truth. The biggest problem they seem to have is that their war leader Strifbjorn is still unmarried and all of the women are attracted to him. Of course, Strifbjorn and the strange outsider Mingan are lovers and are keeping that a secret. Apparently, only heterosexual relationships are allowed because of the low birthrate. Also, the einherjar and waelcyrige have an ability called the Kiss where they share a splinter of their soul with each other, permanently. It’s forbidden to share the Kiss before marriage vows but, of course, Strifbjorn and Mingan have shared it, so Strifbjorn has decided never to marry. However, Muire accidentally sees the lovers but keeps their secret.

Then, Strifbjorn finds an unconscious woman on the beach. He thinks that she’s a mortal and saves her. However, it turns out that the woman might be the goddess, the Lady, whose coming the Children of the Light have been expecting. If that’s true, she will be their leader in a coming war.

The story has three point of view characters: Muire is called “The Historian” in the headings. She’s small and meek for a waelcyrge, and she believes herself to be the least of her warrior sisters. However, others have noticed her capabilities. She can cast spells and is very loyal to Strifbjorn. She’s also the only one whom we see traveling among the mortals and avenging the dying. If she’s not entirely happy, she’s at least content with her life. She’s in love it the war leader but has always known that she can’t have him. Her story is told in a first person and past tense.

Mingan, the Grey Wolf, is the second POV character and his story is told in first person and present tense which emphasized the way that he lives in the moment. He’s older than the other Children of the Light but he doesn’t remember much about his past, at first. He wears a collar and feels very hot all the time. He loves Strifbjorn and understands why they must keep their affair a secret. He’s shorter than the einherjer but stronger and considered one of their best fighters. The others whisper that he has a demoness as a lover. Instead, Imogen is Mingan’s sister (in spirit if not in flesh). She feeds on misery and Mingan feels compelled to feed her when he can. The Imogen is not just a fighter; she’s a terrifying weapon whom only Mingan can wield. The Wolf has never felt at home in the mead hall so he lives with his wolf pack in the forest.

The third POV character is Strifbjorn who is written in third person. He’s honorable to a fault and is greatly troubled by the need to keep his affair a secret. He’s a leader first and always thinks how his actions will hurt or help other. Well, almost always.

By The Mountain Bound is a tale of love, secrets, betrayals, and loyalty. It doesn’t really matter if you’ve read the first book or not. A lot of things are told here which aren’t made clear in All the Windwracked Stars and nothing depends on reading it first. In fact, reading this second book first is likely going to make reading the first book a richer experience because you know what has come before. If I had the time, I’d read the first book again.

The book is intense and well paced. However, there’s an air tragedy and sadness on it, especially if you’ve read the first book.

Edited to add: is the series SF or fantasy? Apparently, even the publisher can’t decide: the first book is labeled SF and the second fantasy. Hmh. I’d call this one epic fantasy but first one has enough technological gadgets that I’d call it SF. Of course, if you’re of the opinion that books which have magic, can’t be SF, then this is clearly fantasy.

 

Elizabeth Bear: All the Windwracked Stars

The first in an SF trilogy rooted in Norse mythology.

Publication year: 2008
Page count: 370
Format: print
Publisher: TOR

The story starts with Ragnarok. Some of the einherjar and the walcyrie have become tainted, and they have turned against their brethren. In the fight in the snow, they and the creatures of darkness kill each other. Only Muire, the smallest and the least of the waelcyrge, is still alive because she ran away in the middle of the fighting. She will call herself a coward for the rest of her life. Only one other person is alive on the battlefield; Kasimir who is a walcyrie’s steed, a valraven. His rider is dead and he’s gravely wounded. Together, Muire and Kasimir managed to beat off the final attack and survive it. Kasimir chooses Muire as his rider but she feels that she’s not worthy and isolates herself from the valraven. The third survivor is Mingan, the Grey Wolf, a tainted one and Suneater who betrayed his brethren to the other tainted.

Over two millenia go by. The humans have built another world and that, too, is nearing the end. Eiledon is the last human city and it’s still alive in the middle of acid rain and desolation because of the Techonmancer Thjierry Thorvaldsdottir who protects the city. Muire has isolated herself from the humans but then she feels the Grey Wolf is near again and has killed someone. Muire finds the victim who is near death and draws the man’s soul into herself. The victim requires vengeance against his killer who is, indeed, Mingan. Also, the city’s law enforcement are hunting both the killer and Muire.

The setting here is stunning and I loved it! It’s a mixture of science fiction and fantasy; the valraven and walcyrie are magical creatures and they use magic, yet they live in a society where cyborgs exist and food comes from vats. The Technomancer has created a species to serve her, the moreaux who seem to have been originally various animals and are now animal-looking humans, just stronger and quicker. (And named after H. G. Wells’ Island of Dr. Moreau.) They have names out of Greek mythology like Selene and Helios. There are also humans who have been mutated because of battle viruses unleashed in wars. The people take care to categorize everyone accordingly to truman, halfman, unman… and only trumans have rights to education. Most of the people have Icelandic sounding names.

The world is, admittedly, bleak. Most of the characters live in appalling conditions and must earn their food by fighting for the entertainment of others and whoring. They die of diseases because they don’t have the money to pay for medicines. Only the Technomancer and those close to her live in abundance.

Muire finds out that some of her former brethren have come back, reincarnated into these brief lived humans. Cathoair is the reborn war leader of the einherjiar whom Muire loved from afar. It breaks her heart to see Cathoair as a fighter for entertainment and then whoring himself. Cathoair’s life isn’t easy by any means and we get to see some of his past.

All of the character are flawed and broken. They’d endured horrible things but still carry on somehow. Muire has isolated herself from humans because they die so quickly. All the time she thinks of herself as a coward and a weakling; a failure. She used to be a historian, poet, and a smith before Ragnarok. She’s also weakened from the fight and the long time that she took to bury the dead. Earlier, she didn’t need to sleep and didn’t get tired. Now, while she can’t age, she does feel hot and cold and gets tired. Kasimir is worried that he’s once gain let down his rider and is doing his best not to pressure Muire. Even Mingan is looking for some sort of a way to continue living after what he has done, although we don’t see his POV much. Ironically, the most balance character in the book might be the moreau Selene who has been built to serve and has no choice in the matter.

Yet the themes of the book are surviving horrible situations and mistakes, moving on, and continuing to live. Even redemption.

The Norse mythology is most seen in the character Muire, who sometimes calls herself a angel. She talks about serving the Light and the All-Father. The human society has a religion loosely based on what happened at Ragnarok and Mingan is their devil. I was a bit bemused to see that the World Serpent, called the Bearer of Burdens, was expected to fight alongside light.

Sex and violence are intertwined in the book. Both of Cathoair’s lovers (a woman and a man) are also fighting in the ring and he beats on them there. Mingan’s and Muire’s relationship is also mixed with both. Muire loathes him because of his betrayal and tries to hurt him while Mingan desires Muire. Mingan can draw others’ breath, and life essence (memories, even memories from previous lives and energy so sustain himself), and this is done by mouth contact; kissing. It can be painful but Mingan can make it pleasurable, too. A bit later in the story, Mingan gives Muire back her full powers and I’m not entire comfortable with that but I’m pretty sure I’m not supposed to be.

Overall, I liked the twists in the plot. Muire is the main POV character but there are several others, too.

I’m not sure if I like all the aspects of the ending but I’m curious to find out where the story goes next. However, it can be read as a stand-alone; the story wraps up in the end.

 

Elizabeth Bear: Hell and Earth

This is the second book in the historical fantasy duology Stratford Man dealing with Will Shakespeare and Kit Marlowe, and their careers as magicians and spies for the Queen.

Hell and Earth starts where Ink and Steel ended; Will back on Earth and Kit back in the Seelie Court. They continue to protect both Queen Elizabeth and the Faerie Queen the Mebd from conspiracies. Will has learned that his poetry has magic which can influence people or even the fate of England. He and his compatriots, among them Ben Jonson and Thomas Walsingham, decide to do a new translation of the Bible. Which is, of course, heresy.

After his brief stay in Hell, Kit has been changed; other people’s touch brings him pain. He can still be in his lovers’ company but can’t really touch them anymore. He longs for Will and stays on Earth with him as long as he can. However, the dark Prometheans who tortured him before, have still more plans for him. And so has Lucifer.

The chapters alternate with either Will or Kit as the point-of-view character. Each chapter starts with a short quote from either Shakespeare, when the POV character is Will, or Marlowe, when the POV character is Kit. A few times the POV changes in the middle of a chapter and then a quote also shows the change. I thought this was very elegant.

Again, both Kit and Will go through emotional wringer and physical torture as well. The plot is mostly political intrigue although this time in London. The Faerie Court is seen only briefly.

My only complaint is the lack of female characters which is, of course, totally appropriate for the setting. Both Queens are only seen briefly and they are more the motive for other character than actors themselves. Annie Shakespeare does appear, though.

I love these books to bits! They are full of history and mythology and literature. I really should read Faustus again.

 

Elizabeth Bear: Dust

This is a science fiction book.

Synopsis from Barnes and Nobles:

“On a broken ship orbiting a doomed sun, dwellers have grown complacent with their aging metal world. But when a serving girl frees a captive noblewoman, the old order is about to change….

Ariane, Princess of the House of Rule, was known to be fiercely cold-blooded. But severing an angel’s wings on the battlefield—even after she had surrendered—proved her completely without honor. Captive, the angel Perceval waits for Ariane not only to finish her off—but to devour her very memories and mind. Surely her gruesome death will cause war between the houses—exactly as Ariane desires. But Ariane’s plan may yet be opposed, for Perceval at once recognizes the young servant charged with her care.

Rien is the lost child: her sister. Soon they will escape, hoping to stop the impending war and save both their houses. But it is a perilous journey through the crumbling hulk of a dying ship, and they do not pass unnoticed. Because at the hub of their turning world waits Jacob Dust, all that remains of God, following the vapor wisp of the angel. And he knows they will meet very soon.”

The book is written mostly from Rien’s perspective. All her life she has believed that she’s an orphan, and she will not easily believe Perceval’s claim that she’s the angel’s half-sister and has been born to the ruling class. She has dreamed of it when she was younger but can’t believe the dream would come really true. When they are fleeing, Perceval is forced to give Rien a symbiot which makes Rien an Exalt. After that Rien struggles to understand her changing body and the feats of endurance and strength that she can now do.

The other POV character is Jacob Dust who isn’t human. In essence, he’s a very old computer program. He’s part of the ship and so can do a lot of things such as shapeshift himself and watch almost anyone in the ship. He also knows that the ship is damaged and he can’t repair it without a huge cost to himself. Therefore, he tries to manipulate some of the humans to do what he wants.

There are other POV characters, too, for a short time. Perceval is the most prominent of them. At first, she contemplates her fate at the hands of Ariane.

Each chapter starts with a short quote. Some of them are from real books, such as the Bible and from Shakespeare’s plays, but most are from imaginary books such as The New Evolutionist Bible. These almost made me want to get the print book instead of the audio.

Ariane Conn and her brothers and sisters remind me very much of Zelazny’s Amber. Here, the noble siblings also distrust each other and also live far longer than the lower-class Means. Of course, here the nobles are physically different because they have symbiots, power armor, and nanotechnology. Perceval’s father’s name is Benedict.

Even though some of the characters are named after Arthurian characters (Perceval and Tristan), the most famous Arthurian triangle is, thankfully, missing. Instead there’s the old plotline of the orphan servant who is elevated into nobility. Also, even though it’s not mentioned, the characters are on a variety of quests: first to escape, then to repair the ailing ship, and to stop Ariane’s ambitions. Saving the ship might be called questing for the Holy Grail of these people.

There are a couple of transsexual characters in the book and Rien prefers girls. On the other hand, Perceval doesn’t seem to have a sex drive at all and she has sworn herself into celibacy. Perceval’s and Rien’s father has several wives but that is mentioned just off-hand.

Even though the culture seems medieval to me mostly because of the strict class structure (which is maintained by technology), the people do know that they live in a starship and they don’t call their technology magic. The leaders of the habitats are called commanders and the leader of the whole ship is the Captain.

I liked this book a lot (except for the ending. I want more! More!) and it’s only better when relistening.

Edit: Apparently, this is the first book in a trilogy and the next, Chill, is already out! Hurrah!

 

Elizabeth Bear: Ink and Steel

This is part of the Promethean Age –series and the first book in the Stratford Man duology.

I read first the two Promethean Age books which were set in the modern US and Faerie (“Blood and Iron” and “Whiskey and Water”) because I’m, well, anal about reading order and these two were released before Stratford Man duology. Now I kind of regret it because “Ink and Steel” gives a lot of background to the world and some of the characters in the other duology.

I liked this book probably even more than the previous two. Its atmosphere is just as dark and the characters go through horrible events and suffer a lot. So, it should be a book I don’t like but there’s something there that can make me continue to read and even enjoy it. Maybe it’s my fascination with faeries and the cold, heartless Court they have here. Maybe it’s the lush writing. I know I like the historical period but I don’t know enough about the reign of Elizabeth I to really get the most out of it. Probably it’s the combination of characters, writing style, and setting.

The main characters are William Shakespeare and Kit Marley who is also known as Christofer Marlowe. Here, Will is a poor playwright and actor who works in London and struggles with the beginning of palsy. His wife and three children live in Stratford. His wife Annie isn’t happy about it but has no other choice. Will is also Kit’s very good friend and they help each other to write.

Kit almost dies from a dagger blade to his eye. He wakes up with a dark haired woman whom he slowly realizes is Morgan Le Fay. Morgan is a Queen of Faery and the sister of the reigning Queen, the Mebd. Even though Kit has been saved, he can’t return to a mortal life. Instead he is bound to Morgan and gets an immortal life in the heartless Faerie Court. But he can travel for a short time to mortal world and influence things there. Kit was a spy and a witch to Elizabeth’s loyal men, the Queen’s Men, who battle their enemies anyway they can. Publicly with words and with plays, and not so publicly with steel, blackmail, and spying. Kit feels that he still has a lot to do. But since he’s gone, so to speak, the Queen’s Men have to find another playwright to work his magic to the hearts of the audience. Kit guesses that they will try to recruit Will and he would very much like to prevent that because he thinks that Will doesn’t have the ruthlessness needed for the job.

But Kit is already too late. One of Will’s friends introduces him to Elizabeth’s spymaster, who is publicly thought to be dead, and his inner circle. Will has no choice but join. A whole new world of magic and espionage opens up to him.

Kit visits Will and gives him advice. They also send letters to each other about the sensitive political situation with an elderly Queen without an heir, and about the plays. Kit becomes the lover of both Morgan and her son Murchaud the Black, and is sucked in the complex machinations of the Court.

Bear has made a wonderful mix of fact and fiction, history and fairy tale, plays and mythologies. The book is littered with short quotes from both Shakespeare and Marlow which work well to establish the historical context and feel as well as a feel of the characters who wrote them. The whole time I wished that I knew more about the time period than what I could find in Wikipedia.

There a send of sadness and perhaps even doom around the characters. And yet they have choices and they do what their heart tells them to do. Well, the human characters have, at any case.

I believe most of the human characters are historical ones: Elizabeth I, Earl of Essex, spymaster Walsingham. Some of the mythological characters have also appeared elsewhere first. Morgan Le Fay is, of course, from the Arthurian legends. The Puck from Shakespeare. I also got the feel that Bear don’t like Lancelot much.

The strength of the story lies in the strength of the raw emotions of the characters. Love, hate, jealousy, lust, willingness to sacrifice oneself for another. They are contrasted against the cold Fae who seem to be able to feel only pain, if even that.

Bear uses somewhat archaic English with lots of “thees” and “thous”. Thankfully, it’s still understandable even to a foreigner like me.

Overall: I can’t wait to read the next one. I hope Bear can continue the series.

Oh, yes. The book contains romance and sex between men.

 

Elizabeth Bear: Whiskey and Water

This is the second book in the duology. The first is Blood and Iron. Both are part of the Promethean Age –series of books. However, the other books are set in different time periods so it’s not really a continuing series although of course there are same immortal characters in the books. I recommend reading Blood and Iron before this one.

Whiskey and Water is set seven years after the end of Blood and Iron (BaI). All of the surviving characters from BaI are seen here, too, and there are also a lot of new characters. Indeed, the cast of characters here is remarkably larger than in the previous book. There are also a lot more point-of-view characters. This was a bit of a problem for me because I vastly prefer just one or at most three POV characters. However, since some of them were familiar from the previous book, I wasn’t too irritated.

The familiar POV characters are Queen Elaine of the Seelie Court, Whiskey the Kelpie, and Matthew Magus formerly of the Prometheans. Elaine is still queen despite the plotting factions in her court. Her relationship is a bit strained with her son, though. Ian still blames Elaine for the deaths of his girlfriend and his unborn child. Also, the previous queen the Mebd appointed Ian as her successor and some factions in the court think that Elaine isn’t the legal ruler. In order to be the queen of faeries Elaine has given her soul to Whiskey. So, she can’t really feel much of anything. Also, her husband Keith is the legendary Dragon Prince whose fate is to kill a lot of people and be betrayed by someone near him. However, Keith is in Hell. He went the instead of Elaine.

Whiskey has ruled mercilessly the world’s oceans for times without end. However, now that he has a soul he can’t be as ruthless as before. His underlings have noticed this and some of them think it’s time Whiskey gave way to someone who can really rule. The others have stopped obeying his orders and the orders of Elaine. Whiskey himself wishes that Elaine would take his soul back because he has fallen in love with her and is now her occasional lover. Elaine, of course, can’t answer his feelings. Whiskey can’t help but to be loyal to her.

The former mage Matthew is in just as sorry a state as the other two. He can’t control his magic but at the same time he can’t stop hearing what New York City is telling him. He has broken all contact with Jane Adraste who was his mentor and is the only surviving full mage of the Prometheans. Jane has started to gather to herself new apprentices and Matthew isn’t happy about it. He couldn’t avenge his brother and he doesn’t really fit into the new world after the faeries revealed their existence to the world.

The book has a lot of new characters. Jewels wants to be a fae so badly that she has cut pointed tips into her ears. She’s also cut herself otherwise most of her life. When her friend Althea is killed gruesomely in the streets of NYC the authorities and Matthew think that the faeries are involved. The Merlin and Matthew take Jewels and her friend Geoffrey into the Seelie Court to find justice. Elaine gives Jewels as a servant to her son Ian so that Jewels can learn the skill to survive in the faerie lands.

Christopher Marlow has lived hundreds of years in hell as one of Lucifer’s pets. Now he finally has a chance to get back to world that has changed much. Marlow was part of the Prometheans when he was alive and has started to think that their goal of ridding the world of the faeries isn’t right.

There’s also Lily Wakeman who belongs to a Wicca group and gets far more than she thought when she starts a romance with one of the men in the group. It turns out that Lily has natural power of her own. She’s also transsexual.

Donall Smith is a NYC detective but he finds out that poking into the affairs of Jane Adraste can be dangerous. Especially when you yourself have magical power. The archmage may even make you an offer you can’t refuse.

The daughter of Mannannan Mac Lir is still alive and well. She’s a swan maid who knows Lucifer and Archangel Michael as well as Marlow.

Felix Luray used to be a member of the Prometheans. Now he’s trying to get back to the good graces of his archmage.

And a host of other characters. There’s even three devils: Marlow’s Lucifer Morningstar, Milton’s Satan, and a modern, more vicious devil. The Archangel Michael walks the earth as a woman. Morgan Le Fay lives in the Faerie world with her two hounds.

In a world were any and all stories can come true, human perception shapes a lot of things.

This book is just as dark as the previous one. Hope and sympathy are rare things in the cruel faerie world as well as in hell. Human world is a little bit better but only when the humans make it so. The pace is quick considering the size of the cast.

Bear’s writing style has also improved. While in BaI she wrote in tight third point-of-view and only changed the point-of-views between scenes, here she quickly and deftly changes the view as needed even inside a scene. Her writing is very beautiful and fits the grim world well; Bear’s writing makes the world bearable to read about and to even enjoy. She writers immortal and famous characters easily and manages to even surprise the reader at the end.

Oh and did I say that I love the book?

 

Elizabeth Bear: Blood and Iron

Wow! This one was really good! Basically it intertwines a lot of old creatures, fairy tales, werewolves, Arthurian mythos, and the modern world. The amazing thing is that it works so well.

Even though the modern world has largely forgotten the existence of Fairie and the other supernatural creatures and clings to science, Fairie exists and tries to survive as best it can. Both the Seelie and the Unseelie Courts have to raid half-breed fairies from the modern world to make up for their dwindling numbers. They also have to tithe to Hell every seven years. However, there are some humans who still know about the Fair Folk. They are magicians who have organized themselves as the Prometheus Club and they oppose Fairie any way they can. The Prometheus Magi who we come to know in the book have all lost someone to the Fairie and so have a very personal stake in the cold war.

There are three point-of-view characters: the Seeker who is the hunter of the Daoine Sidhe Seelie Queen the Mebd, Keith MacNeill a werewolf prince of a small pack, and Matthew Szcezegielniak a Promethean Magus.

The Seeker rises as the most prominent character. We find out quickly that she’s a changeling, a human who was taken or seduced to Fairie. There she obviously thrived to become a competent the Seeker whose job it is to capture more humans or half-breeds to her Queen. However, she is also the daughter of the current leader of the Prometheans and her mother is planning something very big to save all of the captured humans, the Seeker among them. However (again) the Seeker is already a grown woman: her beloved lover betrayed her to the Fairies and so their son Ian has been raised in the Seelie Court as an Elf Knight. His father has never even seen him and the Seeker has apparently also seen him very rarely.

At the start of the book the Seeker is hunting a young girl for her Queen. The girl is first slapped around by her pimp and then a Kelpie tries to lure her away in order to kill and eat her and possibly to have sex with her first. The Seeker binds the seahorse by his true name and returns with the girl. The Kelpie Whisky is a major and complex character in the novel. Soon though, the Mebd reveals that a new Merlin has been seen in the world and sends the Seeker to find him and to bind him to the Queen. Much to everyone’s surprise the Merlin is a woman. She’s also not a young girl clueless of her power and innocent, but a woman in her thirties: a musician, a collage professor, and a mage who knows most of her powers and also knows what and who she wants. Seeker has started out thinking that she will have to do what Nimue and Vivienne did before her and to seduce the new Merlin. However, the new Merlin Carel is a lesbian. Also, the Seeker has to outbid her competition who are the Prometheus Mage Matthew and the Seeker of the Unseelie Court Kadiska who both come to court the new Merlin.

Keith MacNeill’s father wants him to inherit the leadership of the pack. However, Keith doesn’t want it. He doesn’t feel like a leader and doesn’t want the responsibility. There is also another wolf in the pack whom Keith thinks would make a much better leader: a black wolf who has come recently from Russia. However, according to the ancient rules of the werewolves Keith and Fyodor will have to fight for the position of the leader. Keith was also the Seeker’s lover and still loves her deeply. He also wants very much to see his son and to be a part of Seeker’s life again.

Matthew Magus is a human mage who has lost his brother to the Fairies. Kelly was taken when he was in his twenties and when he came back only a few human years had passed but Kelly had become an old man and his feet are ruined. Worst of all to the eyes of Matthew, Kelly considers Fairie his home and would like to go back. At least on his lucid moments. Matthew is trying to prevent Fairies from taking anyone else and also he tries very hard to convince the Merlin to fight alongside the humans. His archmage is Jane Adraste, the Seeker’s mother, and they try to convince the Seeker to return.

There is whole tapestry of other characters; some bad, some good, and most of them complex and fascinating. All of them have their own motivations to do what they do.

The Arthurian angle of the book is interesting. There is a Merlin who is bound to the Dragon (not a Dragon but the Mother of all Dragons) and when there is a Merlin there is also a Dragon Prince who is also bound to the Dragon. The Dragon Prince will be betrayed by someone near him every time. The Dragon Prince comes around about every five hundred years. The ones after Arthur were Harold Godwineson and Vlad Tepesh. The Prince’s purpose is to kill in the name of the Dragon to satisfy her hunger. Unlike Arthur and the people close to him, this time the people tangled into the Arthurian tale know what is coming and they can either accept it or try their best to avoid it.

Morgan Le Fay is a prominent character. Here she is not the feminist icon that some writers have made her but neither is she an evil witch. In fact, she comes across as very human; someone who has made mistakes and is trying her best to live with them. I’d like very much to get a book focusing on her. Probably not during the Arthurian times but some other time.

There are a lot of references to many, many old myths, tales, songs, and poems. Tam Lin is the most obvious one. The Mebd has forbidden it from her court so it appears that that did happen one way or another in her court. Arthuriana is of course also obvious one.

The fairies themselves acknowledge that they are made from stories. When the stories change so can they and their memories of what really happened. That’s the reason why it’s hard to fight against the legend of the Dragon Prince.

The mood of the book is not happy. It’s very much not a happy ending book, also. But it’s not entirely depressing either. People just have to do a lot of hard choices and then live with them.

Many of the plots start with a familiar way (a prophesied leader, your parent isn’t who you thought s/he was, the reluctant prince/ss, even rules say we have to fight to the death) but Bear twists them out of the familiar ruts that many, many fantasy writers put them through. In the end we’re in a far different place than where we started and that’s a huge plus.

I also like her writing; it’s not as sparse as Brust’s but it’s far from the overflowery prose that many fantasy writers use. Just enough but not too much.