Grail - Elizabeth Bear [2]
—Green Man Reviews
“It’s rare to find a book with so many characters you genuinely care about. It’s a roller coaster of a good thriller, too. There’s plenty of intrigue and a few climactic gunfights and an intriguing love triangle.… Elizabeth Bear has carved herself out a fantastic little world with this first novel. Long may it continue.”
—SF Crowsnest.com
“Hammered is a well-written debut, and Bear’s deft treatment of the characters and their relationships pushed the book up to keeper level.… I would gladly hand it over to anyone who would appreciate a broader spectrum of strong female characters to choose from, particularly in the realm of speculative fiction.”
—Broad Universe
“An enthralling roller-coaster ride through a dark and possible near future.”
—Starlog
“Bear has done a bang-up job rearranging a few squares of the here and now into a future that’s guaranteed to raise the blood pressure.… Sure, we all want heart-pounding suspense, and Bear offers that in spades. But she also provides the kind of pressurizing prescience that doesn’t exactly see the future so much as it re-paints the most unpleasant parts of the present into a portrait of a world that knows and loathes itself all too well.… And the gritty underpinnings she establishes make her flights of fancy all the more believable.”
—The Agony Column
“[Bear] does it like a juggler who is also a magician.”
—MATTHEW CHENEY, Mumpsimus
SCARDOWN
“Bear deftly creates believable characters who walk into your heart and mind easily … [her] prose is easy on the mind’s ears, her dialogue generally crisp and lifelike.”
—SciFi.com
“Scardown is a wonderfully written book, and should be a prerequisite for anyone who wants to write intrigue. Although it doesn’t reinvent the cyberpunk genre with radically new science or philosophy, it uses the established conventions to tell a thoroughly engaging story, and tell it with a high degree of skill. It’s engaging brain candy with surprising emotional insights—and some cool gun fights—and you won’t be able to put it down.”
—Reflection’s Edge
“For all the widescreen fireworks and exotic tech, it is also a tale in which friendships and familial relationships drive as much of the action as enmity, paranoia and Machiavellian scheming. Bad Things great and small will indeed be allowed to happen, but those who come through the other side will have exhibited that combination of toughness and humanity that makes Bear one of the most welcome writers to come over the horizon lately.”
—Locus
WORLDWIRED
“Elizabeth Bear … has forged a peculiar and powerful path with her tripartite novel. By sheer force of will and great writing, Bear has pulled off a rather remarkable feat without drawing attention to that feat.… [A] rip-roaring tale of detection, adventure, aliens, conspiracy and much more told in carefully turned prose with well-developed characters.”
—The Agony Column
“Elizabeth Bear is simply magisterial. She asserts firm control of her characters, her setting, and her research.… It really is a fine thing to see a writer mature as well and as successfully as Elizabeth has—and in only her third published book. I can pay her the ultimate compliment a reader can make a writer: I will purchase and read each of her books. Yes, I trust her insights and talent that much.… Run, do not walk, to your nearest bookseller, buy this book, and then sit back and enjoy.”
—Las Vegas SF Society
“Bear excels at breaking world-altering political acts and military coups into personal ambitions, compromises, and politicians who are neither gods nor monsters.… Worldwired is a thinking person’s book, almost more like a chess match than a traditional narrative.… Hardcore science fiction fans—especially those who read David Brin and Larry Niven—won’t want to miss it.”
—Reflection’s Edge
“The language is taut, the characters deep and the scenes positively crackle with energy. Not to mention that this is real science fiction, with rescues from crippled starships and exploration of mysterious alien artifacts and international diplomatic brinksmanship