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Chains cover art by Samuel Bak
New Amsterdam cover art by Patrick Arrasmith
The Chains That You Refuse
New Amsterdam
The Chains That You Refuse (Night Shade Books, 2006) is my first published short story collection, which is more or less comprehensive through 2005. (I am currently at work on a second comprehensive collection: more information as warranted.) It contains several previously unpublished stories, and a number of hard-to-find small press appearances.
The publisher's blurb says: Elizabeth Bear’s science fiction trilogy (Hammered, Scardown and Worldwired) have received widespread popular acclaim, but it is her short fiction which has really been turning heads. Routinely defying genre boundaries and exhilarating her readers, Elizabeth Bear’s short fiction demonstrates why she is one of the most exciting young writers in the genre.
Whether the inspiration is Ragnorok, Stagger Lee, Elizabethan Drama, John Lennon, or matters even further a field, Bear proves to be up to the task of taking recognizable icons and settings, and making them her own. The stories in The Chains We Refuse range from recognizable SF and fantasy, to contemporary-fantastic stories, to forms not quite so easily described. The twenty-two tales in this collection are sure to please.
I'm not sure which story is actually supposed to have something to do with John Lennon, though. There is some Lovecraftiana in here, however, and a story about Irene Adler. Here is the table of contents:
*L'esprit d'escalier: not a play in one act
* Gone to Flowers
* The Company of Four
* Ice
* High Iron
* ee "doc" cummings
* The Devil You Don't
* Tiger! Tiger!
* The Dying of the Light (with amber van dyk)
* And the Deep Blue Sea
* Schrödinger's Cat Chases the Super String
* One-eyed Jack and the Suicide King
* Sleeping Dogs Lie
* Two Dreams on Trains
* Stella Nova
* This Tragic Glass
* Botticelli
* Seven Dragons Mountains
* Old Leatherwings
* When You Visit the Magoebaskloof Hotel Be Certain Not to Miss the Samango Monkeys
* Follow Me Light
* The Chains That You Refuse
Publishers Weekly gave it a not so great review:
Fans of literate fantasy may embrace the 22 inventive tales in Bear's first story collection, but others will be put off by the experimental entries with their nonlinear, often static narratives and extreme emotional detachment. Little happens, for example, in the opening tale, "L'esprit d'escalier: Not a Play in One Act," about a man writing a play about Christopher Marlowe, John Keats and Allen Ginsberg in the afterlife. Bear (Hammered) is better when forced into the more traditional discipline of the Victorian pastiche with "Tiger! Tiger!" in which the world of Sherlock Holmes collides with that of H.P. Lovecraft. Perhaps the most successful story is "Seven Dragons Mountain," which mixes Chinese dragons and airships, but again a clever idea could have benefited from a more gripping execution. (Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. )
but Booklist really liked it:
The title story of Bear's collection is a tiny piece on the uselessness of knowing the future. Its volume mates leap from one trope to another, all over the genre map. Without exception, they are bright moments of storytelling, whether they concern mysterious creatures a la Lovecraft, time travel, political intrigue, epic battles, or the queen of the Seelie Fay. In "This Tragic Glass," Kit Marlowe's data throw off research on Renaissance poets at the University of Nevada, and the scholars arrange to bring him to their time (they've already got Keats) to reveal his greatest secret. Bear is as comfortable reimagining great literary figures--in "L'esprit d'escalier--Not a Play in One Act," besides Marlowe and Keats, she brings in Ginsberg, Shakespeare, Shelley, even Brautigan--as extrapolating physicists: "Schrodinger's Cat Chases the Super String" includes a conversation among Bohr, Schrodinger, Einstein, Heisenberg, and the Curies. An extraordinary gathering of stories that showcases Bear's chops most effectively. Regina Schroeder (Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved)
New Amsterdam (Subterranean Press, 2007) is my first hardcover publication. It's a really beautiful book, too. It is a theme collection: Six novelettes and novellas about Detective Crown Investigator Abigail Irene Garrett and Don Sebastien de Ulloa, who are, respectively, a forensic sorcerer and an amateur detective in a turn of the century contrafactual history set (mostly) on the East Coast of North America.
There was a limited edition hardcover with an associated chapbook, but it's sold out, and I think the trade hardcover is pretty hard to get too. However!
There will be a trade paperback reprint in summer of 2008.
This is the publisher's blurb for that one: Abigail Irene Garrett drinks too much. She makes scandalous liaisons with inappropriate men, and if in her youth she was a famous beauty, now she is both formidable--and notorious. She is a forensic sorceress, and a dedicated officer of a Crown that does not deserve her loyalty. She has nothing, but obligations.
Sebastien de Ulloa is the oldest creature he has ever known. He was no longer young at the Christian millennium, and that was nine hundred years ago. He has forgotten his birth-name, his birth-place, and even the year in which he was born, if he ever knew it. But he still remembers the woman who made him immortal. He has everything, but a reason to live.
In a world where the sun never set on the British Empire, where Holland finally ceded New Amsterdam to the English only during the Napoleonic wars, and where the expansion of the American colonies was halted by the war magic of the Iroquois, they are exiles in the new world--and its only hope for justice.
Here's the table of contents for that:
*Lucifugous
*Wax
*Wane
*Limerent
*Chatoyant
*Lumiere
Publisher's Weekly really likes this one:
Set in a New Amsterdam that's still a royal colony at the turn of the 20th century, this engaging dark fantasy collection from John W. Campbell Award–winner Bear (Carnival) introduces a tough, witty female sleuth. Abigail Irene Garrett is the perfect Victorian hard-boiled detective, with the added benefit of necromantic skills that make her a formidable forensic investigator in a world where sorcery is common. Teaming occasionally with vampire sleuth Sebastien de Ulloa, Irene cuts a figure of crime-fighting confidence through five of the six stories, grappling with demonic killers summoned for personal revenge or political intrigue, and plunging into wildly unpredictable adventures such as those recounted in "Lumière," a stunning blend of steampunk and eldritch horror. Bear's tales are not only ingeniously mysterious but also richly textured with details that bring the society and history of her alternate America to vivid life. Readers who like the grit of Laurell K. Hamilton's Anita Blake novels and the historical heft of Chelsea Quinn Yarbro's vampire tales will find similar pleasures here. (Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.)
Booklist loved it to death:
The zeppelin bound for New Amsterdam in British North America leaves France in 1899, carrying the typically far-ranging group of passengers, including a famous American film actress, a Hungarian aristocrat, a writer from Boston, an attractive young couple seeking political advancement in the Pennsylvania colony, and young Jack, traveling companion of Sebastien, a well-known detective. Less well-known is Sebastien's vampiric need for blood. Then, help! Is there a detective in the house? The blood thickens when Madame Pontchartrain, the group's eldest member, disappears, never having slept in her bed. The joy here arises from watching the story's twists and turns unfold, accompanied by speculation about who else on board may or may not be "of the blood" and by Pontchartrain's penchant for opium. Once in the New World, Sebastien adds to his blood sources sorcerer Abigail Irene Garrett, who's actually an officer serving the Crown's Duke Richard, and the plot complexities multiply, as do the cast members, giving new resonance to the term "characters" in this fast-moving supernatural tale that's bloody well good. (Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved)
And Library Journal was really happy with it too:
Abigail Irene Garrett, a woman past her youth but not beyond the occasional scandal, works as a forensic sorceress and an officer of the Crown. Sebastien de Ulloa has seen more than 900 years and has nothing left to live for. When Abigail and Sebastien find themselves in the New World, one in which the magic of the Iroquois prevents the American Colonies from expanding, they become the young land's best hope for justice. The hardcover debut by the author of the Promethean Age novels (Blood and Iron; Whiskey and Water) pairs two unlikely souls as compatriots in a new series that takes place in an alternate America. Sparkling with wry humor and precise period detail, this belongs in most fantasy collections.
Nathan Brazil at Sf Site gave it a very nice review here, saying (among other things):
New Amsterdam is presented as a series of loosely connected novellas, centred around the crime solving adventures of Lady Abigail Irene Garrett, and Sebastian de Ulloa. Garrett is a flint hard, caustic tongued, forensic sorceress, and de Ulloa is a thousand year-old wampyr, something like a bisexual Hercule Poirot. Beginning separately, but eventually combining talents and causes, the pair make their unique way through six stories, set at the turn of the 20th century. But this is a world in which sorcery is an every day fact of life, vampires are an accepted race, intercontinental travel is via Zeppelin, and the sun never set on the British Empire. A world where England is still on the verge of war with France, Holland only ceded New Amsterdam to the English Crown during the Napoleonic wars, and the war magic of the Iroquois halted colonial expansion.
For those enamoured with vampire detective fiction, but bored with the crudity of Laurell K. Hamilton, and the foppish frills of Anne Rice, Elizabeth Bear has the answer. New Amsterdam provides cooler, intellectually laced intrigue, aimed at readers comfortable with subtle minutia and artfully crafted characterisation.
Also, Charles Stross, who--among his other accomplishments--is A Hugo Winner--said these nice words about it: "In the tradition of Randal Garrett’s Lord Darcy stories, Elizabeth Bear has carved out a disturbingly dark alternative past, where the gaslit neuroses of Victorian colonialism rub shoulders with the nightmares of an older, grimmer age. Watch out for this fantasy — it’s got fangs."