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New Amsterdam


Cover art by Patrick Arrasmith

New Amsterdam

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.

It was followed by another related novella, Seven for a Secret, and at this point there are plans for two more novellas (the first one entitled The White City) and a chapbook or two.

There was a limited edition hardcover of New Amsterdamwith an associated chapbook, but it's sold out, and I think the trade hardcover is pretty hard to get too. However!

Reprinted in trade paperback 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:

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 Awardñwinner 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 "LumiËre," 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."

Seven For A Secret

The wampyr has walked the dark streets of the world's great cities for a thousand years. In that time, he has worn out many names--and even more compatriots.

Now, so that one of those companions may die where she once lived, he has come again to the City of London. In 1938, where the ghosts of centuries of war haunt rain-grey streets and the Prussian Chancellor's army of occupation rules with an iron hand.

Here he will meet his own ghosts, both dead and undead. And here he will face the Chancellor's secret weapon: a human child.

Seven for a Secret, coming in March 2009, is available as a trade hardcover or as a special limited addition with an additional long story, "The Tricks of London," in chapbook form. Preorder here.

The Booklist, review below:

Bear returns to the team of the wampyr Sebastian and Abigail Irene Garrett, decades after the stories of New Amsterdam (2007). Abigail Irene is now in her eighties, not particularly mellowed with age. Sebastian, remembering his history in London, is protecting young lovers from the Schupo (i.e., police; England has been under the not-very-popular iron fist of the Prussians for some time), in the process finding a mystery begging solution. The smell of wolf—of two girls, yes, but also a wolf—and magic somehow relating to sevens sets Sebastian and Abigail Irene to finding out what terrible thaumaturgical experiments the Prussians are into now. Seven echoes, quite often, the events in Paris (i.e., in New Amsterdam), and Sebastian is prone to fits of soul-searching. He has a very small court and is old enough to have a lot of memories to work with. Bear again handles the combination of PI caper and vampire yarn with her usual unconventionality. Sebastian is a fascinating character, and the mysteries he becomes embroiled in are magnificent examples of alternate history.

Here's the Publishers Weekly review:

Hugo-winner Bear's sequel to 2007's New Amsterdam will please fans of the earlier book, a series of alternate history novellas. Lady Abigail Irene Garrett and wampyr Don Sebastien de Ulloa resurface in a 1938 London that has been under German rule for over a decade. With the British king in exile in the Americas and the German Chancellor gathering a force of werewolves, the amateur detective duo plan to use magic to defeat the occupation. While other writers might have used the concept for a lengthy novel, Bear's decision to keep the story short lets her easily maintain suspense, and her superior prose will engage the interest of both new readers and fans of Abby and Sebastien's earlier exploits.

Excerpts from the Locus reviews:

Rich Horton listed it as a "recommended story," saying among other things: Elizabeth Bear's new book, Seven for a Secret, is a very satisfying latter-day sequel to her mosaic novel New Amsterdam.
And an excerpt from the Faren Miller review: The situation seems less grim than exciting to a pair of girls who barely manage to hide their lesbianism, their anti-government sentiments, and certain uncanny capabilities (for whatever the leaders wish to think, whatever the laws decree, magic does exist here). When the lives of these girls intersect with that of the wampyr who goes by many names, and the dying old woman he both tends and loves, it leads to moments of blood, sweat, and gloriously foolhardy danger, yet Bear never lets us forget the longer view.

New Amsterdam Chronology

 
© 2007 Elizabeth Bear. Brushes by Flyguy Designs.