A Blessing of Unicorns, by Elizabeth Bear

I've read both of the Sub-Inspector Fallon stories now and enjoy the near-future post-apocalypse-but-we-survived setting of the story. In many ways it seems this version of the future is making the same mistakes as the present version, but that in some ways speaks to the critiques that the series can't really sufficiently let go of the present. It would almost work better as a near-future pre-apocalypse setting where we've managed to put off the (maybe) inevitable a bit longer.

It's interesting to be conscious of how we've changed when looking at representation in literature. Elizabeth Bear is not Indian, and in some ways the protagonist is not that convincing an Indian character. You're very conscious that it's a Western white woman telling a story set in India. Contrast that with, say, S. P. Divya's writing, which has a very Indian flavor and brings a different set of concerns.

It's good work and I'm glad to have read it.

A Blessing of Unicorns

My Goodreads Review

In the House of Aryaman, a Lonely Signal Burns, by Elizabeth Bear

Picked this up because I want to read A Blessing of Unicorns, the second in this story series. And I have to say that it is entertaining and interesting to read, like all Elizabeth Bear's work. I agree with other reviewers that there's a lot going on here, and in creating the mystery it gets a bit overwhelming. But a whole lot of good speculative elements. The sentient cats were cute, though I don't know how much demand there would be for an intelligent, socially demanding cat (accurately called a parrot-cat--parrots are really demanding). I enjoyed it and almost can give it a 4, but it's just a little all over the place. Looking forward to the next one.

My Goodreads Review

The Red Mother, by Elizabeth Bear

The Red Mother is a very fun character study.  Our protagonist, Auga Augasson, is a rogue--a sorcerer, a Viking (used as a verb here) and generally a guy out for a good time.  He's on a mission for kin duty--to find his brother and tell him he's been cleared of a manslaughter charge.  He ends up having to contest with a dragon to bring his brother back from death (caused by that dragon) and save a village.  Which might not really be worth saving.  

Auga and the dragon have some good if a little predictable dialog, though the situation was pretty original to me.  This is a fine piece of writing that, given what else was nominated, perhaps should have been more of a contender.

Machine, by Elizabeth Bear

Well...I liked Machine, better than I liked Ancestral Night.  I'm still not really enthused, even though I basically enjoyed it and was engaged in the plot.  The story is not simple, nor is the resolution.  But I agree with other reviewers that both Haimey (from Ancestral Night) and Jens spend a lot of time introspecting in our general direction, meaning that they infodump big time. 

They are also very similar in their basic belief in the Synarche.  It comes off as an inhumanly prosocial galactic empire, until it doesn't.  The plot situations are slightly different, but both characters react to their situations as though they were representatives of what the Synarche is about on an individual level, instead of real people.  I am reminding myself that Haimey was in many ways not a real person.  Jens seems to be, though we learn less about her background.

The novel stands alone, and you really wouldn't need to read one or the other first.  That is kind of what drives me nuts about this one, because Ancestral Night leaves a very large plot element out there for later development.  <spoiler>Singer, the shipmind from Ancestral Night, is a peripheral character in Machine so we know it takes place later.  I was really hoping this book would take the idea of the pattern written into the universe that only Haimey can see a bit further.  There's a very mild echo of it in the poetry written into the archaic humans of Big Rock Candy Mountain's DNA, but that particular reveal ends up getting dropped entirely</spoiler>  So this book, in my view, *should* have been a straight sequel but it wasn't.  

I liked Helen Alloy as a side character, and the way the action unfurled kept me reading.  But both of these books just leave me thinking they could have been better.  Darn.

My Goodreads Review

Lest We Forget, by Elizabeth Bear

This one is on the disturbing side of SF, though not severely so.  A veteran is dying of the war they fought, in an unusual way.  Not in combat.  Much of the story is description leading up to the moment of the reveal.  A doctor has found a way to infect people with memories via a virus, but it requires some sacrifice to get the memories into that form.  Our veteran is making it.  Lots of possibilities here, this could go wrong in so many ways, and they know it too.  I think that would be the end of our species as thinking beings--we'd never know again when a thought was ours.  The leadup is pretty believable too.  Good stuff!

Erase, Erase, Erase, by Elizabeth Bear

This is a story that F&SF says it has held for a long time, waiting for the right time to publish.  And it is a fine literary piece.  Our protagonist is slowly disappearing--parts fall off, become transparent to ordinary objects.  Not consistently, but inconveniently.  And she is losing her memory, and losing track of things.

Sounds like an Alzheimer's story, but the cause seems to be guilt--the protagonist does a lot of writing, and is trying to remember the name of the leader of the terrorist cult she joined in college.  Before he does terrible damage.

The story is well written and good to read.  Made me think about the Unabomber a lot.  How do people in this position find their way back to reality?

A Time to Reap, by Elizabeth Bear

I'll say right off the top that I loved this story.  Time travel stories are all about the motivation, and in this case it's a gorgeously told tale.  Kat is a child actor, performing in a play based on a videogame, that is in turn based on a murder mystery set in 1978.  She goes to the scene of the murder to gather background for the character she is performing.  Some characters live, and some die--her character is one of the victims.

Kat is a sixteen year old playing a twelve year old, and that makes a lot of difference in the story.  Because she gets sucked up in a time machine one of the characters built (by accident, it was supposed to be a space bender) and is deposited back in 1978.

There's a lot of interesting nostalgia about that time--being kind of old I am personally familiar with it.  Lots of junk food (that has not changed, though the character stays away from it to maintain low weight), unaccompanied children, no cell phones--it's an odd world for her.  Interesting to see the surprise at how that time was, reflecting on the difference between what I remember and how things are now.

The story centers on the relationship between Kat and the IRL version of the character she is playing, Sissy.  It is beautiful and complex, and weaves well into the mystery story as Kat tries to solve and prevent the murders, even as she risks changing the future in unknowable ways.  We get some time travel paradox and it is central to the resolution but not the story.

This should have gotten more respect.  It didn't get on the major (Hugo, Nebula) ballots and finished somewhat low on Locus.

Ancestral Night, by Elizabeth Bear

Well...Ancestral Night is a decent book. I cannot say better. It ticks all the boxes--a premise that facilitates galactic adventure (the Alcubierre-White drive) that she leverages in the plot, some decent characterization, and lesbian sexual tension that I think comes closer to what sexual aggression between women would be like than anything else I have read. But it was a long and kind of hard slog. Our protagonist (Haimey) has a complex history that is slowly revealed--she has been highly regulated with personality overlays. She is a true fan of galactic government and prosocial behavior in the form of the Synarche. She has an engineering mind that lends itself to hard SF.

You would think it would be nominated for the major awards with this kind of pedigree. But I'm not surprised it wasn't. It's good, but not quite good enough for that company. What is the lack? Editing, maybe? We are treated to a lot of semi-preachy soul searching from Haimey. And her nemesis, Zayna Farweather, is kind of a cartoon. Somewhat self-consciously so, since she is a pirate and they embrace the lifestyle almost to the point of saying "Arrr...". A major subplot is the tension and psychological combat of Haimey and Farweather, but Farweather is too much of a cutout and Haimey spends most of it talking to herself.

There's a lot of room for sequels--inscrutable aliens and codes written into the structure of the universe itself leave a good work space. But it is a work of competency more than anything. I am happy enough to have read it.

My Goodreads Review

Okay, Glory, by Elizabeth Bear

Okay, Glory is the first piece of what could be considered "hard" SF by Elizabeth Bear that I have read.  Except it's almost not speculative, seems just about a year or two in the future.  An eccentric tech billionaire who likes to be left alone has constructed an IOT Fortress of Solitude and turned control over to a house AI called Glory.  It takes good care of him and he's very fond of it.  Except it gets hacked--the AI gets convinced that the outside world has had the Zombie Apocalypse--and locks him in.  Who'd 'a thunk it?

We're getting to the point where it's easy to believe that anyone who turns that much of their life over to IOT devices is asking for trouble.  Might have been more interesting if his Smart House was air-gapped and they still found a way to hack it.

In any case it's a good story, and nice that it found its way into a free online source from the print collection (Twelve Tomorrows) that it was in.

The Stone In the Skull, by Elizabeth Bear

The Stone in the Skull by Elizabeth Bear

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


I'm only giving this book 3 stars, but it's a strong 3 stars. As others have said, this is pretty much stage setting for the next couple of books in the trilogy. The characters are all pretty thoroughly fascinating and have a lot of range. The Gage is a sort of classic "gentle giant" type, and it will be interesting to see where Bear takes him. The Dead Man is also a classic type, more the stolid samurai. Both have outlived their original purpose. Their search and their dialogues about it can get a bit self-conscious at times, but overall they are worth reading. We have two women rulers, very similar in their solid devotion to duty, but one is on the way to a drug addiction and the other is transgender. Lots of possibilities here.

I usually don't read books in a universe out of order, even if they are supposedly independent, and think I should have done so here as well. The characters are supposedly mostly new, but I think the setting would make more sense with the earlier trilogy behind it.



View all my reviews

Karen Memory, by Elizabeth Bear

Having finished all the books and stories I could find related to the 2015 Hugo, Nebula, and World Fantasy Awards, I branched out to the Locus awards.  Lots of fine material there.  I settled on novel nominee Karen Memory because it was available as an e-book from my local library and I have enjoyed many Elizabeth Bear novels.

Karen Memery is a "seamstress" in Rapid City, somewhere along the West Coast during the Gold Rush.  The seamstressing is done on her back.  She has the good fortune to work for Madame Damnable, an extraordinarily tough and fair madame who is well connected in Rapid City politics.  The setting is Gold Rush steampunk--we have mostly horsepower for getting around, but electricity, dirigibles and advanced engineering are readily available.  A Mad Scientist license in Rapid City costs about the same as one for being a seamstress.

Things get rough when Peter Bantle, a nasty local pimp, gets higher ambitions and decides to run for mayor with outside money and a steampunk mind control device.  He is also harboring a serial murderer of white streetwalkers that brings Bass Reeves, a black US Marshal, to town.

The story is basically a good one.  We have romance (lesbian--almost feels required), adventure, strong women and strong men.  Bear is a good writer and brings it together well.  But there are a lot of problems that detract from enjoyment. 

Most steampunk novels, and lots of alternate history novels, are based around a speculation about the effects of a technological advance that takes place several decades ahead of time, like flight, electricity or computing.  The story then flows from the logical consequences of that advance.  But Bear is not a steampunk author--she writes fantasy.  That seems to show here, since the steampunk advances feel random and don't coherently drive change.  We have dirigibles, "surgery machines" that somehow harness analog power to do advanced medical care, and sewing machines that are operated from the inside like a tank (literally so later).  And a mind control device that acts through a focusing device at a distance, like some sort of early Bluetooth.

The title character's name is after a friend of the author's.  She alludes to the name pun early on but doesn't do anything with it. Karen has memories, but she does not exemplify or otherwise interact significantly with Memory in the book.

Karen speaks in rural dialect, which I find kind of distracting. 

All in all this feels like a book that didn't come together nearly as well as it could have.  The afterword describes her research and adds a lot to the enjoyment, which is why in the end I will give it 3 stars.  Possibly a stretch to consider it for an award.

Dolly, by Elizabeth Bear

Dolly was on some best story lists in 2011, but it's not nominated for anything this year--I'm waiting for some novels to be available so am reading some favorite authors in the meantime. 

Dolly is a robot who has killed her owner.  Detective Roz is trying to figure out how she was used as a weapon.  But she and her partner begin to draw a different conclusion as they talk to her--she is self-aware enough to have done it herself, though she was not programmed as such.  New ground will be broken. 

The story is pretty basic, this idea is not a new one so it needs a twist or more dressing to really be good.  But it was OK for a slow evening.  3 stars