As anyone who followed my reviews in 2013 knows, I’m a slavering fan-boy for Elizabeth Bear’s Eternal Sky trilogy (Reviews: , Shattered Pillars, Steles of the Sky). Seriously. It’s the best completed fantasy trilogy I’ve read in a decade. Along with Kameron Hurley, I think that Bear is publishing some of the most progressive, interesting and important SFF today.
So, needless to say, I’m pretty excited to see that the first details about Bear’s next novel, Karen Memory, have been revealed. An I think you should be, too.
In conversation with Liz Bourke on Tor.com, Bear said:
Currently I’m working on a wild west Steampunk novel called Karen Memory, which is coming out from Tor in 2015. It involves heroic saloon girls, massive conspiracies, and at least one fascinating and oft-ignored historical character.
While fans of her fantasy trilogy might be disappointed to see Bear leaving the epic fantasy subgenre, I’m excited to see that she’s continuing to explore the boundaries of genre fiction. Bear is one of the genre’s more diverse and exploratory writers, and readers can expect the same level of care and thoughtfulness that she applied to epic fantasy to be shown towards Steampunk and its (very popular) tropes and traditions.
Karen Memory is slated for release in 2015 from Tor Books.
I’ve been on the Bear bandwagon for a long time, so I know she has a capability and capacity to inhabit LOTS of subgenres. Why not Weird West,too?
You know I’m a huge fan of Bear’s stuff. Her catalog has a wide variety of subgenres (epic fantasy to hard sf to urban fantasy to Elizabethan urban fantasy to vampires to stuff I don’t quite know how to categorize if I was in a categorizing mood). Heck, even her two more traditional SF series (Jenny Casey and the Dust trilogy) aren’t all that similar.
The one true consistency is excellence. That, and richly drawn characters who come across as individuals with their own motivations rather than filling a story slot.
I assume the oft-ignored historical character is Annie Oakley…
Steampunk isn’t usually my think, but Bear is one of my favourite authors. I’m definitely going to read it!
Thing*
I card write good
The Eternal Sky trilogy is finished?! I’ve been waiting for it to be completed because I’m tired of waiting for the next book in series but I must’ve missed that. Guess I’ll finally be starting book 1 now…