Author #Elizabeth Bear is just one creative writer.Winner of the Hugo And Sturgeon Memorial Awards.This book has 27 stories and novellas.Expect the unexpected with characters,words and worlds.Imaginative fiction it’s purest form.
Thank you,
#Netgalley,#Elizabeth Bear, And #Subterranean Press

Ahoy there me mateys!  I received this short story collection eARC from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.  So here be me honest musings . . .

The cover drew me in and three things convinced me to read this book:

1. I love Elizabeth Bear!  I have read at least eight of her novels;
2. It is a Subterranean Press book and they do great work; and
3. This collection has 27 stories and I have never read any of Bear's short fiction.

Out of the 27 stories I loved 14 of them, 7 were just okay, and I didn't like 6.  I will say that ye get a lot of bang for yer buck.  I will try to give ye an idea of the bare bones and thoughts on the stories:

"Covenant" - Damn.  Get inside the head of a convicted and rehabilitated serial murderer and then manage to find compassion for them.  I was mesmerized.  This was awesome and worth the price of admission.

"She Still Loves the Dragon" - This was weird and I don't think I liked it.  It is the story of a female knight and a dragon and their love.  I didn't really get it.

"Tideline" - This was a fantastic story about a dying war machine and the boy she befriends on a beach.  Sad and lovely.

"The Leavings of the Wolf" - This was an odd story about a woman whose wedding ring haunts her.  She is both driven and reluctant to get rid of it.  I didn't love the ending of it but it was very engaging.

"Okay, Glory" - I loved this one.  A rich recluse's smart house is hacked for ransom.  This is how he deals with it.  Clever and compelling.

"Needles" - This vampire story was confusing.  I didn't understand this one either.

"This Chance Planet" - A street mutt in Moscow helps a woman confront her unhealthy situation that everyone else in her life knows about but won't intrude on.  I loved it and thought the ending was excellent.

"The Body of the Nation" - This was a murder mystery with an awesome setting and a fun main character.  However, the solving of the mystery was cheating by not giving the reader sufficient clues.  It also felt like a snippet of a larger novel and that ye were missing something.

"Boojum" - Living space ships rock!  So do space pirates!  I actually have read (and loved) this one before but didn't realize it was co-written between Sarah Monette and Elizabeth Bear.

Side note: I also didn't know that Sarah Monette and Katherine Addison are the same person!

"The Bone War" - I loved this story about a bone wizard who brings a dinosaur back to "life".

"In the House of Aryaman, a Lonely Signal Burns" -  Another awesome story with a murder mystery, cool world building, and a cat.

"Shoggoths in Bloom" - Well I didn't know what a Shoggoth was.  The First Mate had to explain it me.  Loved this historical fantasy fiction set in between the great wars with a black naturalist scientist as the main character.  Sad but correct ending.

"Skin in the Game" - A painfully good story about the price of being a rockstar.

"Hobnoblin Blues" - This one was also about a rockstar who happens to be Loki.  I have to admit I kinda skimmed the beginning but I liked the ending a bit more.  Mixed feelings.

"Form and Void" - A weird, cool story about space, an unhealthy friendship, and odd dragons.  I liked it.

"Your Collar" - This story was about the minotaur and a queen.  It was interesting but I didn't completely understand the ending.

"Terroir" - I didn't know what this French word meant but dang was it used well as the theme of this story that dealt with memory and ghosts.  I thought the story was a bit too long but I enjoyed it.

"Dolly" - Murder-mystery robot story.  Absolutely loved it.

"Love Among the Talus" - This was set in the same world as the Eternal Sky trilogy which I read and loved.  Loved this story too.

"The Deeps of the Sky" - Ships sailing in the sky.  First contact story told from the perspective of an alien meeting a human for the first time.  Liked it.

"Two Dreams on Trains" - This was a heart wrenching story set in New Orleans in the distant future.  It showcases a mother's love and dreams for her son and her disappointment.  Beautifully done.

"Faster Gun" - A western with Doc Holiday, a crashed spaceship in the desert, and magic.  Fun.

"The Heart's Filthy Lesson" - An adventurer on Venus is trying to discover a lost civilization while dealing with the conflicted feelings about her lover who happens to share a mind-link with her.  I really loved this one.

"Perfect Gun" - A mercenary buys the perfect ship only that ship has her own ideas about her pilot's actions.

"Sonny Liston Takes the Fall" - A weird story about Las Vegas and boxing with a bit of magic and horse racing thrown in.  Well written but I didn't like it.

"Orm the Beautiful" - A weird story about the last dragon and how he chose to end his life.

"Erase, Erase, Erase" -  I liked the concepts in this one but the plot was kinda tedious.

I be very grateful to have a chance to read these stories.  While I didn't love every story, I do have a few new favourites of hers.  Arrrr!

So lastly . . .

Thank you Subterranean Press!

The Best of Elizabeth Bear is an enormous collection of Bear's short fiction. That's the fantastic thing about it and the difficulty with it. In nearly 600 pages, we, the readers, get 27 stories that range from hard science fiction to fantasies about knights and dragons to westerns (weird ones) to boxing stories. There's such a wide range of stories here that you almost don't believe one person wrote them all. But, that's almost too many stories for the average bear and it's hard to get through them all so overwhelming is the sheer quantity. Nevertheless, unlike most collections which are unabashedly front-loaded, these get even better the deeper you dig.

Here are some notes on 15 of them from the second half of the collection, the part some might not even reach ( and that would be a mistake):

* Skin in the Game is a tale about life on the road surrounded by money-hungry publicists and agents. It's a story about pop music and authenticity and the drive to be the latest and the greatest with the newest technology.
* Hobnoblin Blues is another riff on the music biz. It features an androgynous rock star, Loki, hailing from middle England and his travails with fame, fortune, and everything that goes with it.
* Form and Void is a story about two teenage girls, umbilically connected as they often are and who can't let go. It's a story about sprouting wings and taking off into space. It's in many ways a transformative story and about real honest-to-God dragons.
* Your Collar is all about ancient myths and legends. There once we are told was a king and a Minotaur and a labyrinth. Now there's a queen and a beast called a Minotaur.
* Terroir reminds us of the re-enactment tours where tour guides take you through the scenes of the Normandy beach D-Day as if you lived through it. But, to thus business executive, the ghosts of Normandy may be even more real than that.
* Dolly-- Any good robot murder mystery absolutely has to pay homage to Asimov and his positronic brains and Bear takes this opportunity to give a shout out. Dolly is a very special robot and it takes a very special detective to ferret the truth out from Dolly.
* Love Among the Talus - They say a princess is so pure and sensitive that she can feel a pea underneath twenty mattresses. Well, this is not that story. But, it is a story about a princess and a magic spell and a prince.
* The Deeps of the Sky -- is a revisit to Close Encounters of the Third Kind, but without the mashed potato mountain
* Two Dreams on Trains --is an excellent story about the Waterworld-type world that grows when the levees break and New Orleans is flooded for good. 'Cause you know a city with a history like that you don't just walk away from. And it's all anyone wants to jet up into space.
* Faster Gun -- Based on this story, Bear could very well have made an entire career out of weird westerns. This is Doc Holliday and Tombstone like you never imagined them before. Perfectly crafted, dirty, dusty, and a bit out of what you'd expect to find in the Great American Southwest.
* The Heart’s Filthy Lesson -- is about colonizingVenus in form fitting adaptashells and tangling with giant native monsters that are vaguely like tigers.
* Perfect Gun ---is a sweet little Valentine's story of romance, togetherness, and mercenaries
* Sonny Liston Takes The Fall --is a well-crafted story of a legend whose biggest claim to fame these days was losing the title to the msn formerly known as Cassius Clay. Bear can clearly write in just about any genre. There's not much science fiction here.
* Orm the Beautiful --is yet another bold tale about everyone's favorite creature (and obviously Bear's favorite) the mighty esteemed dragon.
* Erase, Erase, Erase --is the final story in the collection, but one that didn't strike a chord for me.

As an SFF fanatic, Elizabeth Bear's name is not unknown to me...but I'm sad to say I've never read any of her work until now. What was I waiting for?! Bear's collection of highly speculative shorts display a master of the craft as well as a penchant for entertaining, thought-provoking storylines that leave you thinking about them for days. This volume contains 27 different stories, so it took me a while to get through it--but that's not a bad thing! There's something satisfying about being able to finish a short story but still know there's more of the book to enjoy later on. Based on these short stories, I'm looking forward to reading more from Bear and will likely try something longer next... Stone Mad looks like a likely candidate!

I had never read any of Elizabeth Bear's work before this, so I wasn't quite sure what to expect. What a pleasant surprise this book is! There are 27 stories here, which is quite a lot, and there are many different genres represented. Some of the stories stand well on their own, while others feel like they're parts of bigger stories that make me want to read more. Regardless of that, the entire book is a great read and I enjoyed every story. Now I'm enticed to read some of her novels.

If you have not read Elizabeth Bear (and why have you not?), this collection is an excellent place to begin! She writes fantasy, alternate history mysteries, science fiction, fantasy romance, and straight out weird tales that would fit in Lovecraftian anthologies ("Shoggoths in Bloom" for example). And after you have dipped your toes in Elizabeth Bear, you will be ready to go out and decide what other of her works to devour! Happy reading!

Thanks Netgalley for the opportunity to read this collection!

A massive collection of stories, 27 in all, this book provides a survey of Elizabeth Bear's breadth and storytelling talent. Regardless of the genre, her characters are almost always drawn with specificity and their own particular off-center perspectives. Her stories seldom follow standard tropes; instead, things are at least a little askew. A number of these stories involve transformations of one sort or another, almost all unexpected.

3.5 STARS

From Earth to Venus to interstellar space and more...

The Best of Elizabeth Bear is a collection of 27 short stories that cover an entire universe, shifting through time and space with remarkable ease. Some carry over constant themes, like Bear's exploration of "rightminding," in which people can chemically alter their brains to no longer produce undesired emotional responses. Others introduce new worlds and new stakes with surprising fluidity and ease. All, however, imagine a world that could have been, or might still be. Bear is a speculative fiction master, and these 27 short stories show that to the fullest in their arrangement.

"You have known many monsters. Many of them have been civilized. Most have been human."

Bear's work commonly explores the condition of humanity, especially in relation to the non-human. Her stories regularly explore who deserves human kindness and compassion, who deserves to be considered as a living, thinking, rational being. Whether it's a rightminded ex-serial killer faced with familiar perils, or a sentient ship trapped on a salt-drenched beach with no hope of scaling the nearby cliffs, there's always a question of what these characters need, what they deserve.

There's often a look at who the real monsters are, too. Humans? The machines they create? The thirst for power, money, knowledge? Drawing the line between right and wrong can sometimes be difficult. Other times, however, it's crystal clear.

And yet I have my reservations about the collection as a whole.

For one, this collection drives home the fact that...short stories often aren't for me. As often as I was impressed by Bear's command of language and her willingness to dive deep into questions big and small, I found myself frustrated by the endings of stories, which felt open-ended. Some folks love this, and it does seem more common in short stories. I simply dislike it on a personal level. I prefer endings that feel by and large fixed, and any openness has to be extraordinarily well-crafted.

My other reservation, however, is a more important one. For all of Bear's phenomenal work exploring time and space and the beings inhabiting it, there were two stories in particular that had me a little wary. Both "Shoggoths in Bloom" and "Sonny Liston Takes the Fall" center Black men, and I found it disconcerting to read these coming from a white woman. "Sonny Liston Takes the Fall" was especially jarring, in that there was a single use of the n-word, and I don't care for that coming from a white author.

At this time, I've yet to find any Black reviewers of these two stories. I'm going to continue searching, however, because I think their input on Bear's work is more valuable than my own in this case.

Ultimately, we reach a 3.5 star rating, caught between impressive talent and boundaries overstepped.

On the one hand, Bear's work is truly impressive from a craft standpoint, and she builds diverse worlds in which to stage her big questions. Her character casts are not overwhelming white cishet men, but instead people of varied races, genders, and sexualities (plus some non-human cast members, like the devoted Chalcedony in "Tideline," or Chairman Miaow in "In the House of Aryaman, a Lonely Signal Burns"). My favorite stories were "The Bone War," featuring a creative approach to necromancy and a healthy dose of professional interference, "Love Among the Talus," starring a princess who lets no one interfere with the destiny she desires, and "Faster Gun," in which the famous Doc Holliday crosses paths with aliens in the Old West.

And yet I cannot set aside what I observed in "Shoggoths in Bloom" and "Sonny Liston Takes the Fall," well-written as they are. While I think Bear tries to handle issues of race with respect, I'm not convinced this was her place to do so. It remains a lingering hesitation, refusing to be brushed aside, and I have to honor that, have to bring it up at the very least.

The Best of Elizabeth Bear releases on January 31st from Subterranean Press, if you find yourself considering it for purchase.


CW: violence, kidnapping, graphic injury, nudity, child death, loss of a loved one, body horror, gore, racism, anti-Semitism, drug use, alcoholism, disordered eating, smoking, transphobia, animal death, child abuse, police brutality, sexual assault, suicide

Elizabeth Bear is brilliant at switching genres and giving the normally forbidding scifi / speculative fiction genre a deeply human element. There are a few pieces in here that feel like they're part of larger works (I know at least one of them actually are) but they do serve well enough to stand on their own - and make me more curious about the series they belong to! These are perfect for intrigue and worldbuilding between novels, making them perfectly palatable. Having read these, I definitely want to dive more into Bear's backlist - particularly the forensic sorceress in an alternate history because that just sounds really cool.

A great collection of some of Bear's truly best work, including short stories and a novella. I'd read some of these before and others were new to me, and most were a pleasure. Bear is best when writing about the deep inner lives of people and things, like in "Boojum," and when reimagining other places and mythos, like in "Faster Gun," set in a Wild West, and "Shoggoths in Bloom," which upends Lovecraft's racism and Cthulhu mythos in an elegant manner. While a few of the stories drag a bit--mainly those that center around the reader being able to understand either alternate-science concepts or rely on large narrative jumps-- the collection as a whole is solid and a great capsule of Bear's work.

An unusually strong set of stories, but Bear has also written a lot over a long period of time. A nice job of curation. I haven't much of her work before now, but shows her talent nicely. These are diverse and many are complex. Only a couple entries that were only good. Recommended.

I feel lucky to have received a review copy!!

This collection of short stories by Elizabeth Bear range from sci-fi to fantasy, from worlds where dragons turn to precious stones to creatures who mine a gas giant and are visited by aliens who are mostly made of molten water (loved that phrase).
While I did not like all the stories equally (does anyone ever?), most if them were quite good. What I loved best about the writing was how Elizabeth Bear could, in a few short pages, help you slip into a mind and a situation total alien to anything you will ever experience. This is what makes her a great and award winning author and what makes this collection of short stories more than worth the read.
My favorite was a story called "The Perfect Gun". The combination of a robotech-like technology with a look into the morality of a mercenary was sci-fi at its best.
Thank you to the publisher and Netgalley for the opportunity to read an ARC of this book.

The Best of Elizabeth Bear- This Subterranean Press edition of Elizabeth Bear's short stories and novellas is chock full of powerful, astonishing ideas and inspiring revelations. Weighing in at almost six hundred pages, these twenty-seven outings cover much of her award-winning career so far. "Shoggoths in Bloom", uses the Lovecraft Mythos in a mesmerizing parable about racism and free-will, all the more poignant as Lovecraft himself has been deemed by many to be an avid racist. I always enjoy Mythos stories done by other writers and this one is a sublime mixture of longing and discovery. "Tideline", an award winner as well as Shoggoths, tells a sentimental, moving story of sacrifice and purpose, that echoes the loss and hope of a new tomorrow. So many good stories to choose from, most anthologies have a few clinkers, but I'm not wasting any time searching for one here. Thanks to Subterranean for giving me a digital review copy. I bet the hardback will be gorgeous!

These are the best short stories of a very popular author. I've tried a few of her novels and nothing has clicked for me, so I jumped at the chance to try her best stories. Varying mileage for me; again, nothing really clicked on a big level. That just means she isn't my cuppa; fans will certainly love it and other new readers ought to start here.

This is a forthcoming collection of Elizabeth Bear’s short stories that I received as an ARC from Subterranean Press. So thanks to them for that.

My prior experience with Elizabeth Bear has been fairly small, relative to what she’s published. I’ve read <i>Karen Memory</i> and the sequel, about a woman working in a brothel in 19th century boomtown Seattle with a dash of the supernatural thrown in for fun, and <i>Ancestral Night</i>, first in an upcoming sci-fi series about a small crew in a future Federation-like galactic alliance. Both were excellent, and very, very different from each other.

Which leads me to the main thing I took away from this collection: my God, does Bear have range. Murder mysteries involving necromancers on 19th century steamboats. Aliens and time travelers in the Old West. Robin McKinley-esque fairy tales. Dragons. Vampires. Sentient spaceships. Shoggoths. It all works, and it all works very, very well.

A few themes emerge. The majority of these stories feature female protagonists, and all of them are super interesting characters. There’s pretty much nothing cliché about any of them, and when you have to sketch characters as quickly as you do in writing short stories, not leaning on established tropes is an impressive feat.

There are a number of murder mysteries, and while a short story doesn’t give time to really explore the mystery in the way you can with a good Agatha Christie, they nevertheless kept me guessing and caught me a bit off-guard with the answers.

There are a few stories with historical characters, notably Doc Holiday and boxer Sonny Liston. One story is set in a quiet New England seaside town, and explicitly in the universe of HP Lovecraft.

An idea that comes up repeatedly is the idea of “rightminding.” I was familiar with the idea already, because it’s a major theme in <i>Ancestral Night</i>, but it’s clear that Bear has been kicking this idea around for a while. The notion is that of a technology, implanted in the brain, that allows one to regulate one’s brain chemistry. With some matters, like people dealing with psychopathy or other mental illness, the benefits are obvious. And one can see the benefit of switching off one’s fear to deal with a frightening situation calmly, or turing off your sex drive if it’s getting in the way of rational decision making. But at some point, you’re turning off part of what it means to be human, and where that line is is far from clear. It’s an interesting sci-fi kind of question, and I’m curious to see where else Bear takes it.

All in all, this is a great way to get to know one of modern science fiction’s best and brightest. Like all good anthologies, you can read this all in one go or spread it out. But highly recommended either way.

I kept waiting. Waiting for a story to not hit me so hard, to say "oh okay, there it is." There's always a weak link in an anthology, no matter how carefully curated. As I read the last words of 'Erase, Erase' and finished the collection, I realized I would have to keep waiting, maybe in the next Bear collection there will be a dud. There certainly isn't one here.

Elizabeth Bear is a master of short fiction. Her stories have layers upon layers. As I read, I tracked down a few that had been published elsewhere and made my friends read them so we could discuss. And argue. And tease at all the different meta threads Bear effortlessly weaves through her stories.

I received an ARC copy of this in exchange for an honest review, but I will be purchasing a copy for my library. That's how good this collection is. If you've never read Bear, this will convert you. If you're already a fan, this will enthrall you further.

Standout favorites as follows:

Covenant
She Still Loves the Dragon
Tideline
Your Collar
Love Among the Talus
The Body of the Nation

I have read some of these short stories before, and loved them, but without really registering the author and how wonderful ALL of her stories are. This collection is superb, and I now realize that she is one of my favorite authors...I just had never connected the dots before to realize that she wrote so many of my favorites, because I'd read them spread out over years. Now I want even more, and will seek out all of Elizabeth Bear's other stories!