New Amsterdam

New AmsterdamEbook New Amsterdam Elizabeth Bear 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 Sebastien De Ulloa Is The Oldest Creature She Has Ever Known 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 In A World Where The Sun Never Sets 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 This review has been revised and can now be found at I really wanted to like this I still want to like it In fact, I suspect it s actually a two star book for me and I gave it an extra one because it s just depressing to give such an awesome concept two stars But the fact is I found reading this book either mildly entertaining or straight up disengaging Damn it.Part of the problem is that I didn t know what I was getting into The summaries I d read made it sound like a sort of steampunk and magic and vampires detection duo And that is not the case First, this is, for the most part, a book of short stories with the same protagonists mostly but no connection between them Except just as I d adjusted my expectations to that, the stories did start being connected Inconsistency kills this book in so very many places that s one of them I didn t get the sense they were written with any planning, so there s some minor retconning and recharacterizing as the stories progress, and also some tonal shifting It s nothing so major it d be noticeable, unless you read one story right after the other Which is what this book has you do So,
Sebastien de Ulloa is a vampire with a millennium and change to his name, a habit of caring about his food, and the desire to build a new life across the Atlantic in the colonies Detective Crown Inspector Lady Abigail Irene Garrett is a forensic sorceress who has exiled herself from London for reasons that do not need exploring at this juncture Together, they solve crime.Oh, now, this This I like.Clever, tense, satisfying mosaic novel It feels like the best of Bear s writing prose like perfectly toned musculature, and lacking the sometimes annoying self consciousness of Blood and Iron The alternate history turn of the twentieth century, where the imperial powers still grip the colonies and magic is science, is evocative and rich It got me from the start with Lucifugous I mean, it s basically Murder on the Orient Express in a zeppel
Set between 1899 and 1903 in a world where the sun never set on the British Empire, where America is still deeply British on those small territories secured from the natives and with the French breathing down their neck across a tenuous border, New Amsterdam presents the great amateur detective, Don Sebastien de Ulloa Travelling from Europe to the colonies across the Pacific by dirigible with his trusted young friend Jack, Sebastien is one of the oldest wampyrs living While wampyrs are welcome in Europe, they are most definitely not in the colonies, so he and Jack work hard to keep it a secret on board the air ship It s not long, however, before Sebastien s detective skills are required when a passenger disappears, and a sorcerer reveals his true nature.When he arrives in New Amsterdam only recently handed over to the British by the Dutch Sabestien teams up with Detective Crown Investigator Abigail Irene Garrett, a sorcerer who drinks a lot, is loyal to the Crown or at least, the oath she took to serve it and is having an affair with Duke Richard, the British Empire s representative in New Amsterdam The two find themselves neck deep in grisly paranormal murders and international politics, along with Jack and a curious widow who writes fiction, Phoebe Smith.This is my first Bear outing, and I have to admit fr
He s a millennium old vampire traveling to the New World to avoid vampire politics She s a detective mage with a sense of duty that could crack iron.Together they fight crime Seriously, New Amsterdam is set in sort of a steampunk magic alt history where the Hadenosaunee Iriquois and other native tribes kept the British and French from doing much in the US interior, the Dutch didn t cede their New York territory to Britain until the Napoleonic era, and the US never won independence Lady Abby Irene Garrett is one of the Crown s three go to people for magical crimes in the colonies, after a self imposed exile from England I enjoy a good supernatural mystery, and this fulfills this in spades The book is made up of a series of interconnected short stories there is an overarching plot about the relationship between Abby Irene and the Crown, but each story also features a crime to be solved The worldbuilding is also nice, and I d love to see than New Amsterdam, Boston and Paris in the stories The romance
This is one of those rather peculiar books that I feel I ought to adore, and actually only mildly like distressingly much of Elizabeth Bear is like that for me, where it just never quite makes the jump into deep passion Abigail Irene is a fabulous character, and Sebastian and Jack are at least unconventional, and the world building is comprehensive and well done, and I just never quite manage to break t
A series of short stories about a steampunk magic world Vampire who happens to be a private detective Okay, so that sounds like an awful premise But the book itself is quite entertaining, both for the random historical characters who sneak in, the well thought out alternate history, the pains the vampire takes to hide his condition , the hints at background events a war with France, Civil rights move
What a pity that this is out of print It s a very erudite version of steampunk On one level, it is a series of chapters that span the time period from 1899 to 1903 Each of the chapters stand alone, and perhaps in a previous life, they were short stories Each chapter is its own self contained mystery which is solved by 1,100 year old vampire and detective, Sebastien de Ulloa, and 50 ish former bombshell, Lady Abigail Irene Garrett, who is not only notorious for her liaisons with powerful, married men but also a formidable forensic sorceress and Detective Crown Investigator Sebastien is leaving Spain and his court for the New World, at that time the English colony of New Amsterdam, and travels only with his companion Jack, a 16 year old boy who was raised as Sebastien s ward after he was bought at a young age from some sort of slavery indenture situation and then freed by Sebastien Now Jack is a jealous lover who feeds Sebastien not only for the pleasure he gets from it but out of love for his vampire The first mystery is solved by Sebastian and Jack that of a murder on the dirigible taking them to New Amsterdam In New Amsterdam, Sebastien encounters DCI Garrett, aka Lady Abby Irene, when they are working on a case together, and they collaborate on future cases after that.When these individual mysteries are strung together, they tell a broader story about the political intrigues between the mu
New Amsterdam is a collection of short stories about Detective Crown Inspector Abigail Irene Garrett, a forensic sorceress, and Sebastien de Ulloa, a renowned amateur sleuth who also happens to be a vampire The stories take place in an alternate history colonies, where tensions exist between the Empire, the French, and the Iroquois The first story in the collection owes much to the tradition of English country house mysteries, only the suspects are all trapped in a dirigble instead The writing style felt a bit like Sir Arthur Conan Doyle s Sherlock Holmes stories, only sexier, and I enjoyed Bear s homage In the second story Sebastien meets Abby Irene, and most of the stories are told from her point of view The stories shine when they focus on murders and intrigue, and the sorcerous and mundane ways in which Abby Irene and Sebastien solve their cases A common thread running through the collection is whether or not New Amsterdam will side with the French or the British, and I found the last two stories which dealt almost entirely with this choice to be the weakest in the book This is largely a personal bias, however, as I love murder mysteries and prefer them to political int
This book is probably one of the first books in a long time to make me squeak out loud, cheer out loud, and genuinely cry for the characters The book is made of short stories and novellas detailing the adventures of DCI Abigail Irene Garrett and Sebastien De Ulloa, a vampiric detective closer to Sherlock Holmes than Nick Knight I honestly adored this book and as I m typing here, I wish that I could give it a fair review or even discuss the book in any way, but I can t While I can clinically discuss things I like, or things I enjoy, I find it hard to discuss things I absolutely, positively ADORE and such is the case with this book.All I can say is pick it up If you like the Dresden Files but want a bit of steampunk and subtlety, pick it up If you ve seen enough young female protagonists and you d like to read about a woman who s settl