James Nicoll Reviews

I Ran All Night and Day

Ancestral Night (White Space, volume 1)

By Elizabeth Bear

19 Dec, 2019

**Space Opera That Doesn't Suck**

5 comments

2019’s Ancestral Night is the first volume in Elizabeth Bear’s White Space series. It shares a universe with her earlier Jacob’s Ladder sequence¹.

Halmey Dz and her partners (the starship Singer and Connla Kurucz) make a precarious living searching out lost starships. They’ve had a run of bad luck; one more failure and they may lose their government subsidy.

On the other hand, the wrong lost starship could kill them.

Authors should not suffer for the poor decisions of the marketing department

Range of Ghosts Range of Ghosts (The Eternal Sky, volume 1)

By Elizabeth Bear

25 Nov, 2015

**Special Requests**

0 comments

2012’s Range of Ghosts is the first novel in Elizabeth Bear’s Eternal Sky series, which currently includes three linked novels and five shorter works. Or so I see on consulting the ISFBD, because if the hardcover I read has any hint that this is part of a series, I overlooked it. I will return to this point later.

Life as a relative of the Great Khan isn’t all beer and skittles and sacking the defenseless cities of the great plains. Sometimes it involves massive civil wars. The death of a Khan usually triggers a squabble over the Khanate. Which of the rivals, Qulan or Qori Buqa, will gain power? Or will the war end with the Khaganate in ruins? Choosing which faction to join is a matter of life and death and neutrality is not an option.

Temur chose poorly, which is why when we meet him he is the lone survivor of a slain army. He has been left for dead amidst the heaped bodies of his close relatives.