Dust

On a broken ship orbiting a doomed sun, dwellers have grown complacent with their aging metal world. But when a serving girl frees a captive noblewoman, the old order is about to change....

Ariane, Princess of the House of Rule, was known to be fiercely cold-blooded. But severing an angels wings on the battlefieldeven after she had surrenderedproved her completely without honor. Captive, the angel Perceval waits for Ariane not only to finish her offbut to devour her very memories and mind. Surely her gruesome death will cause war between the housesexactly as Ariane desires. But Arianes plan may yet be opposed, for Perceval at once recognizes the young servant charged with her care.

Rien is the lost child: her sister. Soon they will escape, hoping to stop the impending war and save both their houses. But it is a perilous journey through the crumbling hulk of a dying ship, and they do not pass unnoticed. Because at the hub of their turning world waits Jacob Dust, all that remains of God, following the vapor wisp of the angel. And he knows they will meet very soon.

"Bear proves there's still juice in one of science fiction's oldest tropes, the stranded generation ship, in this complex coming-of-age tale. Rien, a handmaid in a feudal society, must care for the prisoner Ser Perceval — a mutilated enemy who Rien discovers is her half-sister by an absent scion of the ruling family. Their quest for a safer home tangles with their society's own quest for safety, as the descendents of an artificial intelligence and the genetically engineered crew battle for control to save the ship from an impending supernova. Standard plot devices litter the familiar landscape: tarot, pseudo-angels, named swords with powers, and politics as a family quarrel. But Campbell Award — winning author Bear uses them beautifully to turn up the pressure on her characters, who r respond by making hard choices. And — as she did in Carnival and Hammered — Bear breaks sexual taboos matter-of-factly: love in varied forms drives the characters without offering easy redemption." Publishers Weekly (Copyright Reed Business Information, Inc.)

The award-winning author of "Carnival" begins a new trilogy with this spectacular tale of a wandering space colony struggling to retain order as it orbits a doomed sun. Original.

Elizabeth Bear was born on the same say as Frodo and Bilbo Baggins, but in a different year. This, coupled with her childhood tendency to read the dictionary for fun, has led inevitably to penury, intransigence, and the writing of speculative fiction. Her hobbies include incompetent archery, practicing guitar, and reading biographies of Elizabethan playmenders.

She is the recipient of the John W. Campbell Award for best New Writer and the author of over a dozen published or forthcoming novels, including the Locus Award-winning Jenny Casey trilogy and the Phillip K. Dick Award-nominated Carnival. A native New Englander, she spent seven years near Las Vegas, but now lives in Connecticut with a presumptuous cat.