Worldwired (Jenny Casey) [Kindle Edition]

Elizabeth Bear (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description

Give Canada’s Master Warrant Officer Jenny Casey an inch and she’ll take a galaxy. That’s just the kind of person a world on the brink of destruction needs. The year is 2063, and Earth has been brutalized. An asteroid flung at Toronto by the PanChinese government has killed tens of millions and left the equivalent of a nuclear explosion in its wake. Humanity must find another option....

Perched above the devastation in the starship Montreal, Jenny is still in the thick of the fray. Plugged into the worldwire, connected to a brilliant AI, her mind can be everywhere and anywhere at once. But it’s focused on the mysterious alien beings right outside her ship. Are they there to help–or destroy? With Earth a breeding ground for treason and betrayal as governments struggle to assign blame, Jenny holds the fate of humankind in her artificially reconstructed hand....


From the Paperback edition.

About the Author

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.

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Product Details

• Format: Kindle Edition
• File Size: 542 KB
• Print Length: 416 pages
• Page Numbers Source ISBN: 0553587498
• Publisher: Spectra (November 29, 2005)
• Sold by: Random House Digital, Inc.
• Language: English
• ASIN: B000FCKIVO
• Text-to-Speech: Enabled
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (11 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #257,543 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)

More About the Author

I tell stories. I prefer the mountains to the desert, and rain to sun. My eyes are blue. I like flying on airplanes, but they keep making the seats smaller.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Smashing conclusion to trilogy, April 5, 2006

By 

lb136 "lb136" (New York, NY USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

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This review is from: Worldwired (Mass Market Paperback)

"Worldwired" goes off, yet again in new direction. The three-part saga that in the author's "Hammered" seemed to be establishing itself as a cyberpunky "band of outlaws up against globalism and the corporations," but turned into an international thriller cum space opera in "Scardown," now adds a first-contact puzzle thread to the proceedings. (And a spectacular scene at the United Nations.)

This time out Jenny Casey takes more of a supporting role (although she gets plenty of action) as Richard, the super-intelligent artificial intelligence, moves front and center here. Certainly, he is the one who keeps all the plotlines together. But Jenny herself gets plenty of chapters in which to tell her part of the story in her wisecracky first-person-present style.

The author brings back the characters who survived the first two tales, and tosses in a few more (she puts a few of the returnees essentially on hold for a while, but do not fret, because she plugs them in when they're needed again), and once again uses her jagged multiple pov style. There's plenty of action here, but you have to resist the temptation to gobble down the pages, because if you do, you won't have the time to relish Ms. Bear's fine-honed prose style.

I hope that Ms. Bear will return to this "universe" she's created, although advertisements at the back of the book would seem to indicate that in her next novel she intends to go in another direction. No matter. I'll travel that road with her.

8 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Fabulous wrap up of this three-book story arc, December 29, 2005

By 

C. Cameron (Vancouver, Canada) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Worldwired (Mass Market Paperback)

Watching Jenny grow and change from "Maker" in the first book, to a starship pilot in the second, to a complicated 50 year old combat veteran and reluctant hero in this book has been a fascinating journey. Bear's characters: heroes, villains, and bystanders, are all clearly lit and sympathetic (even when you know they are on the wrong side). If you liked "Patriot Games" or "Hunt for Red October" for Jack Ryan and the rest of the characters, I think you'll like this story, too. Gritty writing with an involved plot that keeps you guessing.

It also has an AI (artificial intelligence) patterned after Richard Feynman, famous physicist and drummer and a personal hero of mine. Marvellous.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Great Story and Writing, January 10, 2011

By 

hvanderwielen - See all my reviews

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This review is from: Worldwired (Jenny Casey) (Kindle Edition)

I never would have guessed where this trilogy would end. The plot was interesting and the characters compelling. I also really enjoyed the writing style of this author. A few of her more descriptive images really stuck with me.