"Cunningly crafted stories full of wonder and intelligence. VanderMeer proves again why he is so essential and why everybody should be reading him."
-Junot Diaz, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
Featuring "The Situation," a story set in the universe of VanderMeer's bestseller, Borne.
Compared by critics to Borges, Nabokov, and Kafka, contemporary fantasist Jeff VanderMeer (The Southern Reach Trilogy) continues to amaze with this surreal, innovative, and absurdist gathering of award-winning short fiction. Exotic beasts and improbable travelers roam restlessly through these darkly diverting and finely honed tales.
In “The Situation,” a beleaguered office worker creates a child-swallowing manta-ray to be used for educational purposes (once described as Dilbert meets Gormenghast). In “Three Days in a Border Town,” a sharpshooter seeks the truth about her husband in an elusive floating city beyond a far-future horizon; “Errata” follows an oddly familiar writer who has marshaled a penguin, a shaman, and two pearl-handled pistols with which to plot the end of the world. Also included are two stories original to this collection, including “The Quickening,” in which a lonely child is torn between familial obligation and loyalty to a maligned talking rabbit.
Chimerical and hypnotic, VanderMeer leads readers into a new literature of the imagination.
Industry Reviews
"Elegantly crafted stories ably demonstrate VanderMeer's skill at telling tales of wonder in language that enhances the reading experience"
-Library Journal, starred review
"One of our very best contemporary practitioners of the fantastic . . . superb prose, overwhelmingly odd situations, and fascinating, eccentric characters."
-Publishers Weekly, starred review
"Jeff VanderMeer is not to be trusted. He hypnotizes with shiny objects, bizarrely beautiful shapes and phrases, then (more often than not) gently drifts you into very dark places. You won't know where you're going till you get there and then, of course, it's too late."
-Mike Mignola, creator of Hellboy
"Cunningly crafted stories full of wonder and intelligence. VanderMeer proves again why he is so essential and why everybody should be reading him."
-Junot Diaz, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
"Vandermeer's stories hit one's hindbrain slantwise-they offer no easy answers and no comfort. Rather they are hard, brilliant gems meant to cut and shine-these are some of the most beautiful, upsetting, and accomplished tales I have ever read."
-Catherynne M. Valente, author of The Orphan's Tales
"In the hands of a brilliant writer like Jeff VanderMeer, writing fantasy can be a means of serious artistic expression. . . . It is also playful, poignant, and utterly, wildly imaginative."
-Peter Straub, author of The Talisman
The Third Bear contains some of my favorite stories of recent years. There's the meticulous workplace surrealism of 'The Situation,' the remorseless multiworld cataclysms of 'The Goat Variations,' the beautiful eldritch heartsickness of 'The Surgeon's Tale.' Jeff VanderMeer is one of the very best."
-Kevin Brockmeier, author of The Brief History of the Dead
"Annexing the weird half-lit spaces between genres, these stories lean sometimes into fantasy and SF, sometimes into metafiction, but are always deft and pleasurable reads. VanderMeer is one of the few writers out there able to coax something startling and necessary from anything."
-Brian Evenson, author of Last Days
"The stories in this collection are smart, gorgeous, allusive, and tricky. VanderMeer is a fantasist extraordinaire."
-Jack O'Connell, author of The Resurrectionist
"Jeff VanderMeer's work is subversive and disquieting, possessed of an almost kinetic force in its impact upon the mind. Body horror gone viral, fairy tales wrapped in their own entrails, and metafictional murder; these and other images herein are sure to leave their mark and fester in the subconscious. Already a well-regarded fantasist, The Third Bear reveals VanderMeer at his most fearsome."
-Laird Barron, author of The Imago Sequence and Other Stories
"One of the leading fantasists of this generation, Jeff VanderMeer's new collection is a must-have for any discerning reader."
-Rick Klaw, editor of The Apes of Wrath
"Reminiscent of Japanese surrealist author Haruki Murakami . . . VanderMeer's stories are provocative marvels."
-Sacramento Book Review
"When you add all these [stories] together, what you have is a collection that the Brothers Grimm or Hans Christian Anderson might have written if they really wanted to mess with the heads of small children (10/10)."
-Graeme's Fantasy Book Review
