Hell and Earth is Elizabeth Bear’s sequel to Ink and Steel. Kit Marlowe is dead and living in Faerie. Will Shakespeare is writing good plays and dealing with conspiracies. Elizabeth dies. James takes over. Faerie is disturbed. Angels and demons are involved. Of course. Will Marlowe go to Hell? Will Will? Is Will’s wife jealous of dead Kit? Yes, it’s complicated. Elizabeth Bear is having such fun. Just go with it. Four stars. ( )

http://ninecats.org/margaret/blog/2014/08/19/hell-and-earth-elizabeth-bear ( )

All of the reversals, betrayals, unexpected good fortune, and tragic love a girl could ask for. The Stratford Man as a whole turns out to be a thoughtful exploration of love and loyalty and the nature of storytelling, and comes out to a perfectly satisfying conclusion.

There are some particularly good bits regarding Lucifer - his motives, his methods, and his philosophy, presented wrapped in some rather stunning language and imagery. The Elizabethan idiom throughout worked really well for me - it was a nice compromise between readability and accuracy. Lovely overall, and now I have to go find the rest of the Promethean Age books. ( )

Very satisfying read, as I've come to expect from Bear. While the intrigues could have been explained a bit more (especially on the fae side), I felt a kinship with the characters who were never quite certain as to what was going on. There was much less angst about who might be doing whom in this volume than in the last, which was a relief. ( )

http://tamaranth.blogspot.com/2010/01/201006-hell-and-earth-elizabeth-bear.html ( )