Shadow Unit shared world book one is free and DRM-free

Elizabeth Bear writes,

Shadow Unit is an ongoing, now five-year-old science fiction web serial about a mysterious "anomaly" that causes affected human beings to simultaneously develop superpowers and sociopathy--and about the law enforcement agents who struggle to contain the crisis.
In more formal terms, it's is a semi-real-time semi-interactive shared-world hyperfiction narrative--which is to say, a story in which you can interact with some of the characters much of the time. It's the brainchild of Emma Bull and Will Shetterly, and is written by Elizabeth Bear, Holly Black, Leah Bobet, Amanda Downum, Sarah Monette, Chelsea Polk, and Stephen Shipman--with art by Amanda Downum and Kyle Cassidy.
Shadow Unit's producers have always made the entire narrative available on a donation model on the website and its associated social media. We've also produced a series of ebooks (available at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Smashwords)--and the first volume is available as a paper book. For a limited time (We're not yet sure how limited!) we're also giving the first ebook (Shadow Unit #1) away for free.

Shadow Unit 1 (Thanks, Bear)

I write books. My latest is a YA science fiction novel called Homeland (it's the sequel to Little Brother). More books: Rapture of the Nerds (a novel, with Charlie Stross); With a Little Help (short stories); and The Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow (novella and nonfic). I speak all over the place and I tweet and tumble, too.

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Don Smith

I love Emma Bull and Holly Black. I’ll have to give it a read and see if it grabs me.
Legotech

The series is a LOT of fun and the books integrate stuff from the web like character’s livejournal entries and stuff like that that you might have to search around the site a bit to find otherwise. There’s a forum where some people have put together chronologies so you can read the stories and extras in the same order that they are in the books. Anyway, pick up the first one or check out the website at http://www.shadowunit.org

No I’m not involved with them…just someone who devoured all 12 ebooks recently :)
http://profiles.google.com/marc.k.mielke Marc Mielke

Elizabeth Bear wrote one of the best Cthulhu Mythos stories I’ve ever read: “Shoggoths in Bloom”, and I’ve been looking for more of her work. I’ll give this a go based on that!
http://twitter.com/B_Archy †Barack ‘O’ Bibbz†

Fascinating, I Want It. Where Can I Find The PDF?
- Paul Renault
  
  Er, you DO know how webpages work, eh?
  
  /The PDF looks nicely formatted for a Nexus 7′s screen.
http://www.facebook.com/tomdheere Tom Dheere

I had the pleasure of narrating the audiobook versions of “Shoggoths of Bloom” and “Mongoose” so I can attest that anything they write is worth reading! They were two of my favorite short stories I’ve narrated.
RevRob

Arachne Jericho did .mobi and .epub versions of Seasons One and Two a few years ago. She has them posted on her site:
http://spontaneousderivation.com/downloads/ . You should check them out.
matociquala

Hey, RevRob–Arachne’s versions are awesome, and totally free (and authorized under Creative Commons.) They don’t contain some of the supplemental material that the official ebooks do, however–including blog entries and Kyle’s photo covers.

–ebear
Zig

I’ve not read this (yet) and while I am sure it is very different the synopsis brings to mind the anime Darker Than Black.

Looking forward to reading. Darn fine writers involved.