James Nicoll Reviews

Justina Ireland’s 2022 Ophie’s Ghosts is a stand-alone historical occult novel.

After a white lynch mob murders her father and burns the family home to the ground, young Ophelia ​“Ophie” Harrison and her mother flee Georgia for the comparative safety of Pittsburgh.

Trauma wakes in Ophie a rare ability, the ability to see and to speak to ghosts. Whether this is a gift or a burden is unclear.

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Justina Ireland’s 2018 Dread Nation is a zombie apocalypse novel.

The American Civil War ground to a halt as soon as the dead began clambering from their graves. The cost of Grant’s march south against the undead was the South’s surrender and the freeing of the slaves. People once born in chains are now free.

There is, of course, one small catch, which is that entrenched white supremacy didn’t vanish when legal slavery did. As a consequence…

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