Fabula Ultima Natural Fantasy Atlas by Emanuele Galletto (March 2025)
The NATURAL FANTASY ATLAS for FABULA ULTIMA will bring you into worlds deeply permeated by the cycles of time and nature, where young heroes face the consequences of past mistakes and demonstrate that history does not have to repeat itself, creating a brave future of coexistence, much like in classic JRPGs!
Dive into a new JRPG subgenre based upon harmony and change with 4 new Classes (Floralist, Gourmet, Invoker, and Merchant) and new Heroic Skills to create even more new combinations!
10 natural fantasy locations: archetypal settings with tips and hints for playing an intense natural fantasy campaign or which you can use as inspiration to breathe life into your world.
Craft equipment and tools with any materials you gather using the rules for custom weapons and forging.
Introduce Quirks, optional rules that add even more depth to your characters, and take a break to share a convivial moment with the camp activities.
5 Villains, challenging new bosses of increasing power to use in your adventures, providing your Players with tougher and more exciting challenges.
208 full-color pages, featuring manga and chibi-style illustrations from international artists.
Lessons in Magic and Disaster by Charlie Jane Anders (August 2025)
In the vein of Alice Hoffman and Charlie Jane Anders’s own All the Birds in the Sky comes a novel full of love, disaster, and magic. A young witch teaches her mother how to do magic – with very unexpected results – in this relatable, resonant novel about family, identity, and the power of love.
Jamie is basically your average New England academic in-training – she has a strong queer relationship, an esoteric dissertation proposal, and inherited generational trauma. But she has one extraordinary secret: she’s also a powerful witch.
Serena, Jamie’s mother, has been hiding from the world in an old one-room schoolhouse for several years, grieving the death of her wife and the simultaneous explosion in her professional life. All she has left are memories.
Jamie’s busy digging into a three-hundred-year-old magical book, but she still finds time to teach Serena to cast spells and help her come out of her shell. But Jamie doesn’t know the whole story of what happened to her mom years ago, and those secrets are leading Serena down a destructive path.
Now it’s up to this grad student and literature nerd to understand the secrets behind this mysterious novel from 1749, unearth a long-buried scandal hinted therein, and learn the true nature of magic, before her mother ruins both of their lives.
To quote the Canadian Science Fiction and Fantasy Association Site:
SFFA members* can now submit their nominations for works done in 2024. Members may submit up to five different works in each of our ten categories. We ask that you only nominate in categories if you are familiar with the eligible works. Our nomination form closes at 11:59pm Eastern Time on April 5th.
Suppose you are a science fiction author and further suppose it suits the goals of your narrative to dramatically illustrate how radically the world has changed by dividing some currently continental scale nation into smaller units. Where should one draw the new borders?
I can think of several solutions, each of which I will demonstrate using the continental United States of America, on the grounds most people will have heard of the USA, if not necessarily in the present tense, and maps of CONUS are easy to find.
The obvious answer is along existing sub-national divisions. Pretty much every nation has existing smaller scale administrative units, either because it was assembled out of them or because some management tasks are more efficiently handled locally. It’s not hard to find a map of the US that details the states. All one has to do is make the borders a little darker, perhaps with a sharpie.
The cost of convenience is that visually, it’s not so different from the current arrangement. It’s boring.
Let’s come up with some more innovative maps.
Interstate compacts
For various reasons, American states found it useful to coordinate crisis management with each other in 2020. The particular nature of the issue is irrelevant. What’s interesting is that the compacts that emerged hint at what might arise if the Federal government were not around.
Unfortunately, this leaves vast swaths of territory outside recognized interstate compacts and visually, it’s not too different from the previous approach. At least it provides a hint about natural fracture lines.
Language
It’s not unheard of for borders to align with linguistic differences1. Applying this to the US requires some ingenuity. A map tracking first language in each state isn’t going to look much different from the current US, as English is very dominant. A map of the most common second language isn’t much more interesting as that language is almost always Spanish2. Most common third language is more promising or at least it produces a more intriguing map of post-America than “the US minus Alaska and Hawaii”. However, the linguistic characteristic I would use is regional slang terms for soft drinks, which produces this visually pleasing graphic.
Pornhub search terms
The staff at Montreal’s Pornhub produce intriguing statistical analyses of viewer habits, because when Canadians see naked people having sex, their reaction is “Hey, guys! Let’s create spreadsheets and informative maps!” Apparently. The results are educational, entertaining, and sometimes alarming. They are also fruitful source material for futuristic maps, which is probably not the oddest purpose for which Pornhub’s stats are used.
The maps are also incredibly not safe for work, unless you work at Pornhub. I am not even going to bother providing an example. If you do use Pornhub’s maps as inspiration, remember to either rename the regions or have a ready explanation as to why there is a Republic of Milf3.
Watersheds
The most interesting option that came to mind was natural features, specifically watersheds. Water is a vital resource, so it makes sense it would shape borders. Watershed maps are (or were, at the time of writing) easy to come by. Best of all, the result is entertainingly different from the current state of affairs.
***
Those are five options that came to mind. Are there better alternatives, ones that might inspire even more interesting maps? Feel free to mention your favorites in comments below.
1: But only somewhat. For example, yeah, there’s an English/French division along the Ontario/Quebec border, but there are still Franco-Ontarians and Anglo-Quebeckers.
2: I have only myself to blame for focusing on CONUS, because both Hawai‘i and Alaska seem to have second languages that are not Spanish.
3: Which my surprisingly naïve spellcheck tried to correct to MilSF.
A quirky, literary love story like no other, one that veers wildly from contemporary Britain to Soviet Russia to a bizarre but recognizable future, from one of the UK’s hottest young novelists…Rachel and Jaime: their story isn’t simple. It might not even be their story.
Augustus Fate, a once-lauded novelist and now renowned recluse, is struggling with his latest creation. But when Jaime and Rachel stumble into his remote cottage, he spies opportunity, imprisoning them inside his novel-in-progress. Now, the fledgling couple must try to find their way back home through a labyrinthine network of novels.
And as they move from Victorian Oxford to a utopian Manchester, a harsh Russian winter to an AI-dominated near-future, so too does the narrative of their relationship change time and again.
Together, they must figure out if this relationship of so many presents can have any future at all.
The Watermark is a heart-stopping exploration of the narratives we cling to in the course of a life, and the tendency of the world to unravel them. Kaleidoscopic and wildly imaginative, it asks: how can we truly be ourselves, when Fate is pulling the strings?
It seems like it was just yesterday that it was February and yet somehow it’s March! Time again to promote the James Nicoll Patreon, as well as the other options open to people who wish to support James Nicoll Reviews.
Do you want ongoing say in what I review? Join my Patreon here.
21 works reviewed. 11 by women (52%), 9 by men (43%), 0 by non-binary authors (0%), 1 by authors whose gender is unknown (5%), and 8 by POC (38%).
2025 to Date
44 works reviewed. 23 by women (52%), 19 by men (43%), 1 by non-binary authors (2%), 1 by authors whose gender is unknown (2%), and 18 by POC (41%).
Grand Total to Date
2835 works reviewed. 1578 by women (56%), 1187 by men (42%), 45 by non-binary authors (2%), 25 by authors whose gender is unknown (1%), and 895.25 by POC (31%).
Genre Count, Books Reviewed January 2025
21 books reviewed. 11 fantasies (52%), 0 non-fiction (0%), 9 science fiction (43%), 1 mainstream (5%), and 0 mysteries (0%), of which 9 were series books (43%).
Genre Count, Books Reviewed, 2025 TD
44 books reviewed. 17 fantasies (39%), 2 non-fiction (5%), 20 science fiction (45%), 3 mainstream (7%), and 2 mysteries (5%), of which 21 were series books (48%).
Genre Count, Books Received February 2025
Netgalley instituted changes that basically make them useless to me, so the flood of new books is going to be closed off. Alas. I don’t know if this section even makes sense any more.
12 books received, 6.5 fantasy (54%), 1 horror (8%), 0 mainstream (0%), 0 mystery (0%), 2 non-fiction (17%), 1 roleplaying game-related (8%), 1.5 science fiction (13%), of which 2 were series (17%), 10 non-series (83%), and 0 hard to classify (0%).
Genre Count, Books Received2025 TD
52 books received, 31.5 fantasy (61%), 3 horror (6%), 1 mainstream (2%), 1 mystery (2%), 3 non-fiction (6%), 6 roleplaying game-related (12%), 6.5 science fiction (13%), of which 22 were series (42%), 25 non-series (48%), and 5 hard to classify (10%).
In this chaotic micro tabletop game, you play as a yandere, who will stop at nothing to make senpai notice you. Whether they like it or not, you will spend your lives happily ever after together. Even if that means you need to do things you wouldn’t usually do.
Whether through sweet whispers, carefully planned “accidents,” or eliminating the competition, your love story is one of passion, deception, and just a little bit of murder.
Set up the perfect confession – The cherry blossoms will swirl around you both as you hand over your love letter. Approach Senpai at the Fireworks Festival with a sneaky kiss… The day is yours to seize!
Sabotage your rivals - Stop those Senpai’s other admirers who are unworthy of their love. You might have to improvise on the spot — but if there’s food here, there’s a kitchen, and where there’s a kitchen, there’s knives!
Win over Senpai — By any means possible. If that means its only you and them left in this world, so be it. Just, try to avoid (or defeat) law enforcement and others that get in your way
With a very simple ruleset requiring only a d10, “Why won’t you love me!?” lets you and your friends roleplay the classic trope all the way to its dramatic conclusion.
Well, that sure was a month. Nevertheless, James Nicoll Reviews preservers! How can you help? Well, if you’re an author, writing books and games for me to review is greatly appreciated. I am always happy when people read my reviews. If you wish to offer monetary support, there are several options:
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