James Nicoll Reviews

Last Exit by Max Gladstone

Ten years ago, Zelda led a band of merry adventurers whose knacks let them travel to alternate realities and battle the black rot that threatened to unmake each world. Zelda was the warrior; Ish could locate people anywhere; Ramon always knew what path to take; Sarah could turn catastrophe aside. Keeping them all connected: Sal, Zelda’s lover and the group’s heart. 

Until their final, failed mission, when Sal was lost. When they all fell apart. 

Ten years on, Ish, Ramon, and Sarah are happy and successful. Zelda is alone, always traveling, destroying rot throughout the US. 

When it boils through the crack in the Liberty Bell, the rot gives Zelda proof that Sal is alive, trapped somewhere in the alts. 

Zelda’s getting the band back together―plus Sal’s young cousin June, who has a knack none of them have ever seen before. 

As relationships rekindle, the friends begin to believe they can find Sal and heal all the worlds. It’s not going to be easy, but they’ve faced worse before. 

But things have changed, out there in the alts. And in everyone’s hearts. 

Fresh from winning the Hugo and Nebula Awards, Max Gladstone weaves elements of American myth―the muscle car, the open road, the white-hatted cowboy―into a deeply emotional tale where his characters must find their own truths if they are to survive.

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November 2021

21 works reviewed. 11 by women (52%), 10 by men (48%), 0 by a non-binary author (0%), 0 by authors whose genders are unknown (0%), and 8 by POC (38%).

Year to Date

237 works reviewed. 128.5 by women (54%), 100.5 by men (42%), 5 by non-binary authors (2%), 3 by authors whose gender is unknown (1%), and 95 by POC (40%)

Grand Total to Date

1985 works reviewed. 1,111 by women (56%), 830 by men (42%), 26 by non-binary authors (1%), 18 by authors whose gender is unknown (1%), 574.75 by POC (29%).

This means I am on track to post my 2000^th review here on or about December 21. 

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Dreams Bigger Than Heartbreak by Charlie Jane Anders

From the international bestselling author of All the Birds in the Sky, Charlie Jane Anders, comes Dreams Bigger Than Heartbreak, the sequel to Victories Greater Than Death in the thrilling adventure Unstoppable series, set against an intergalactic war.They’ll do anything to be the people they were meant to be — even journey into the heart of evil.Rachael Townsend is the first artist ever to leave Earth and journey out into the galaxy — but after an encounter with an alien artifact, she can’t make art at all. Elza Monteiro is determined to be the first human to venture inside the Palace of Scented Tears and compete for the chance to become a princess — except that inside the palace, she finds the last person she ever wanted to see again. Tina Mains is studying at the Royal Space Academy with her friends, but she’s not the badass space hero everyone was expecting. Soon Rachael is journeying into a dark void, Elza is on a deadly spy mission, and Tina is facing an impossible choice that could change all her friends lives forever. 

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Book of Night by Holly Black

#1 New York Times bestselling author Holly Black makes her stunning adult debut with Book of Night, a modern dark fantasy of shadowy thieves and secret societies in the vein of Ninth House and The Night Circus.Charlie Hall has never found a lock she couldn’t pick, a book she couldn’t steal, or a bad decision she wouldn’t make. She’s spent half her life working for gloamists, magicians who manipulate shadows to peer into locked rooms, strangle people in their beds, or worse. Gloamists guard their secrets greedily, creating an underground economy of grimoires. And to rob their fellow magicians, they need Charlie.Now, she’s trying to distance herself from past mistakes, but going straight isn’t easy. Bartending at a dive, she’s still entirely too close to the corrupt underbelly of the Berkshires. Not to mention that her sister Posey is desperate for magic, and that her shadowless and possibly soulless boyfriend has been keeping secrets from her. When a terrible figure from her past returns, Charlie descends back into a maelstrom of murder and lies. Determined to survive, she’s up against a cast of doppelgängers, mercurial billionaires, gloamists, and the people she loves best in the world — all trying to steal a secret that will allow them control of the shadow world and more.

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Age of Ash by Daniel Abraham

From New York Times bestselling and critically acclaimed author Daniel Abraham, co-author of The Expanse, comes a monumental epic fantasy trilogy that unfolds within the walls of a single great city, over the course of one tumultuous year, where every story matters, and the fate of the city is woven from them all.Kithamar is a center of trade and wealth, an ancient city with a long, bloody history where countless thousands live and their stories unfold. This is Alys’s. 

When her brother is murdered, a petty thief from the slums of Longhill sets out to discover who killed him and why. But the more she discovers about him, the more she learns about herself, and the truths she finds are more dangerous than knives. Swept up in an intrigue as deep as the roots of Kithamar, where the secrets of the lowest born can sometimes topple thrones, the story Alys chooses will have the power to change everything.

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Rosebud by Paul Cornell

A multilayered, locked-room science fiction novella from Paul Cornell in which five digital beings unravel their existences to discover the truth of their humanity.“The crew of the Rosebud are, currently, and by force of law, a balloon, a goth with a swagger stick, some sort of science aristocrat possibly, a ball of hands, and a swarm of insects.”When five sentient digital beings — condemned for over three hundred years to crew the small survey ship by the all-powerful Company — encounter a mysterious black sphere, their course of action is clear: obtain the object, inform the Company, earn lots of praise.But the ship malfunctions, and the crew has no choice but to approach the sphere and survey it themselves. They have no idea that this object — and the transcendent truth hidden within — will change the fate of all existence, the Company, and themselves.

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October 2021

22 works reviewed. 12 by women (55%), 10 by men (45%), 0 by a non-binary author (0%), 0 by authors whose genders are unknown (0%), and 9 by POC (41%).

Year to Date

216 works reviewed. 117.5 by women (54%), 90.5 by men (42%), 5 by non-binary authors (2%), 3 by authors whose gender is unknown (1%), and 87 by POC (40%).

Grand Total to Date

1964 works reviewed. 1,100 by women (56%), 820 by men (42%), 26 by non-binary authors (1%), 18 by authors whose gender is unknown (1%), and 566.75 by POC (29%).

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Spear by Nicola Griffith

“Breathtaking. Nicola Griffith knows what she’s doing.” —Jo Walton / ​“Mesmerizing, epic, and immersive.” —Malka OlderA spellbinding and subversive queer recasting of Arthurian myth by the legendary author of HildThe girl knows she has a destiny before she even knows her name. She grows up in the wild, in a cave with her mother, but visions of a faraway lake come to her on the spring breeze, and when she hears a traveler speak of Artos, king of Caer Leon, she knows that her future lies at his court.And so, brimming with magic and eager to test her strength, she breaks her covenant with her mother and, with a broken hunting spear and mended armour, rides on a bony gelding to Caer Leon. On her adventures she will meet great knights and steal the hearts of beautiful women. She will fight warriors and sorcerers. And she will find her love, and the lake, and her fate.Nebula and Lambda Award-winning author Nicola Griffith returns with Spear, a glorious queer retelling of Arthurian legend, full of dazzling magic and intoxicating adventure

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Worlds of Exile and Illusion: Rocannon’s World, Planet of Exile, City of Illusions by Ursula K. le Guin

From the multi-award-winning author of The Left Hand of Darkness and the Earthsea sequence comes this single-volume omnibus of the first three Hainish novels.Intergalactic war reaches Fomalhaut II in Rocannon’s World.Born out of season, a precocious young girl visits the alien city of the farborns and the false-men in Planet of Exile.In City of Illusions a stranger wandering in the forest people’s woods is found and his health restored; now the fate of two worlds rests in this stranger’s hands … The three novels contained in this volume are the books that launched Ursula K. Le Guin’s glittering career, and are set in the same universe as her Hugo and Nebula Award-winning classics The Left Hand of Darkness and The Dispossessed. 

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Dead Silence by S. A. Barnes

Claire Kovalik is days away from being unemployed — made obsolete — when her beacon repair crew picks up a strange distress signal. With nothing to lose and no desire to return to Earth, Claire and her team decide to investigate.What they find at the other end of the signal is a shock: the Aurora, a famous luxury space-liner that vanished on its maiden tour of the solar system more than twenty years ago. A salvage claim like this could set Claire and her crew up for life. But a quick trip through the Aurora reveals something isn’t right.Whispers in the dark. Flickers of movement. Words scrawled in blood. Claire must fight to hold onto her sanity and find out what really happened on the Aurora, before she and her crew meet the same ghastly fate. 

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