James Nicoll Reviews

The Great Gods by Daniel Keys Moran (February 2023)

The long-anticipated first book about Camber Tremodian, who first appeared in Daniel Keys Moran’s classic SF novel The Long Run — one of the highest rated SF novel on Goodreads.

The keystone work of Moran’s Tales of the Continuing Time, The Great Gods kicks off the ​“Time Wars” series. Young Camber doesn’t know who he is, or who his parents were. He’s a child in a small village, in a long post-Singularity universe with thousands of sentient races and over ten billion years of recorded history. He’s no one, as far as he knows, one of half a trillion humans alive in the year 3009.

But Camber will rise. 

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Thornhedge T. Kingfisher (August 2023)

There’s a princess trapped in a tower. This isn’t her story.

Meet Toadling. On the day of her birth, she was stolen from her family by the fairies, but she grew up safe and loved in the warm waters of faerieland. Once an adult though, the fae ask a favor of Toadling: return to the human world and offer a blessing of protection to a newborn child. Simple, right? 

If only.

Centuries later, a knight approaches a towering wall of brambles, where the thorns are as thick as your arm and as sharp as swords. He’s heard there’s a curse here that needs breaking, but it’s a curse Toadling will do anything to uphold…

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Flight & Anchor by Nicole Kornher-Stace (June 2023)

Young SecOps operatives 06 and 22 were about to be sent out for their first military engagement. Just a few years earlier, they were child refugees of a corporate civil war; Stellaxis modified them into supersoldiers. But 06 and 22 have escaped their prison barracks and entered a city they can barely remember. In the dead of winter, they sleep in an abandoned shipping container and scavenge for resources. 

The Director of the Stellaxis supersoldier program knows that 06 and 22 are gone, where they are, and that she has no easy way of retrieving them. The Director also knows that if she sends anyone after them, there will be a bloodbath — or at least a great deal of bad press. But all operatives’ days are numbered. 06 and 22 must make a terrible choice: their freedom or each other

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Mother Howl by Craig Clevenger (June 2023)

Sixteen-year-old Lyle Edison recognizes the face of a murder victim on the nightly news – the waitress at his local diner. A place he often frequented with his dad. The following day his father is arrested and charged with her murder. And then eight further bodies are discovered. 

Following the revelation that his dad is in fact a serial killer, Lyle is outcast and shunned. Forced to abandon his family, illegally obtaining a new identity, he moves away to start all over again. 

Some years later, Lyle thinks he has finally moved on. But after several brushes with the law, Lyle’s past eventually catches up to him when a mysterious stranger known only as Icarus shows up and seems to know Lyle’s secret…

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James Nicoll Reviews –2291 reviews and counting! – is funded by commissions and by my Patreon.

Many thanks to my existing patrons! If you are not yet a patron and you enjoy my endless rambles through the brambles of speculative fiction, please consider supporting my Patreon. Encourage your friends to support it!

(Is it obvious I don’t enjoy this sort of self-promotion? But it is part of the job and I really should be better at it than I am)

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January 2023

22 works reviewed. 12 by women (55%), 9 by men (41%), 0 by a non-binary author (0%), 1 by authors whose gender is unknown (5%), and 8 by POC (36%).

2023 to Date

22 works reviewed. 12 by women (55%), 9 by men (41%), 0 by a non-binary author (0%), 1 by authors whose gender is unknown (5%), and 8 by POC (36%).

Grand Total to Date

2290 works reviewed. 1279 by women (56%), 958 by men (42%), 34 by non-binary authors (1%), 19 by authors whose gender is unknown (1%), and 684.75 by POC (30%).

Government Types January 2023

Total 22, Not Applicable 2 (9%), Unclear 1 (5%), Anarchy 0 (0%), Pure democracy 0 (0%), Representative democracy 5 (23%), Oligarchy 10 (45%), Autocracy 4 (18%).

Government Type 2023 TD

Total 22, Not Applicable 2 (9%), Unclear 1 (5%), Anarchy 0 (0%), Pure democracy 0 (0%), Representative democracy 5 (23%), Oligarchy 10 (45%), Autocracy 4 (18%).

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