James Nicoll Reviews

March 2025

21 works reviewed. 9 by women (43%), 9 by men (43%), 1 by non-binary authors (5%), 2 by authors whose gender is unknown (10%), and 9 by POC (43%).

The end of month report is getting rather long so I think I will put the cut up here.

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Extremity by Nicholas Binge (September 2025)

A time-traveling, end-of-the-world police procedural, Extremity is True Detective if written by Philip K. Dick. 

When once-renowned police detective Julia Torgrimsen is brought out of forced retirement to investigate the murder of Bruno Donaldson, a billionaire she worked with whilst undercover, she doesn’t expect to find two bodies. Both are Bruno — identical down to the fingerprints — and both have been shot. 

As the investigation sucks her back into the macabre world of London’s rich elite, she finds herself on the hunt for a mysterious assassin who has been taking out the wealthy one by one. But when she finally catches up with her quarry, she unveils an entire world of secrets: impossible documents about future stock market crashes, photographs of dead clones, and a clandestine time-travelling conspiracy so insidious it might just mean the extinction of the entire human race. 

If Julia is to have any chance of preventing this terrible future, she’ll have to revisit her own past, the terrible choices she made undercover, and the brutal act that destroyed her once legendary career.

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Monsters and Other Tales of Humanity by Carla E. Dash (July 2025)

Revealing both how terrifying and how heroic individuals can be when untethered from relationships, Monsters and Other Tales of Humanity portrays the ways people cope with loneliness. A woman is haunted by Death, who progressively resembles her drowned fiancé . A child seeks beauty in a handsome stranger’ s greenhouse and holds out hope for a savior. A woman’ s husband is murdered by police, and her monstrous children enact a bloody revenge. A negligent mail carrier believes stars are disappearing from the sky, heralding the annihilation of the universe. A video game character’ s dissonance with the actions he must perform precipitates a choice that could destroy his world. Speculative and lyrical, these stories explore the human need for connection and how the lack of ties warps lives. 

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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.

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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. 

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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 5^th.

More details at the other end of this link.

Both James Nicoll Reviews and Young People Read Old Science Fiction are eligible (in the Best Fan Writing/Publication category), as are many other fine Canadian works.

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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?

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The Watermark by Sam Mills (February 2025)

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? 

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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.

Do you immediate gratification¹? Commission a review!

Do you languish under the burden of excess wealth? Spontaneous donations may be accomplished via my Paypal.

Bales of hundred-dollar bills delivered in the dark of night are also acceptable. Contact me for my mailing address.

1: Immediate gratification in the sense that it will be deferred by the time it takes me to wedge the requested review into my schedule. 

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