James Nicoll Reviews

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The Wizard and the Prophet: Two Remarkable Scientists and Their Dueling Visions to Shape Tomorrow’s World by Charles C. Mann (2019)

In forty years, Earth’s population will reach ten billion. Can our world support that? What kind of world will it be? Those answering these questions generally fall into two deeply divided groups – Wizards and Prophets, as Charles Mann calls them in this balanced, authoritative,
nonpolemical new book. The Prophets, he explains, follow William Vogt, a founding environmentalist who believed that in using more than our planet has to give, our prosperity will lead us to ruin. Cut back! was his mantra. Otherwise everyone will lose! The Wizards are the heirs of Norman Borlaug, whose research, in effect, wrangled the world in service to our species to produce modern high-yield crops that then saved millions from starvation. Innovate! was Borlaug’s cry. Only in that way can everyone win!

Mann delves into these diverging viewpoints to assess the four great challenges humanity faces – food, water, energy, climate change – grounding each in historical context and weighing the options for the future. With our civilization on the line, the author’s insightful analysis is an essential addition to the urgent conversation about how our children will fare on an increasingly crowded Earth. 

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Time for the annual round of Hugo categories for which I am eligible. 

James Nicoll Reviews fall under Best Fan Writer, as do my Dreamwidth posts. 2021’s Hugo Award data was just released — it turned out I was just five votes away from being a finalist again. So close!

Still, I was rather low energy in 2020. 2021 was different. Today marks my 2000^threview on James Nicoll Reviews. The journey is its own reward. That said, Hugo nominations are also a reward and one for which I would be quite grateful.

My 90 or so 2021 Tor essays fall under Best Related. 

Young People Read Old SFF (now in its 5^th year) is a fanzine. Last year, it was nominated for an Aurora. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if it was deemed worthy of a Hugo nomination in the year in which my Young People were reading their way through old Hugo Award finalists? 

Another way in which to encourage my reviews is to join my Patreon or directly commission reviews. With omicron sweeping the world (and our Provincial premier having apparently vanished to his cottage to wait the crisis out), it seems likely the theatres will close again. This means I will once again be dependent on writing income. Ah, well. At least I got to stand in a theatre again.

Onward to Review 3000! 

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Weapons & Equipment: Wondrous Items and Useful Goods for Runequest by Richard August, Jason Durall, Martin Helsdon, Erin Mcguire, Diana Probst, Jude Reid, Jeff Richard, Jared Twing, and Dom Twist (December 2021)

What’s Inside?

RuneQuest: Weapons & Equipment is an essential guide to a wide range of items, goods, services, training, magical items, and beasts for both players and Game Masters. 

Expand your Armory

A plethora of new adventuring equipment, as well as new close combat weapons, melee weapons and armor. Every type of hammer, spear, sword, and much more is detailed. Diversify your adventuring party with no character wielding the same statistics and rules.

Beasts of Glorantha

New and compiled rules for beasts of burden, mounts, and awakened animals. Prices and rules for warbeasts, exotic animals, and pack animals accompany stats for riding equipment and even mobile dwellings!

Lands & Holdings

New rules for land ownership allows your adventurers to expand their foothold in Glorantha. The book contains rules for the quality of land, prices of different dwellings, unique land features, fortifications, as well as developing and improving your land over time.

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Changer of Days by Alma Alexander (November 2021)

The child Anghara Kir Hama was forced to flee the kingdom she rightfully ruled, escaping the murderous wrath of her brother, the usurper, who would see her dead to secure the throne. But her years spent in a strange desert land — honing the miraculous power called Sight — have forever changed the young queen. And now it is time to claim what is hers. But treachery greets Anghara upon her return to a realm suffering under the cruelty of the bloodthirsty tyrant Sif. In the dungeons of her enemy, she awaits an inevitable death, robbed of the gift that set her apart from all others. Yet those who have sworn to defend her will not rest until their cherished queen is safe, including one whose noble heart belongs to her alone. For young Anghara’s remarkable destiny is greater than crowns and countries — greater even than the fearsome Old Gods who must stand down to make way for the Changer of Days. 

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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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