James Nicoll Reviews

Last year saw the beginning of the WFC reviews

Doing What the WFC Cannot Do, being an incomplete survey of POC currently active in speculative fiction. I will review 52 recent works by 52 different POC in 52 weeks.

I never thought of a better name for the project. Additionally, every week I spent looking for material appropriate for the WFC reviews in 2019, I generally found two or three or four likely candidates. I ended the year with a considerable backlog. Accordingly, I am extending this project to a second year to try to catch up.

Same rules as last year: each book is authored by a Person of Colour, each author gets at most one book per year in this project, and this is a floor, not a ceiling; if I find a second book by an AOC I’ve reviewed here that I want to review, I won’t set it aside for 2021. I’ll review it under a different project. 

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Seventeen-year-old Lake spends her days searching a strange, post-apocalyptic landscape for people who have forgotten one very important thing: this isn’t reality. Everyone she meets is a passenger aboard a ship that’s been orbiting Earth since a nuclear event. The simulation that was supposed to prepare them all for life after the apocalypse has trapped their minds in a shared virtual reality and their bodies in stasis chambers.

No one can get off the ship until all of the passengers are out of the sim, and no one can get out of the sim unless they believe it’s a simulation. It’s up to Lake to help them remember. 

When Lake reveals the truth to a fellow passenger, seventeen-year-old Taren, he joins her mission to find everyone, persuade them that they’ve forgotten reality, and wake them up. But time’s running out before the simulation completely deconstructs, and soon Taren’s deciding who’s worth saving and who must be sacrificed for the greater good. Now, Lake has no choice but to pit herself against Taren in a race to find the secret heart of the sim, where something waits that will either save them or destroy them all.

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In the vast, artificial galaxy called the Spin, a rebellion has been crushed. Viklun Hass is eliminating all remnants of the opposition. Starting with his daughter. But Fleare Hass has had time to plan her next move from exile to the very frontiers of a new war. For hundreds of millions of years, the planets and stars of the Spin have been the only testament to the god-like engineers that created them. Now, beneath the surface of a ruined planet, one of their machines has been found. 

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ONE FAMILY, TWO HOLIDAYS, ONE DEVASTATING SECRET

To new nanny Amanda, the Temple family seem to have it all: the former actress; the famous professor; their three successful grown-up children. But like any family, beneath the smiles and hugs there lurks far darker emotions.

Sixteen years earlier, little Niamh Temple died while they were on holiday in Portugal. Now, as Amanda joins the family for a reunion at their seaside villa, she begins to suspect one of them might be hiding something terrible…

And suspicion is a dangerous thing.

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On to another year of genre fiction! 

Thanks to my editor Karen Lofstrom and my web person Adrienne L. Travis. Thank you to my audience of the last five and a bit years! That goes double for everyone who has commissioned a review or been part of my Patreon. And a big thanks to authors everywhere, without whom writing book reviews would be very challenging.

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A former soldier turned PI tries to help the fantasy creatures whose lives he ruined in a world that’s lost its magic in a compelling debut fantasy by Black Sails actor Luke Arnold. 

Welcome to Sunder City. The magic is gone but the monsters remain.
I’m Fetch Phillips, just like it says on the window. There are a few things you should know before you hire me:
1. Sobriety costs extra.2. My services are confidential.3. I don’t work for humans.
It’s nothing personal – I’m human myself. But after what happened, to the magic, it’s not the humans who need my help. 

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Twenty-four of the most exciting voices in genre fiction bring you the world and the stars, each in their own individual way.

Stories that explore the vast grandeur of the universe, worlds close to us, worlds far in the distance. Alternate Earths, colonies in the sky, engineered worlds, mystical battlegrounds, pirate seas, underground caverns, journeys in time and across the stars. 

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A space salvager and her partner make the discovery of a lifetime that just might change the universe in this wild, big-ideas space opera from multi award-winning author Elizabeth Bear. 

Halmey Dz and her partner Connla Kurucz are salvage operators, living just on the inside of the law…usually. Theirs is the perilous and marginal existence — with barely enough chance of striking it fantastically big — just once — to keep them coming back for more. They pilot their tiny ship into the scars left by unsuccessful White Transitions, searching for the relics of lost human and alien vessels. But when they make a shocking discovery about an alien species that has been long thought dead, it may be the thing that could tip the perilous peace mankind has found into full-out war. 

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One Cursed City. Two Dead Gods. Ten Thousand Murderers and Thieves. One Orphaned Girl. As a child, Kyrioc was groomed to be the head of one of the most powerful noble families in Koh-Salash, a city built inside the skeletons of two murdered gods. Kyrioc himself dreamed of becoming head of the High Watch, the highest political position in the land.Those dreams have turned to dust. Presumed dead after a disastrous overseas quest, Kyrioc now lives in a downcity slum under a false name, hiding behind the bars of a pawnshop window. Riliska, a nine-year-old pickpocket who sells stolen trinkets to his shop, is the closest thing he has to a friend.When a criminal gang kills Riliska’s mother and kidnaps the little girl, Kyrioc goes hunting for her. He doesn’t care about the forbidden magic the gangs are fighting over — the severed ear of a glitterkind, a creature whose flesh contains astonishing healing powers. He doesn’t care about the bloody, escalating gang violence. He doesn’t care about the schemes of power-hungry nobles. In a raging city on the verge of civil war, Kyrioc only wants to save his friend. He will risk anything for her, even awakening the powers that murdered the gods so long ago.

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Perpetua Collins works for a real troll. Well, technically a goblin, and it’s not as bad as it sounds. As the administrative assistant, she provides a ​“human” face for an employment agency specializing in placements for goblins and trolls. It’s probably the most unusual job she could find in Toronto, but she’s grateful for it, having come to the city with $500 in her pocket and no support. Without it, she’d have no choice but to go back to the boring small town and overbearing mother she worked so hard to leave. But as Perpetua settles into her new job, disturbing questions arise. And no, they’re not about the fact that goblins and trolls exist. She’s fine with that part. The agency has no visible means of support. How does her boss manage to keep his ​“clients” out of the public eye? They’ve been part of the city far longer than anyone thinks, and are growing restless under the burden of forced invisibility and financial poverty. What will happen if the veil drops, and humans see?

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