James Nicoll Reviews

Hundreds of miles above Earth, the space station Ciudad de Cielo – The City in the Sky – is a beacon of hope for humanity’s expansion into the stars. But not everyone aboard shares such noble ideals. 

Bootlegging, booze, and prostitution form a lucrative underground economy for rival gangs, which the authorities are happy to turn a blind eye to until a disassembled corpse is found dancing in the micro-gravity. 

In charge of the murder investigation is Nikki ​“Fix” Freeman, who is not thrilled to have Alice Blake, an uptight government goody-two-shoes, riding shotgun. As the bodies pile up, and the partners are forced to question their own memories, Nikki and Alice begin to realize that gang warfare may not be the only cause for the violence.

There is a dark secret that is hiding at the heart of New York City and diminishing the city’s magicians’ power in this fantasy thriller by acclaimed author Kat Howard.

In New York City, magic controls everything. But the power of magic is fading. No one knows what is happening, except for Sydney — a new, rare magician with incredible power that has been unmatched in decades, and she may be the only person who is able to stop the darkness that is weakening the magic. But Sydney doesn’t want to help the system, she wants to destroy it. 

Sydney comes from the House of Shadows, which controls the magic with the help of sacrifices from magicians.

Astrophysicist Reggie Straifer has an idea. He’s discovered an anomalous star that appears to defy the laws of physics, and proposes the creation of a deep-space mission to find out whether the star is a weird natural phenomenon, or something manufactured.

The journey will take eons. In order to maintain the genetic talent of the original crew, humankind’ss greatest ambition — to explore the furthest reaches of the galaxy — is undertaken by clones. But a clone is not a perfect copy, and each new generation has its own quirks, desires, and neu roses. As the centuries fly by, the society living aboard the nine ships (designated Convoy Seven) changes and evolves, but their mission remains the same: to reach Reggie’s mysterious star and explore its origins — and implications.

A mosaic novel of discovery, Noumenon — in a series of vignettes — examines the dedication, adventure, growth, and fear of having your entire world consist of nine ships in the vacuum of space. The men and women, and even the AI, must learn to work and live together in harmony, as their original DNA is continuously replicated and they are born again and again into a thousand new lives. With the stars their home and the unknown their destination, they are on a voyage of many lifetimes — an odyssey to understand what lies beyond the limits of human knowledge and imagination.

Locus is the magazine of the science fiction, fantasy, and horror publishing fields, with book reviews, author interviews, news, and listings.

Locus Issue #681 (October 2017) features interviews with James Patrick Kelly and Annalee Newitz, a column by Kameron Hurley, an obituary and appreciations of Jerry Pournelle, reports and photos from Worldcon 75 in Helsinki, and reviews of short fiction and books by John Crowley, R.S. Belcher, Ann Leckie, Elizabeth Bear, JY Yang, and many others.

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As with the previous core lists, here are twenty Speculative Fiction Works featuring remarkable red heads chosen entirely on the basis of merit and significance to the field¹. And the colour of at least one significant character’s hair. No implication is intended that these are the only twenty books you should consider².

• The Book of Three by Lloyd Alexander 
• The Summoning by Kelly Armstrong
• Gwinna by Barbara Helen Berger
• Barrayar by Lois McMaster Bujold
• Diadem from the Stars by Jo Clayton
• Princess Belle-Etoile by Marie-Catherine d’Aulnoy
• Nova by Samuel R. Delany
• The Lost World by Arthur Conan Doyle
• So You Want to be a Wizard by Diane Duane 
• Seeker’s Mask by P. C. Hodgell
• The Keeper of the Isis Light by Monica Hughes
• Black Unicorn by Tanith Lee
• Pippi Longstocking by Astrid Lindgren
• Firethorn by Sarah Micklem
• Forerunner Foray by Andre Norton
• The Ruins of Ambrai by Melanie Rawn
• Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone by J. K. Rowling
• Legacy by James H. Schmitz
• A Brother’s Price by Wen Spenser 
• Talking to Dragons by Patricia Wrede 

Persons unfamiliar with one or two of the works, congratulations! You’re one of today’s Ten Thousand!

1: There are two filtering rules: 

• Only one work per author per list

• Any given work by a particular author can appear on only one list. A given author may, however, have works on various lists but each instance of their work will be unique. Unless I screw up.
  

2: NO IMPLICATION IS INTENDED THAT THESE ARE THE ONLY TWENTY BOOKS YOU SHOULD CONSIDER.

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Beneath the Sugar Sky, the third book in McGuire’s Wayward Children series, returns to Eleanor West’s Home for Wayward Children in a standalone contemporary fantasy for fans of all ages. At this magical boarding school, children who have experienced fantasy adventures are reintroduced to the ​“real” world.

When Rini lands with a literal splash in the pond behind Eleanor West’s Home for Wayward Children, the last thing she expects to find is that her mother, Sumi, died years before Rini was even conceived. But Rini can’t let Reality get in the way of her quest – not when she has an entire world to save! (Much more common than one would suppose.)

If she can’t find a way to restore her mother, Rini will have more than a world to save: she will never have been born in the first place. And in a world without magic, she doesn’t have long before Reality notices her existence and washes her away. Good thing the student body is well-acquainted with quests…

A tale of friendship, baking, and derring-do.

Warning: May contain nuts.

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September

22 books read. 13 by women (59%), 9 by men (41%)

Works by POC: 6 (27%)

Year to Date

190 works reviewed. 104.5 by women (55%). 80.5 by men (42%). 4 by non-binary authors (2%). 1 by N/A (0.5%)

Works by POC: 57.5 (30%)

And now, the meaningless table.

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The book gods were very kind to me this week.

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As with the previous core lists, here are twenty Speculative Fiction Works about psionics and other mental gifts chosen entirely on the basis of merit and significance to the field¹. No implication is intended that these are the only twenty works you should consider².

• Ethan of Athos by Lois McMaster Bujold
• Wildseed by Octavia E. Butler
• Enchantress From the Stars by Sylvia Louise Engdahl
• The Clairvoyant Countess by Dorothy Gilman
• Ingathering by Zenna Henderson
• Zero Sum Game by S.L. Huang
• The Man With Six Senses by Muriel Jaeger
• The Journal of Nicholas the American by Leigh Kennedy
• Shin Sekai Yori (From Another World) by Yusuke Kishi
• Deryni Rising by Katherine Kurtz
• A Wind in the Door by Madeleine L’Engle
• City of Illusions by Ursula Le Guin
• Adaptation by Malinda Lo
• The Birthgrave by Tanith Lee
• “The Lady in the Tower” by Anne McCaffrey
• Northwest of Earth by C. L. Moore
• Dying Inside by Robert Silverberg
• Children of the Atom by Wilmar H. Shiras
• Gray Lensman by E. E. Smith
• Psion by Joan D. Vinge

Persons unfamiliar with one or two of the works, congratulations! You’re one of today’s Ten Thousand!

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1: There are two filtering rules: 

• Only one work per author per list

• Any given work by a particular author can appear on only one list. A given author may, however, have works on various lists but each instance of their work will be unique. 

2: NO IMPLICATION IS INTENDED THAT THESE ARE THE ONLY TWENTY BOOKS YOU SHOULD CONSIDER.

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In a world where any act of magic could open a portal to hell, the Order insures that no wizard will live to summon devils, and will kill as many innocent people as they must to prevent that greater horror. After witnessing a horrendous slaughter, the village girl Heloise opposes the Order, and risks bringing their wrath down on herself, her family, and her village.

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This is a work in progress. Open to suggestions. In 2015 and 2016, I devoted Fridays to Norton and Lee, respectively. That led to a certain level of fatigue towards the end of the projects. In 2017, I focused on authors from Waterloo Region, which side-stepped the fatigue issue at the cost of causing problems with the gender ratio of authors reviewed¹. In 2018, my idea is to

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Three thousand years from now, galactic transportation relies on the
sentient energy field known as the Deep. Its immortal human emissaries call
themselves Witches, and they control how the Deep is used. When
eight-year-old Tembi Moon wakes on an unfamiliar world, she knows the Deep
has to be involved, but to leave her home planet and become a Witch
herself? No, that life isn’t for her.

Or so she thought.

At sixteen, Tembi takes her rightful place with the other Witches. They
believe the Deep is a tool; Tembi knows it’s a person with its own hopes
and dreams, and a *wicked* sense of humor! With a war coming that could
cost the lives of millions, Tembi has to find a way to convince the Witches
that the Deep wants them to join the fight.

Because something worse than war is coming, and the Deep needs its Witches
to be ready.

STONESKIN is a prelude to the DEEP WITCH TRILOGY, coming soon.

An odd Eritrean coin travels from lovers to thieves, gathering stories before meeting its match. Google becomes sentient and proceeds toward an existential crisis. An idealistic dancer on a generation ship makes an impassioned plea for creativity alongside survival. Three Irish siblings embark on an unlikely quest, stealing enchanted items via bad poetry, trickery, and an assist from the Queen of Cats. 

In her first collection, multi-award-winning novelist Jo Walton (Among Others, Farthing, Necessity, The King’s Peace) delivers subtle myths and wholly reinvented realities. She soars with eclectic stories, subtle vignettes, inspired poetry, and more — rising from the everyday into the universe itself.

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As with the previous core lists, here are twenty Cyberpunk Speculative Fiction Works chosen entirely on the basis of merit and significance to the field¹. No implication is intended that these are the only twenty books you should consider².

• iD by Madeleine Ashby

• Hammered by Elizabeth Bear

• Moxyland by Lauren Beukes

• Synners by Pat Cadigan

• The Fortunate Fall by Raphael Carter

• When Gravity Fails by George Alec Effinger

• Exit to Reality by Edith Forbes 

• Web of Angels by John M. Ford

• The Many Selves of Katherine North by Emma Geen

• Neuromancer by William Gibson

• Winterlong by Elizabeth Hand

• God’s War by Kameron Hurley

• Arachne by Lisa Mason

• Glass Houses by Laura J. Mixon

• Spin State by Chris Moriarty

• Outlaw School by Rebecca Ore

• Chimera by Mary Rosenblum

• Trouble and Her Friends by Melissa Scott

• The Matrix by Lana Wachowski and Lilly Wachowski

• All Systems Red by Martha Wells

Persons unfamiliar with one or two of the works, congratulations! You’re one of today’s Ten Thousand!

1: There are two filtering rules: 

• Only one work per author per list

• Any given work by a particular author can appear on only one list. A given author may, however, have works on various lists but each instance of their work will be unique. 

2: NO IMPLICATION IS INTENDED THAT THESE ARE THE ONLY TWENTY BOOKS YOU SHOULD CONSIDER.

Read more ➤