James Nicoll Reviews

All acquired for commissions. It was a very heavy week for requests for authors named ​“Brennan”.

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Here are twenty core Speculative Fiction Works it may surprise you to learn I’ve never read, chosen entirely on the basis of merit and significance to the field¹. No implication is intended that these are the only twenty books you or for that matter I should consider².

I’ve owned copies of some of these for a significant fraction of my life to date.

• Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood

• The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum

• Galactic Sibyl Sue Blue by Rosel George Brown 

• Bone Dance by Emma Bull

• Mindplayers by Pat Cadigan

• Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrellby Susanna Clarke

• The Start of the End of It All by Carol Emshwiller 

• Hild by Nicola Griffith

• Those Who Hunt the Night by Barbara Hambly

• Brown Girl in the Ring by Nalo Hopkinson

• The Moomins and the Great Flood by Tove Jansson

• Re: Colonised Planet 5, Shikasta by Doris Lessing

• The Grace of Kings by Ken Liu

• England Swings SF edited by Judith Merril

• The Song of the Lioness by Tamora Pierce

• Unquenchable Fire by Rachel Pollack

• Always Coming Home by Ursula Le Guin

• Among Others by Jo Walton

• The Wood Wife by Terri Windling

• Creatures of Light and Darkness by Roger Zelazny

Persons unfamiliar with one or two of the works, congratulations! You’re one of today’s Ten Thousand! SO AM I. ALWAYS NEW FRONTIERS TO EXPLORE.

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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Welcome to Gluttony Bay High Security Supernatural Prison. We value your patronage. For your entertainment this evening, we are delighted to welcome the world’s most renowned paranormal culinary experts.

And on the menu: You.

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

• Aria by Kozue Amano
• Fullmetal Alchemist by Hiromu Arakawa 
• Red Moon and Black Mountain by Joy Chant
• The Dark is Rising by Susan Cooper
• On the Edge of Gone by Corinne Duyvis
• Growing Up Weightless by John M. Ford 
• Cart and Cwidder by Diane Wynne Jones 
• Justice and her Brothers by Virginia Hamilton
• The Chaos by Nalo Hopkinson 
• Magic or Madness by Justine Larbalestier
• A Wizard of Earthsea by Ursula K. Le Guin
• The Silver Metal Lover by Tanith Lee
• The Forgotten Beasts of Eld by Patricia A. McKillip 
• The Blue Sword by Robin McKinley
• Lud-in-the-Mist by Hope Mirrlees
• Witch World by Andre Norton
• Mirror Sword and Shadow Prince by Noriko Ogiwara
• Little Fuzzy by H. Beam Piper
• Rite of Passage by Alexei Panshin
• The Crystal Cave by Mary Stewart

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

---

i 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. 

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

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In a galaxy where the super-powers are the megacorporations, and ambitious executives play fast and loose with ethics in order to secure resources, where can good people turn for help? The megacorps control the jump gates and trade routes. They use psi-techs, implant-enhanced operatives with psionic abilities, who are bound by unbreakable contracts.

Psi-tech Cara Carlinni once had her mind turned inside out by Alphacorp, but she escaped, found her place with the Free Company, and now it’s payback time.

Ben Benjamin leads the Free Company, based on the rogue space station, Crossways. The megacorps have struck at Crossways once — and failed — so what are they planning now?nCrossways can’t stand alone, and neither can the independent colonies, though maybe together they all have a chance.

But something alien is stirring in the depths of foldspace. Something bigger than thesquabbles between megacorporations and independents. Foldspace visions are supposed to be a figment of the imagination.

At least, that’s what they teach in flight school. Ben Benjamin knows it’s not true. Meeting a void dragon was bad enough, but now there’s the Nimbus to contend with. Are the two connected? Why do some ships transit the Folds safely and others disappear without a trace?

Until now, humans have had a free hand in the Galaxy, settling colony after colony, but that might change because the Nimbus is coming.

Fifteen-year old Fanny and her step-sister are drawn into mysterious occurences around their home in Scotland which seem to be connected to the unexplained disappearance of a young man in 1914.

A super-genius in a small underground colony of survivors of nuclear war, eighteen-year-old Casey risks journeying back to the twentieth century to discover why the survivors are dying and how he can save them all.

Angel Crawford has finally pulled herself together (literally!) after her disastrous dismemberment on Mardi Gras. She’s putting the pieces of her life back in order and is ready to tackle whatever the future holds.

Too bad the future is a nasty bitch. There’s a new kind of zombie in town: mindless shamblers, infectious and ravenous.

With the threat of a full-blown shambler pandemic looming, and a loved one stricken, Angel and the ​“real” zombies scramble to find a cure. Yet when Angel uncovers the true reason the plague is spreading so quickly, she adds ​“no-holds-barred revenge” to her to-do list.

Angel is busting her ass dealing with shambling hordes, zombie gators, government jerks, and way too many mosquitos, but this white trash chick ain’t giving up.

Good thing, since the fate of the world is resting on her undead shoulders.

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“History is a hostage, but it will bite through the gag you tie around its mouth, bite through and still be heard.”—Operation Daniel

In a calm and serene world, one has the luxury of imagining what the future might look like.
Now try to imagine that future when your way of life has been devastated by forces beyond your control.

Iraq + 100 poses a question to Iraqi writers (those who still live in that nation, and those who have joined the worldwide diaspora): What might your home country look like in the year 2103, a century after a disastrous foreign invasion?

Using science fiction, allegory, and magical realism to challenge the perception of what it means to be ​“The Other”, this groundbreaking anthology edited by Hassan Blasim contains stories that are heartbreakingly surreal, and yet utterly recognizable to the human experience. Though born out of exhaustion, fear, and despair, these stories are also fueled by themes of love, family, and endurance, and woven through with a delicate thread of hope for the future.

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July

20 books read. 11 by women (55%), 8 by men (40%), 1 by NB (5%)

Works by POC: 7 (35%)

Year to Date

146 works reviewed. 79 by women (54%). 63 by men (43%). 4 by non-binary authors (3%).

Works by POC: 46.5 (32%)

And now, the meaningless table.

Key: WNB stands for “women and non-binary genders”, while POC stands for “person of colour”. R/R stands for “reviews/reviewers”. For R/R the percentage represents the site’s R/R over my 2015 R/R. SFX is actually called SFX; it is not short for anything. Same with io9. F&SF is the Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. SFS is Science Fiction Studies. LARB is the Los Angeles Review of Books. CSZ is the Cascadia Subduction Zone.

Review source	Total	WNB	WNB %	POC	POC %	Reviewers	R/R	R/R %
JNR 2015	329	195	59	45	14	1	329	100
Locus	324	163	50	22	7	17	19	5.7
JNR 2016	255	163.5	64	62.5	25	1	255	78
SFX	165	48	29	10	6	30	5.5	1.5
Romantic Times	146	84	57	14	10	(incorrect)	n/a	N/a
JNR 2017	146	83	57	46.5	32	1	146	44.4
Tor	141	66	47	18	13	27	5.2	1.6
Strange Horizons	139	66	48	30	22	80	1.7	0.5
Rising Shadows	83	25	30	1	1	2	41.5	12.6
Interzone	67	21	31	7	10	19	3.5	1
F&SF	59	32	54	5	9	5	11.8	3.6
Analog	58	10	17	3	4	1	58	17.6
Io9	56	17	30	12	21	10	5.6	1.7
Asimov’s	53	21	23	3	6	3	17.7	5.4
Vector	52	18	35	4	8	26	2	0.6
SFS	45	48	21	2	4	38	1.2	0.3
NYRSF	42	11	26	6	13	24	1.8	0.5
Foundation	38	9	24	1	3	27	1.4	0.4
LARB	35	11	31	7	20	28	1.3	0.4
Lightspeed	28	16?	57	14	50	3	9.3	2.8
CSZ	23	19	80	8	35	17	1.4	0.4

I am making progress on the non-binary front but only in terms of books. In terms of authors, I am still narrow focus. I've read more books by POC than this time last year (46.5 versus 34) but fiddling about with numbers says at 4 or 5 books by POC I will only have reviewed 66 to 71 books by POC by the end of December. The low end is not significantly better than 2016. It's a good thing I am neither competitive nor obsessed with my statistics.

At 20 books a month, by year's end I will probably edge out everyone but Locus' army of reviewers, in terms of total reviews. Ah, well. And Locus will have reviewed slightly more WNB authors than I will by years end. At least I can console myself that I am about 27 times as productive thus far as the median reviewer is in a year.

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As with the previous core lists, here are twenty Dystopian works, chosen entirely on the basis of merit and significance¹. No implication is intended that these are the only twenty books you should conside².

• The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood
• Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
• Swastika Night by Katharine Burdekin 
• Parable of the Sower by Octavia E. Butler
• Bulldozer Rising by Anna Livia
• The Sheep Look Up by John Brunner
• The Passion of New Eve by Angela Carter 
• Walk to the End of the World by Suzy McKee Charnas
• This Time of Darkness by H. M. Hoover
• Memory of Water by Emmi Itäranta 
• Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl by Harriet Ann Jacobs 
• “The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson
• The Lathe of Heaven by Ursula K. Le Guin
• Drinking Sapphire Wine by Tanith Lee
• The ArchAndroid by Janelle Monáe 
• Woman on the Edge of Time by Marge Piercy
• The Core of the Sun  by Johanna Sinisalo
• House of Stairs by William Sleator
• Battle Royale by Koushun Takami 
• We by Yevgeny Zamyatin

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 CONSIDER³.

3: See footnote 2. 

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Lyrical, witty, and heartbreaking, here is Peter S. Beagle’s much-anticipated return to the short form. In these uniquely beautiful tales, Beagle once again proves himself a master of the imagination.

Sparks are champions of weird science. Boasting capes and costumes and amazing super-powers that only make sense if you don’t think about them too hard, they fight an eternal battle for truth and justice … mostly.

Darklings are creatures of myth and magic: ghosts, vampires, were-beasts, and the like. Their very presence warps reality. Doors creak at their approach. Cobwebs gather where they linger.

Kim Lam is an ordinary college student until a freak scientific accident (what else?) transforms Kim and three housemates into Sparks―and drafts them into the never-ending war between the Light and Dark. They struggle to master their new abilities―and (of course) to design cool costumes and come up with great hero-names.

Turns out that ​“accident” was just the first salvo in a Mad Genius’s latest diabolical scheme. Now it’s up to four newbie heroes to save the day, before they even have a chance to figure out what their team’s name should be!

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To catch an assassin, use an assassin…

Girton Club-foot, apprentice to the land’s best assassin, still has much to learn about the art of taking lives. But his latest mission tasks him and his master with a far more difficult challenge: to save a life. Someone, or many someones, is trying to kill the heir to the throne, and it is up to Girton and his master to uncover the traitor and prevent the prince’s murder.

In a kingdom on the brink of civil war and a castle thick with lies Girton finds friends he never expected, responsibilities he never wanted, and a conspiracy that could destroy an entire kingdom. 

CONTROL THE MAGIC, CONTROL THE WORLD

In the Raverran Empire, magic is scarce and those born with power are strictly controlled — taken as children and conscripted into the Falcon Army.
Zaira has lived her life on the streets to avoid this fate, hiding her mage-mark and thieving to survive. But hers is a rare and dangerous magic, one that threatens the entire empire.
Lady Amalia Cornaro was never meant to be a Falconer. Heiress and scholar, she was born into a treacherous world of political machinations.

But fate has bound the heir and the mage. And as war looms on the horizon, a single spark could turn their city into a pyre.

The Tethered Mage is the first novel in a spellbinding new fantasy series. 

From New York Times bestselling author James S.A. Corey…

Set in the hard-scrabble solar system of the Expanse, this new novella deepens James S. A. Corey’s acclaimed series. 

Guardians of the Galaxy meets The Hobbit in this rollicking fantasy adventure series.

The Dragons who once ruled over the land are dead.

The motley crew that stumbled through that revolution are rich and praised as saviors.

Everyone gets to live happily ever after, right?

Right?

Well, it might have worked out that way if the dragons in Kondorra had been the only ones. If they hadn’t been just the tip of the spear about to fall upon the whole world… 

The second book in a glorious new fantasy trilogy by the next major force in commercial epic fantasy.
In the wake of the devastating attack on Ilin Illan, an amnesty has been declared for all Augurs — finally allowing them to emerge from hiding and openly oppose the dark forces massing against Andarra.

However as Davian and his new allies hurry north toward the ever-weakening Boundary, fresh horrors along their path suggest that their reprieve may have come far too late.

In the capital, Wirr is forced to contend with assassins and an increasingly hostile Administration as he controversially assumes the mantle of Northwarden, uncovering a mystery that draws into question everything commonly believed about the rebellion his father led twenty years ago. Meanwhile, Asha begins a secret investigation into the disappearance of the Shadows, determined to discover not only where they went but the origin of the Vessels that created them — and, ultimately, a cure.

And with time against him as he races to fulfill the treacherous bargain with the Lyth, Caeden continues to wrestle with the impossibly heavy burdens of his past. Yet as more and more of his memories return, he begins to realise that the motivations of the two sides in this ancient war may not be as clear-cut as they first seemed… 

THIS IS THE WAY THE WORLD ENDS… FOR THE LAST TIME.

The Moon will soon return. Whether this heralds the destruction of humankind or something worse will depend on two women.

Essun has inherited the power of Alabaster Tenring. With it, she hopes to find her daughter Nassun and forge a world in which every orogene child can grow up safe.

For Nassun, her mother’s mastery of the Obelisk Gate comes too late. She has seen the evil of the world, and accepted what her mother will not admit: that sometimes what is corrupt cannot be cleansed, only destroyed. 

Something bizarre is happening among the government workers at weapons laboratories across the United States. Increasing numbers of employees are abandoning their jobs for no apparent reason, some of them committing suicide, others trading their high-profile, specialized careers for unskilled jobs in obscure towns. 

One such employee, metallurgist Richard Bransome, is drinking coffee at a café when he overhears a conversation about a long-ago murder that has newly come to light. The details awaken Bransome’s suppressed memory of a similar crime that he committed years before. Like his co-workers, Bransome takes flight, eventually discovering that his sudden recollection is linked to an enemy spy ring and a powerful new weapon. Set during the height of Cold War tensions, this mystery offers a compelling mix of espionage novel, crime drama, and psychological thriller. 

FAMILY IS DUTY. MAGIC IS POWER. HONOR IS EVERYTHING.

Jade is the lifeblood of the island of Kekon. It has been mined, traded, stolen, and killed for — and for centuries, honorable Green Bone warriors like the Kaul family have used it to enhance their magical abilities and defend the island from foreign invasion.

Now, the war is over and a new generation of Kauls vies for control of Kekon’s bustling capital city. They care about nothing but protecting their own, cornering the jade market, and defending the districts under their protection. Ancient tradition has little place in this rapidly changing nation.

When a powerful new drug emerges that lets anyone — even foreigners — wield jade, the simmering tension between the Kauls and the rival Ayt family erupts into open violence. The outcome of this clan war will determine the fate of all Green Bones — from their grandest patriarch to the lowliest motorcycle runner on the streets — and of Kekon itself. 

Following her record-breaking debut trilogy, Ann Leckie, winner of the Hugo, Nebula, Arthur C. Clarke and Locus Awards, returns with an enthralling new novel of power, theft, privilege and birthright.

A power-driven young woman has just one chance to secure the status she craves and regain priceless lost artifacts prized by her people. She must free their thief from a prison planet from which no one has ever returned.

Ingray and her charge will return to her home world to find their planet in political turmoil, at the heart of an escalating interstellar conflict. Together, they must make a new plan to salvage Ingray’s future, her family, and her world, before they are lost to her for good. 

Humans, orcs, mages, elves, and dwarves all jostle for success and survival in the cramped quarters of Yenara, while understaffed Watch Wardens struggle to keep its citizens in line.

Enter Rem: new to Yenara and hungover in the city dungeons with no money for bail. When offered a position with the Watch to compensate for his crimes, Rem jumps at the chance.

His new partner is less eager. Torval, a dwarf who’s handy with a maul and known for hitting first and asking questions later, is highly unimpressed with the untrained and weaponless Rem.

But when Torval’s former partner goes missing, the two must consort with the usual suspects — drug dealing orcs, mind-controlling elves, uncooperative mages, and humans being typical humans — to uncover the truth and catch a murderer loose in their fair city. 

Clementine is a bounty hunter in a world gone mad.

Bound and gagged in her passenger seat is the most revered and reviled raider king in the eastern wastes. She can’t cash him in and she can’t let him go, so together they cross the wasteworld, following a dying road and dodging bloodthirsty raiders who either want to free Jedediah or claim him as their own.

And in a world where lawlessness reigns, a tyrant worse than they could have ever imagined emerges to take the throne. 

A series of murders shocks Tokyo’s Shinjuku ward, but Shigenori, a retired police detective, is instead obsessed with a gargoyle that seems to move. College freshman Kotaro launches a web-based investigation of the killer, and comes to find that answers may lie within an abandoned building in the center of Japan’s busiest neighborhood, and beyond the Gate of Sorrows. In this adult sequel to Miyabe’s The Book of Heroes, you will meet monsters from other worlds and ordinary horrors that surpass even supernatural threats. 

Antonina Beaulieu is in the glittering city of Loisail for her first Grand Season, where she will attend balls and mingle among high society in hopes of landing a suitable husband. But Antonina is telekinetic, and strange events in her past have made her the subject of malicious gossip and hardly a sought-after bride. Now, under the tutelage of her cousin’s wife, she is finally ready to shed the past and learn the proper ways of society.

Antonina, who prefers her family’s country home to the glamorous ballrooms of the wealthy, finds it increasingly difficult to conform to society’s ideals for women, especially when she falls under the spell of the dazzling telekinetic performer Hector Auvray. As their romance blossoms, and he teaches her how to hone and control her telekinetic gift, she can’t help but feel a marriage proposal is imminent.

Little does Antonina know that Hector and those closest to her are hiding a devastating secret that will crush her world and force her to confront who she really is and what she’s willing to sacrifice.

Charlotte is learning to control her emerging magical prowess under the
secret tutelage of Magus Hopkins. Her first covert mission takes her to a
textile mill where the disgruntled workers are apparently in revolt.

But it isn’t the workers causing the trouble. The real culprits are far
more extranormal in nature.

And they have a grudge to settle. 

The Bureau of Preternatural Investigations returns in Switchback, the sequel to Melissa F. Olson’s Nightshades.

Three weeks after the events of Nightshades, things are finally beginning to settle for the Chicago branch of the BPI, but the brief respite from the horror of the previous few weeks was never destined to last.

The team gets a call from Switch Creek, WI, where a young man has been arrested on suspicion of being a shade. The suspect is held overnight, pending DNA testing, but seemingly escapes in a terrifying and bloody massacre. But is there more to the jailbreak than a simple quest for freedom? 

Morino is the strangest girl in school — how could she not be, given her obsession with brutal murders? And there are plenty of murders to grow obsessed with, as the town in which she lives is a magnet for serial killers. She and her schoolmate will go to any length to investigate the murders, even putting their own bodies on the line. And they don’t want to stop the killers — Morino and friend simply want to understand them. 

Meet Greta Helsing, fast-talking doctor to the undead. Keeping the supernatural community not-alive and well in London has been her family’s specialty for generations.

Greta Helsing inherited the family’s highly specialized, and highly peculiar, medical practice. In her consulting rooms, Dr. Helsing treats the undead for a host of ills — vocal strain in banshees, arthritis in barrow-wights, and entropy in mummies. Although barely making ends meet, this is just the quiet, supernatural-adjacent life Greta’s been groomed for since childhood.

Until a sect of murderous monks emerges, killing human and undead Londoners alike. As terror takes hold of the city, Greta must use her unusual skills to stop the cult if she hopes to save her practice, and her life. 

In the fight for humanity, one final hope remains…

Humans are losing the war. Master Sergeant Reed Beckham and the survivors of 1^st Platoon must battle through the tunnels – where they make a grisly discovery.

Dr. Kate Lovato is working on a new bioweapon to destroy the Variants when a derelict Navy Destroyer crashes into the Connecticut shoreline carrying yet another threat.

As the doomsday clock ticks down and military bases fall across the country, the human race enters the age of extinction. Will they prevail – or will mankind vanish off the face of the planet?

The third book in self-publishing sensation and USA Today bestselling author Nicholas Sansbury Smith’s propulsive post-apocalyptic series about a soldier’s mission to save the world. 

There’s a storm on the horizon...

Central Command is gone, the military is fractured, and the surviving members of Team Ghost, led by Master Sergeant Reed Beckham, have been pushed to the breaking point.

Betrayed by the country they swore to defend and surrounded by enemies on all sides, Team Ghost has one mission left: protect Dr. Kate Lovato and Dr. Pat Ellis while they develop a weapon to defeat the Variants once and for all. But after a grisly discovery in Atlanta, Kate and Ellis realize their weapon might not be able to stop the evolution of the monsters.

Joined by unexpected allies and facing a new threat none of them saw coming, the survivors are running out of time to save the human race from extinction. 

Remnants of the high nobility, manipulated by the ​“third power” of Phezzan, abduct the seven-year-old emperor and, with the cooperation of the Free Planets Alliance, declare the establishment of a traditional imperial government. Reinhard, however, has turned the tables by making a secret pact with Phezzan’s high officials and plans a grand invasion of the alliance by way of the Phezzan Corridor. So begins an epic battle between Yang — who, despite surmising Reinhard’s true intentions, must defend Iserlohn — and the Imperial Navy’s peerless fighter, von Reuentahl. 

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