James Nicoll Reviews

How to Summon a Fairy Godmother by Laura J. Mayo (October 2024)

If a fairy godmother can get one sister into a marriage, getting another out of one should be easy… 

Lady Theodosia Balfour has certainly gotten the short end of the stick — her stepsister, the newly crowned Princess Beatrice, is telling everyone in polite society that Theo, her sister, and their mother are evil, wicked, and horrid people who treated her like a slave. Though Theo knows this isn’t exactly true, it seems her life is thoroughly ruined by the rumor. With the Balfour family estate on the verge of bankruptcy, Theo’s only path forward is a forced betrothal to the Duke of Snowbell, a foul-tempered geezer who wishes only to use her as a brood mare for spare heirs. 

Desperate for help, Theo clings to the only thing that might save her: the rumor of a fairy godmother, one that supposedly helped her stepsister secure a prince. After discovering a way to summon a fairy in Beatrice’s old room, Theo thinks her prayers have been answered. But the fairy she meets isn’t at all what she imagined. Drop-dead gorgeous, incredibly cunning, and slightly devious, Cecily of the Ash Fairies is much more interested in gathering powerful favors and smoking her pipe than providing charitable magic for humans in a bind.

Before she receives magical assistance, Cecily sets Theo to three tasks, seemingly to prove that Theo is a selfless and kind person. Helping her along the way are Cecily’s familiars, the flirty human-turned-mockingbird Phineas and the aloof Kasra, a fox shapeshifter who should not be as handsome as he is for someone with such cutting remarks. As Theo works on her tasks, she shockingly finds kinship with the magical creatures she’s helping, and starts to wonder if a continued life among her human peers is what she really wants after all.

From debut author Laura J. Mayo comes a hilarious new spin on the Cinderella tale!

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When the Earth Was Green by Riley Black (February 2025)

Winner, A Friend of Darwin Award, 2024

A gorgeously composed look at the longstanding relationship between prehistoric plants and life on Earth

Fossils plants allow us to touch the lost worlds from billions of years of evolutionary backstory. Each petrified leaf and root show us that dinosaurs, saber-toothed cats, and even humans would not exist without the evolutionary efforts of their leafy counterparts. It has been the constant growth of plants that have allowed so many of our favorite, fascinating prehistoric creatures to evolve, oxygenating the atmosphere, coaxing animals onto land, and forming the forests that shaped our ancestors’ anatomy. It is impossible to understand our history without them. Or, our future.

Using the same scientifically-informed narrative technique that readers loved in the award-winning The Last Days of the Dinosaurs, in When the Earth Was Green, Riley Black brings readers back in time to prehistoric seas, swamps, forests, and savannas where critical moments in plant evolution unfolded. Each chapter stars plants and animals alike, underscoring how the interactions between species have helped shape the world we call home. As the chapters move upwards in time, Black guides readers along the burgeoning trunk of the Tree of Life, stopping to appreciate branches of an evolutionary story that links the world we know with one we can only just perceive now through the silent stone, from ancient roots to the present. 

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The Dark Issue 111 published by The Dark Magazine (August 2024)

The Magazine of Dark Fantasy.

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James Nicoll Reviews is supported in part by Patreon subscribers, to whom I am very grateful. You can join my Patreon here. You too can have ongoing say in which books I review! 

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July 2024

23 works reviewed. 13 by women (57%), 10 by men (43%), 0 by non-binary authors (0%), 0 by authors whose gender is unknown (0%), and 8 by POC (35%).

2024 to Date

153 works reviewed. 86 by women (56%), 64 by men (42%), 2 by non-binary authors (1%), 1 by authors whose gender is unknown (1%), and 61 by POC (40%).

Grand Total to Date

2682 works reviewed. 1498 by women (56%), 1119 by men (42%), 42 by non-binary authors (2%), 23 by authors whose gender is unknown (1%), and 832.75 by POC (31%).

Government Types July 2024

Total 23, Not Applicable 4 (17%), Unclear 2 (9%), Anarchy 0 (0%), Pure democracy 0 (%), Representative democracy 6 (26%), Oligarchy 11 (48%), Autocracy 0 (0%).

Government Type 2024 TD

Total 153, Not Applicable 18 (12%), Unclear 10 (6%), Anarchy 6 (4%), Pure democracy 1 (1%), Representative democracy 49 (32%), Oligarchy 64 (42%), Autocracy 5 (3%).

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Negative Girl by Libby Cudmore (September 2024)

For fans of Cottonmouths by Kelly J. Ford comes Negative Girl: an evocative, moody, neo-noir thriller that explores obsession and people dying across America’s forgotten spaces.

Martin Wade lived hard in his youth, but unlike many of his former bandmates and roadie friends, he didn’t die young. Instead he hit the recovery path, cleaned up his life, and became a private investigator in a dying city in upstate New York.

When his heavily tattooed and scarred assistant Valerie sets up an appointment with a young woman who needs help keeping her biological father away from her, none of the three realize that the father is Martin’s old bandmate, still using, and on a destructive path that will soon be headed straight for Martin’s clean life. As Martin struggles, Valerie becomes increasingly obsessed with their new client’s life.

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Hot Hex Boyfriend by Carly Bloom (September 2024)

When it comes to love, hex marks the spot in this enchanting romance that will delight fans of Practical Magic and The Very Secret Society of Irregular Witches. 

As a child, Delia Merriweather believed with all her heart that she was a witch. Because all Merriweather women were witches. There was just one problem: they had no magic. As an adult, Delia no longer believes magic even exists. However, when she accidentally breaks a hex and restores her family’s powers, she’s forced to accept a new reality: she is a witch. And maybe that’s why the crushingly handsome guy next door has been looking at her like he’s expecting her to fly off on a broomstick, cackling into the night.

Just when Max thinks he’s done keeping an eye on the bumbling Merriweather women, now he must help his neighbors learn to control their magic before they out witches everywhere. But Delia can’t decide if Max is helping or hexing, and Max can’t tell whether his growing feelings for Delia are real, or if he’s come under the spell of the most powerful — and clueless — witch he’s ever known. And the last thing Max needs is to fall for the one witch who could rule the entire witching world by controlling the hearts of men. 

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Six Scorched Roses by Carissa Broadbent (September 2024)

A standalone fantasy romance set in the stunningly epic world of Carissa Broadbent’s New York Times bestselling Crowns of Nyaxia series. This short novel is perfect for readers of The Serpent & the Wings of Night and The Ashes & the Star-Cursed King and features beautiful case wrap art!

Six roses. Six vials of blood. Six visits to a vampire who could be her salvation… or her damnation.

Lilith has been dying since the day she was born. But while she long ago came to terms with her own imminent death, the deaths of everyone she loves is an entirely different matter. As her town slowly withers in the clutches of a mysterious god-cursed illness, she takes matters into her own hands.

Desperate to find a cure, Lilith strikes a bargain with the only thing the gods hate even more than her village: a vampire, Vale. She offers him six roses in exchange for six vials of vampire blood — the one hope for her town’s salvation. 

But when what begins as a simple transaction gradually becomes something more, Lilith is faced with a terrifying realization: It’s dangerous to wander into the clutches of a vampire…and in a place already suffering a god’s wrath, more dangerous still to fall in love with one. 

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I can now say one of my pieces became unpublishable via one of my usual venues due to a USSC decision. 

Democracy offers a thorough vetting of candidates, first by the party apparatus, then by the opposing party’s hostile opsec, the scrutiny of electoral officials, the diligent press, and finally the keen insight of the voting public. Were this not sufficient, state officials and courts are ever vigilant for official wrongdoing. It should be nigh-impossible for a head of government to be corrupt or if corrupt, to avoid punishment for any significant length of time. Indeed, as a noted philosopher once observed ​“when the president does it, that means that it is not illegal, by definition.”

Just as science fiction authors embrace impossible faster-than-light drives for the sake of plot, so too have a few embraced the clearly nonsensical prospect of a head of government who indulges in corruption or even more serious transgressions. American fiction of the 1970s and 1980s seemed particularly fascinated with the idea of presidents gone horribly wrong, a literary craze as inexplicable to modern minds as the popularity of pet rocks, mood rings, and the novel Jonathan Livingston Seagull.

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Death at the Sign of the Rook by Kate Atkinson (September 2024)

The highly anticipated return of Kate Atkinson’s ​“irresistible” (New York Times) private eye Jackson Brodie, whose newest adventure pays homage to Agatha Christie in the latest installment of a series described by The Washington Post as ​“Raymond Chandler meets Jane Austen.”

Marooned overnight by a snowstorm is a cast of characters and a setting that even Agatha Christie might recognize — a vicar, an Army major, a Dowager, a sleuth and his sidekick — except that the sleuth is Jackson Brodie, and the ​“sidekick” is DC Reggie Chase

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