James Nicoll Reviews

Chasing Whispers by Eugen Bacon (September 2022) 

Chasing Whispers is a unique Afro-irrealist collection of Black speculative fiction in transformative stories of culture, longing, hybridity, unlimited futures, a collision of worlds and folklore. 

Columbo: The Complete Series created by Richard Levinson & William Link

Legendary Peter Falk is a four-time Primetime Emmy® Award-winner for his iconic role as the beloved, trenchcoat-wearing Police Lieutenant Columbo. Columbo is the landmark series that inspired a genre. Every criminal, every innocent victim (and some not-so-innocent ones), and
every wily deduction are here in one definitive collection. All 69 episodes from its seven seasons and all 24 television movies are together in this 34-disc anthology. Seemingly befuddled but always brilliant, the cigar-chomping detective will have you following the clues and asking ​“just one more thing” until the last case is cracked.

Gifts of Blood by Susan C. Petrey (July 1990)

A Russian tribe called the Varkela is also known as Children of the Night – or vampires. But the Varkela are nothing like their hideous cousins who made Transylvania famous. They earn the blood they need to survive by trading traditional healing skills with others. But unless something changes, the Varkelans will soon become extinct.

City of Last Chances by Adrian Tchaikovsky (December 2022)

Arthur C. Clarke winner Adrian Tchaikovsky’s triumphant return to fantasy with a darkly inventive portrait of a city under occupation and on the verge of revolution .

There has always been a darkness to Ilmar, but never more so than now. The city chafes under the heavy hand of the Palleseen occupation, the choke-hold of its criminal underworld, the boot of its factory owners, the weight of its wretched poor and the burden of its ancient curse. 

What will be the spark that lights the conflagration? 

Despite the city’s refugees, wanderers, murderers, madmen, fanatics and thieves, the catalyst, as always, will be the Anchorwood – that dark grove of trees, that primeval remnant, that portal, when the moon is full, to strange and distant shores. 

Ilmar, some say, is the worst place in the world and the gateway to a thousand worse places. 

Ilmar, City of Long Shadows. 

City of Bad Decisions. 

City of Last Chances.