James Nicoll Reviews

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. 

Penric and the Bandit by Lois McMaster Bujold (July 2024)

When Rozakajin, road-weary bandit and army deserter, spots a hapless blond young man in a country inn with an intriguing treasure map, he thinks he’s scouted an easy and lucrative victim. Attaching himself to odd traveler Penric seems simple enough, but when Roz’s old enemies catch up from behind, his plans take a turn for the much worse. When Pen’s claim that I never travel alone proves true in ways Roz never imagined, his world becomes more frightening still — but also much wider than he’d ever dared to dream.

The Last Hour Between Worlds by Melissa Caruso (November 2024)

In the Deep Echoes, no one can save you.

Kembral Thorne has a few hours away from her newborn, and she’s determined to enjoy herself at the year-turning ball. But when guests start dropping dead, she can’t help sniffing out trouble — she’s a Hound, after all. Especially when her professional and personal nemesis, notorious burglar Rika Nonesuch, is also on the prowl.

Everyone knows you shouldn’t get involved with Echo games. Let alone one involving ancient Echo lords who can turn layers of reality into a gameboard with human lives for pieces. But as the ballroom grows stranger and more otherworldly with each strike of the hour, it’s clearly too late.

Kem knows the rules: One Echo down is no big deal. Stay alert for trouble. 

Four Echoes down, there are things with eyes in their teeth, and walls that drip blood. Four is the limit. 

As the party plunges through increasingly deadly realities, the rules can’t help Kem anymore. She’ll have to rely on her wits — and Rika — to unravel the most dangerous game of the century before it unleashes catastrophe on their world. 

Brindlewood Bay by Jason Cordova, David Morrison, Calvin Johns, Petra Volkhausen, and Steffie de Vaan (October 2022)

Brindlewood Bay is a tabletop roleplaying game that combines Murder, She Wrote with H.P. Lovecraft. In it, you play a group of elderly women, members of the local Murder Mavens Mystery Book Club, who help the authorities solve murder cases in a picturesque New England Town. Over the course of their investigations, they become aware of a dark occult conspiracy that connects the cases, and will eventually have to face that conspiracy in order to save their community. The game is low-prep and easy to play no matter your experience with tabletop roleplaying games.

Vilest Things by Chloe Gong (September 2024)

Calla Tuoleimi has succeeded in the impossible. Despite the odds, she has won San-Er’s bloody games and eliminated King Kasa, her tyrant uncle and the former ruler of Talin. She now serves as royal advisor to Kasa’s adopted son, August Shenzhi, who has risen to the throne.

Only Calla knows it isn’t really August.

Anton Makusa is still furious about Calla’s betrayal in the final round of the games. In an impossible feat, he took over August’s body to survive and has no intention of giving up this newfound power. But when his first love, the beautiful, explosive Otta Avia, awakens from a yearslong coma and reveals a secret that threatens the monarchy’s authority over Talin, chaos erupts. As tensions come to a boiling point, Calla and Anton must set their conflicts aside and head to the kingdom’s far reaches to prevent anarchy…even if their empire might be better off burning. 

Nightstrider by Sophia Slade (September 2024)

To stop a vicious demon’s conquest, nightmares and humans will band together in book one of a heart-stopping new dark fantasy series. 

Wren is a nightmare: a deadly manifestation of the frightening dreams of humans. She is forever bound to the insidious Para Warwick, the only night creature who can cross the boundary between the dream and waking realms. When she fails to retrieve information on a weapon that could finally end Warwick’s reign and is severely punished, she makes a snap decision to aid the growing rebellion in finding it. Here, she meets Alaric, another nightmare hell-bent on atoning for his sins. Though wildly suspicious of one another, they form a tentative pact to take down Warwick once and for all. 

The waking world is no better off. Prince Caine Fallon, Warwick’s ignorant human son, prepares to wed Ila Enevoldson, the young queen from a neighboring kingdom. But Ila is more than she seems: She is a weaver, a protector of the ancient Boundary that separates the realms, and she has lost a precious weapon entrusted to her. She will do anything to retrieve it, including agreeing to an engagement with the son of her sworn enemy. 

When Caine catches Ila opening a portal to the dream realm and follows her through, he finds himself in a universe stranger than he could have imagined, where his father is more monstrous than he could have fathomed. Their destinies collide with those of the two lethal nightmares, and they are forced to band together to stop the vicious dictator — and prevent the very fabric of reality from unravelling. 

Hot Moon by Allan Smale (July 2024)

Two-time Sidewise Award-winning author, Alan Smale, brings us an exciting alternate 1979 where the US and the Soviets have permanent Moon bases, orbiting space stations, and crewed spy satellites supported by frequent rocket launches. 

Apollo32, commanded by career astronaut Vivian Carter, docks at NASA’s Columbia space station en route to its main mission: exploring the volcanic Marius Hills region of the Moon. Vivian is caught in the crossfire as four Soviet Soyuzcraft appear without warning to assault the orbiting station. In an unplanned and desperate move, Vivian spacewalks through hard vacuum back to her Lunar Module and crew and escapes right before the station falls into Soviet hands. 

Their original mission scrubbed, Vivian and her crew are redirected to land at Hadley Base, a NASA scientific outpost with a crew of eighteen. But soon Hadley, too, will come under Soviet attack, forcing its unarmed astronauts to daring acts of ingenuity and improvisation. 

With multiple viewpoints, shifting from American to Soviet perspective, from occupied space station to American Moon base under siege, to a covert and blistering US Air Force military response, Hot Moon tells the gripping story of a war in space that very nearly might have been. 

Radiant Sky by Alan Smale (November 2024)

In the sequel to Hot Moon, set in an alternate 1983, Apollo astronaut Vivian Carter and her crew barely survive an armed attack from mysterious assailants at the lunar South Pole. 

Back at the joint Zvezda-US Copernicus Moonbase, the precarious Cold War cease-fire between the NASA and Soviet crews comes under threat from another consolidated assault. Vivian must navigate a treacherous political and military landscape, and travel from the lunar surface to high lunar orbit and back again, to solve the riddle of these strange lunar incursions and move ahead to a future that even she can barely imagine. 

Pendragon: 6E Core Rulebook by Greg Stafford and David Larkins (June 2024)

Pendragon is set amidst the glory and grandeur of King Arthur’s Britain. Its innovative mechanics drive the emotional impact of play as your characters pursue Glory, overcome life-and-death struggles, cross blades with ruthless enemies, and fight for love and justice in a world of brutal medieval realism.

The Pendragon: Core Rulebook contains everything you need to begin an epic adventure in King Arthur’s Britain. It covers the complete core rules of the Pendragon game system, including Traits and Passions, Skills, combat, injury and recovery, Glory, Favors, and Honor.

Termination Shock by Greg Stolze, Lochlan Sudarshan, and Jose Garcia (February 2020)

A GAME OF EXHILARATING, TERRIFYING FREEDOM

In 2064, a coalition from beyond the stars set out on the universe’s greatest rescue mission: saving us from ourselves. Now, humanity explores skies filled with alien worlds, mingles with unique cultures, and adapts to technology never made for them.
Once, you lived a harsh life in the Sol system, but now you live in a galaxy filled with opportunity, mystery, and peril. What will you discover? Who will you become?