James Nicoll Reviews

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.

A Harvest of Hearts by Andrea Eames (February 2024)

Howl’s Moving Castle meets The House in the Cerulean Sea in Andrea Eames’ debut cozy fantasy: a cheeky butcher’s daughter, a befuddlingly handsome sorcerer, and his clever talking cat unlock magical secrets in the dark heart of their kingdom — and just might discover the meaning of true love.

Everyone in Foss Butcher’s village knows what happens when the magic-workers come; they harvest human hearts to use in their spells. That’s just how life in her kingdom works. But Foss, plain, clumsy, and practical as a boot, never expected anyone would want hers. 

When a sorcerer snags a piece of Foss’s heart without meaning to, she is furious. For once a heart is snagged, the experience is … well, unpleasant. So, Foss finds herself stomping toward the grand City to keep his enchanted House and demands that he fixes her before she keels over and dies, or whatever happens when hearts are Snagged.

But the sorcerer, Sylvester, is not what she expected. Petulant, idle, and new to his powers, Sylvester has no clue how to undo the heart-taking, or how to do much of anything really, apart from sulk. Foss’s only friend is a talking cat and the walls themselves have moods.

As Foss searches for a cure, she accidentally uncovers that there is much more to the heart-taking — and to the magic-workers themselves — than she could have ever imagined.… 

Twilight 2000: The Black Madonna by Frank Frey & Chris Keeling

When I was a kid, my best friend was named Donald Kaminski. I was over at his house for dinner once when his Great Aunt Lucja was visiting. She was this crazy lady from the old country who spoke hardly any English. After dinner, she gave me a little card with a picture on one side and printing on the other. I thought it was a Polish baseball card or something, but it was an old-time picture of Mary and the baby Jesus. Don’s dad said that it was a holy picture. He read the stuff on the back to me. It was all about the painting, which was called Our Lady of Częstochowa, and had all sorts of neat stuff about sieges and battles, and thieves being struck dead as they tried to steal the painting. I loved it. I never dreamed I’d ever hold the real Black Madonna in my hands someday.

The Black Madonna is a campaign expansion for the fourth edition of TWILIGHT: 2000, based on the classic adventure with the same title for the first edition of the game. This new and updated supplement is written by the original author, Frank Frey, and Chris Keeling.

This boxed set includes new rules, new weapons, an overview of the Silesia region of Poland, new encounters, new factions for the PCs to tangle with, new scenario sites to explore, and details on the Black Madonna itself and its secrets.

The Dark Delight of Being Strange by James B. Haile, III (December 2024)

An ambitious genre-crossing exploration of Black speculative imagination, The Dark Delight of Being Strange combines fiction, historical accounts, and philosophical prose to unveil the extraordinary and the surreal in everyday Black life.

In a series of stories and essays, James B. Haile, III, traces how Black speculative fiction responds to enslavement, racism, colonialism, and capitalism and how it reveals a life beyond social and political alienation. He reenvisions Black technologies of freedom through Henry Box Brown’s famed escape from slavery in a wooden crate, fashions an anticolonial ​“hollow earth theory” from the works of H. G. Wells and Jules Verne, and considers the octopus and its ability to camouflage itself as a model for Black survival strategies, among others. Looking at Black life through the lens of speculative fiction, this book transports readers to alternative worlds and spaces while remaining squarely rooted in present-day struggles. In so doing, it rethinks historical and contemporary Black experiences as well as figures such as Harriet Tubman, Frederick Douglass, Booker T. Washington, W. E. B. Du Bois, Henry Dumas, and Toni Morrison.

Offering new ways to grasp the meanings and implications of Black freedom, The Dark Delight of Being Strange invites us to reimagine history and memory, time and space, our identities and ourselves. 

On Vicious Worlds by Bethany Jacobs (October 2024)

One of the most exciting new voices in space opera returns with the thrilling sequel to These Burning Stars, the explosive space opera debut that launched the dangerous cat‑and‑mouse quest for revenge that will define a people forever.

The Jeveni have finally found freedom on the distant planet Capamame, delivered from Kindom oppression through their alliance with stoic Cleric Chono, intrepid caster Jun Ironway, and Six, the wildly unpredictable manipulator who has outwitted the Nightfoot family.

But when Six and Chono return to the Treble star systems, the dream of freedom meets a dangerous test. The Secretaries of the Kindom are intent on reclaiming power in the Treble, as well as control over the Jeveni. Meanwhile, Jun Ironway and Jeveni collector Masar Hawks struggle to protect Capamame from a population brimming with resentment, not to mention a faceless saboteur spreading mayhem and murder.

As the two groups struggle to outwit their enemies, divergent battles wend toward a climatic reunion that will spark a revolution. But over it all hangs the cruel legacy of Esek Nightfoot, whose rippling effects may prove impossible to survive. 

Breath of the Dragon by Fonda Lee & Shannon Lee (January 2025)

A young warrior dreams of proving his worth in the elite Guardian Tournament, fighting not only for himself but the fate of everything he loves.

Sixteen-year-old Jun dreams of proving his worth as a warrior in the elite Guardian’s Tournament, held every six years to entrust the magical Scroll of Heaven to a new protector. Eager to prove his skills, Jun hopes that a win will restore his father’s pride — righting a horrible mistake that caused their banishment from his home, mother, and twin brother.

But Jun’s father strictly forbids him from participating. He believes there is no future in Jun honing his skills as a warrior, especially considering Jun is not breathmarked, born with a patch of dragon scales and blessed with special abilities like his twin. Determined to be the next Guardian, Jun stows away in the wagon of Chang and his daughter, Ren, performers on their way to the capital where the tournament will take place.

As Jun competes, he quickly realizes he may be fighting for not just a better life, but the fate of the country itself and the very survival of everyone he cares about. 

Kalyna the Cutthroat by Elijah Kinch Spector (November 2024)

The Daughters of Izdihar meets The Foxglove King: An ex-soothsayer and stranded scholar of curses upend a Utopian community that has no love for refugees.

Radiant Basket of Rainbow Shells, scholar of curses and magical history, has spent several years on a research expedition abroad in Quruscan, one of the four kingdoms of theTetrarchia. When Tetrarchia and Radiant’s home country of Loasht suddenly revoke their tenuous peace, Quruscan is no longer the safe haven for Radiant that it once was. He needs someone to help him escape: a bodyguard, perhaps, or someone with the sheer cunning to escort him to safety. The perfect candidate is Kalyna Aljosanova: a crafty, mysterious mercenary with an uncanny reputation. 

But the political situation in Loasht is far more volatile and dangerous than Radiant left it; it soon becomes clear that he may never be able to return home to his family. With a little of Kalyna’s signature guile, she finds Radiant asylum in a utopian community on the border between Loasht and the Tetrarchia, and, for a moment, it seems like they might finally have a safe place to stay. But when the group’s charismatic leader grows wary of the refugees flocking to his community — and suspicious of Kalyna in particular — that sense of safety begins to unravel once more.

Kalyna the Cutthroat deftly imagines how the pressures of heroism can warp even the most unshakeable of survivors, asking what responsibilities human beings have to one another, and whether one good deed — of any magnitude — can absolve you of your past for the sake of a future.