James Nicoll Reviews

Liv Burnham thinks nobody knows Morgan Frost like she does, but a terrible accident pushes her down the rabbit hole where Morgan’s secrets hide and she’ll be lucky to make it out alive.…

On a hot summer night, Liv, Morgan, Clay and Nathan are on the way home from a party in Clay’s convertible. Best friends dating brothers? It doesn’t get better than that. But the joyride ends in sudden impact, a screech of brakes, and shattering glass. On that lonely country road, four lives change forever. 

Liv wakes in the hospital. At first she’s confused when they call her Morgan, but she assumes it’s a case of mistaken identity. Yet when the bandages come off, it’s not her face inthe mirror anymore. It’s Morgan’s. 

Morgan always seemed to have the perfect life. But as Liv tries to fit herself into Morgan’s world, she discovers endlessly disturbing secrets of the criminal and murderous variety and a dark task to finish…if she doesn’t lose her mind first. 

Forced to confront the disturbing truths that Morgan kept hidden in life, Liv must navigate a world of long-buried murder, a dangerous love affair―and a romance that feels like a betrayal. 

From the bestselling author of the epic Malazan Book of the Fallen, comes a story of mankind’s first contact and a warning about our future. An alien AI has been sent to the solar system as representative of three advanced species. Its mission is to save the Earth’s ecosystem — and the biggest threat to that is humanity. But we are also part of the system, so the AI must make a choice. Should it save mankind or wipe it out? Are we worth it? The AI is all-powerful, and might as well be a god. So it sets up some conditions. Violence is now impossible. Large-scale destruction of natural resources is impossible. Food and water will be provided for those who really, truly need them. You can’t even bully someone on the internet any more. The old way of doing things is gone. But a certain thin-skinned US president, among others, is still wedded to late-stage capitalism. Can we adapt? Can we prove ourselves worthy? And are we prepared to give up free will for a world without violence? And above it all, on a hidden spaceship, one woman watches. A science fiction writer, she was abducted from the middle of the street in broad daylight. She is the only person the AI will talk to. And she must make a decision. 

After donning the emperor’s crown, Reinhard becomes the target of an assassination plot. Knowing that the Church of Terra is behind it, he deploys his troops to the church’s holy land: Earth. Meanwhile, Yang’s leisurely retirement is tempered by the surveillance networks watching his every move from both sides. And when he is one day visited by a group of men dressed in black, the galaxy, too, relinquishes peace to become embroiled in upheaval once again. Welcome to the turning point in the war for the fate of the galaxy!

Reinhard, under his Golden Lion banner, is setting out to bend history and the universe to his will. Meanwhile, with no flag of their own to raise, Yang and his compatriots have escaped the murderous hands of the Free Planets Alliance’s government and dubbed themselves the ​“Irregulars.” Yang receives word that an Imperial fleet is closing in on the capital of Heinessen, and in a daring move, recaptures Iserlohn Fortress. In the meantime, Reinhard’s invasion of the Free Planets Alliance proceeds steadily apace. Standing in the path of the Imperial fleet is a fleet of FPA Navy vessels commanded by the elderly Admiral Bucock. An old lion roars out a life-or-death challenge, and a young lion answers it — the final battle of the Free Planets Alliance now begins!

An extraordinarily inventive and hugely original SF novel that charts a compelling vision of a future and spins an hypnotic narrative around it. A novel that could command the same amount of attention and furore that met the publication of The Quantum Thief. The richness and originality of its vision combined with its playful take on hard science make this a novel with real commercial potential that will be talked about for years and should launch a major career in SF. In the far future man has spread out into the galaxy. And diversified. Some have evolved physically into strange new forms, some have become immortal. Some hark back to the old ways. We have built a glorious new future. One that stretches from the sleepy Old World, to new terraformed planets and Dyson spheres built around artificial suns. For as long as we can remember (and some have lived 12,000 years) we have delighted in a rich new existence. Yes there have been wars but we are content in our splendour. Art is revered, life is easy, death forgotten for many. But now there are rumours of a bid to oust the Emperor and a worrying story that our history is not as we remember it — not only man left Earth…

The race is on to place a man on the moon to examine the wreckage of the alien domes destroyed in ​‘The Domes of Pico’. The Russians are training a fanatical young Communist, Serge Smyslov, for the task, while the West’s candidate is a cheery young American, Morrison ​‘Morrey’ Kant. Unfortunately Morrey breaks his arm shortly before take-off in a riding accident and Chris Godfrey takes his place.

The two spaceships land on the moon virtually simultaneously. Chris can walk about in his spacesuit, however Serge is sealed up inside a ​‘lunar rover’ vehicle. While Chris ventures towards the radioactive debris of the domes to retrieve a sample, Serge, brainwashed by his Red superiors, uses a rocket to destroy Chris’s ship. The blast overturns his lunar rover, leaving him unable to return to his ship, while Chris is trapped by a strange, creeping grey mist that may be connected to the domes’ builders…

Chris Godfrey and his friends are off to Mars. The expedition has been planned to the last detail, so there should be no trouble. But what are the terrifying voices which the astronaut Van der Veen heard in outer space?