James Nicoll Reviews

Into the Windwracked Wilds by A. Deborah Baker

Adventurous readers of Kelly Barnhill and Cat Valente’s Fairyland books will be sure to soar among the dark marvels that can be found in Into the Windwracked Wilds, by Seanan McGuire’s latest open pseudonym, A. Deborah Baker. 

When the improbable road leaves Avery and Zib in the land of Air and at the mercy of the Queen of Swords, escape without becoming monsters may be impossible. But with the aid of the Queen’s son, the unpredictable Jack Daw, they may emerge with enough of their humanity to someday make it home. Their journey is not yet over; the dangers are no less great. 

The Crane Husband by Kelly Barnhill

Award-winning author Kelly Barnhill brings her singular talents to The Crane Husband, a raw, powerful story of love, sacrifice, and family. 

“Mothers fly away like migrating birds. This is why farmers have daughters.” 

A fifteen-year-old teenager is the backbone of her small Midwestern family, budgeting the household finances and raising her younger brother while her mother, a talented artist, weaves beautiful tapestries. For six years, it’s been just the three of them―her mother has brought home guests at times, but none have ever stayed. 

Yet when her mother brings home a six-foot tall crane with a menacing air, the girl is powerless to prevent her mom letting the intruder into her heart, and her children’s lives. Utterly enchanted and numb to his sharp edges, her mother abandons the world around her to weave the masterpiece the crane demands. 

In this stunning contemporary retelling of ​“The Crane Wife” by the Newbery Award-winning author of The Girl Who Drank the Moon, one fiercely pragmatic teen forced to grow up faster than was fair will do whatever it takes to protect her family―and change the story. 

Blood Debts by Terry J. Benton-Walker

Thirty years ago, a young woman was murdered, a family was lynched, and New Orleans saw the greatest magical massacre in its history. In the days that followed, a throne was stolen from a queen. 

On the anniversary of these brutal events, Clement and Cristina Trudeau — the sixteen-year-old twin heirs to the powerful, magical, dethroned family — are mourning their father and caring for their sick mother. Until, by chance, they discover their mother isn’t sick — she’s cursed. Cursed by someone on the very magic council their family used to rule. Someone who will come for them next. 

Cristina, once a talented and dedicated practitioner of Generational magic, has given up magic for good. An ancient spell is what killed their father and she was the one who cast it. For Clement, magic is his lifeline. A distraction from his anger and pain. Even better than the random guys he hooks up with. 

Cristina and Clement used to be each other’s most trusted confidant and friend, now they barely speak. But if they have any hope of discovering who is coming after their family, they’ll have to find a way to trust each other and their family’s magic, all while solving the decades-old murder that sparked the still-rising tensions between the city’s magical and non-magical communities. And if they don’t succeed, New Orleans may see another massacre. Or worse. 

The Keeper’s Six by Kate Elliott

Kate Elliott’s action-packed The Keeper’s Six features a world-hopping, bad-ass, spell-slinging mother who sets out to rescue her kidnapped son from a dragon lord with everything to lose.There are terrors that dwell in the space between worlds.It’s been a year since Esther set foot in the Beyond, the alien landscape stretching between worlds, crossing boundaries of space and time. She and her magical travelling party — her Hex — haven’t spoken since the Concilium banned them from the Beyond for a decade. But when she wakes in the middle of the night to her son’s cry for help, the members of her Hex are the only ones she can trust to help her bring him back from wherever he has been taken.Esther will have to risk everything to find him. Undercover and hidden from the Concilium, she and her Hex will be tested by false dragon lords, a darkness so dense it can suffocate, and the bones of an old crime come back to haunt her.

The Two Doctors Górski by Isaac Fellman

Annae, a brilliant graduate student in psychiatric magic and survivor of academic abuse, can’t stop reading people’s minds. This is how she protects herself, by using her abilities to know exactly how her colleagues view her. This is how she escapes the torturous experience of her own existence. 

When Annae moves to England to rebuild her life and finish her studies under the seminal magician Marec Górski — infamous for bringing to life a homunculus made from his unwanted better self — she sees, inside his head, a man who is both a destructive force to everyone around him, and her mirror image. For Annae to survive, she’ll need to break free of a lifetime of conditioning to embody her own self and forge her own path. 

Swords of the Serpentine by Kevin Kulp and Emily Dresner

Swords of the Serpentine is a sword & sorcery game of daring heroism, sly politics, and bloody savagery, set in a fantasy city rife with skullduggery and death. The rules adapt the GUMSHOE investigative roleplaying system to create a fantasy RPG with a focus on high-action roleplaying and investigation inspired by the stories of Fritz Leiber, Terry Pratchett, Robert E. Howard, and others.

Full House edited by George R. R. Martin

In e‑book for the first time, Full House brings together the Wild Cards stories that have been previously published on Tor.com, including works from: 

Daniel Abraham
Cherie Priest
David D. Levine
Walter Jon Williams
Paul Cornell
Carrie Vaughn
Caroline Spector
Stephen Leigh
Melinda M. Snodgrass
And more!

Wild Massive by Scotto Moore

Scotto Moore’s Wild Massive is a glorious web of lies, secrets, and humor in a breakneck, nitrous-boosted saga of the small rejecting the will of the mighty. 

Welcome to the Building, an infinitely tall skyscraper in the center of the multiverse, where any floor could contain a sprawling desert oasis, a cyanide rain forest, or an entire world. 

Carissa loves her elevator. Up and Down she goes, content with the sometimes chewy food her reality fabricator spits out, as long as it means she doesn’t have to speak to another living person. 

But when a mysterious shapeshifter from an ambiguous world lands on top of her elevator, intent on stopping a plot to annihilate hundreds of floors, Carissa finds herself stepping out of her comfort zone. She is forced to flee into the Wild Massive network of theme parks in the Building, where technology, sorcery, and elaborate media tie-ins combine to form impossible ride experiences, where every guest is a VIP, the roller coasters are frequently safe, and if you don’t have a valid day pass, the automated defense lasers will escort you from being alive. 

Wild Massive: The #1 destination for interdimensional war.
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Pulling the Wings Off Angels by K. J. Parker

Pulling the Wings Off Angels is a madcap adventure brimming with the ethical quandaries and sardonic wit of The Good Place by World Fantasy Award-winning author K. J. Parker 

Long ago, a wealthy man stole an angel and hid her in a chapel, where she remains imprisoned to this day. 

That’s the legend, anyway. 

A clerical student who’s racked up gambling debts to a local gangster is given an ultimatum — deliver the angel his grandfather kidnapped, or forfeit various body parts in payment. 

And so begins a whirlwind theological paradox — with the student at its center — in which the stakes are the necessity of God, the existence of destiny — and the nature of angels.