James Nicoll Reviews

This World Is Not Yours by Kemi Ashing-Giwa (September 2024)

This World is Not Yours by USA Today bestseller Kemi Ashing-Giwa is the perfect blend of S.A. Barnes’ space horror and Cassandra Khaw’s beautiful but macabre worlds. An action-packed, inventive novella about a toxic polycule consumed by jealousy and their attempts to survive on a hostile planet. 

After fleeing her controlling and murderous family with her fiancée Vinh, Amara embarks on a colonization project, New Belaforme, along with her childhood friend, Jesse. 

The planet, beautiful and lethal, produces the Gray, a ​“self-cleaning” mechanism that New Belaforme’s scientists are certain only attacks invasive organisms, consuming them. Humans have been careful to do nothing to call attention to themselves until a rival colony wakes the Gray. 

As Amara, Vinh, and Jesse work to carve out a new life together, each is haunted by past betrayals that surface, expounded by the need to survive the rival colony and the planet itself. 

There’s more than one way to be eaten alive. 

Sorcery and Small Magics by Maiga Doocy (October 2024)

From debut author Maiga Doocy comes the charming tale of an impulsive sorcerer and his curmudgeonly rival as they venture deep into a magical forest in search of a counterspell that can break the curse between them — only to discover that magic might not be the only thing pulling them together. 

Leovander Loveage is a master of small magics. He can summon butterflies with a song or turn someone’s hair pink by snapping his fingers. Though such minor charms don’t earn him much respect, anything more elaborate always blows up in his face, and so Leo vowed long ago never to use powerful magic again. 

That is, until a mishap with a forbidden spell binds Leo to obey the commands of his longtime rival, Sebastian Grimm. Grimm is Leo’s complete opposite — respected, exceptionally talented, and absolutely insufferable. The only thing they can agree on is that revealing the curse between them would mean the end of their respective magical careers. They need a counterspell, and fast. 

Chasing rumors of a powerful sorcerer with a knack for undoing curses, Leo and Grimm enter the Unquiet Wood, a forest infested with murderous monsters and dangerous outlaws alike. To break the curse, they will have to uncover the true depths of Leo’s magic, set aside their long-standing rivalry, and — much to their horror — work together. 

Even as an odd spark of attraction flares between them. 

The Fate of Silent Gods by Scott Drakeford (November 2024)

he Age of Ire saga continues with The Fate of Silent Gods, continuing the gripping, personal vengeance with compelling characters in a struggle for power. 

Emrael Ire has won the first round of war against the dark god, but at a terrible cost to himself. 

Unsure of who he can trust, even among his own people, Emrael must find a way to score a major victory against both the forces of the dark lord and the corrupt lords of the provinces. 

He thought he already paid his price. The gods will exact another. 

Adrift in Currents Clean and Clear by Seanan McGuire (January 7, 2025)

Giant turtles, impossible ships, and tidal rivers ridden by a Drowned girl in search of a family in the latest in the bestselling Hugo and Nebula Award-Winning Wayward Children series from Seanan McGuire. 

Nadya had three mothers: the one who bore her, the country that poisoned her, and the one who adopted her. 

Nadya never considered herself less than whole, not until her adoptive parents fitted her with a prosthetic arm against her will, seeking to replace the one she’d been missing from birth. 

It was cumbersome; it was uncomfortable; it was wrong. 

It wasn’t her. 

Frustrated and unable to express why, Nadya began to wander, until the day she fell through a door into Belyrreka, the Land Beneath the Lake – and found herself in a world of water, filled with child-eating amphibians, majestic giant turtles, and impossible ships that sailed as happily beneath the surface as on top. In Belyrreka, she found herself understood for who she was: a Drowned Girl, who had made her way to her real home, accepted by the river and its people. 

But even in Belyrreka, there are dangers, and trials, and Nadya would soon find herself fighting to keep hold of everything she had come to treasure. 

Bonesmith by Nicki Pau Preto (July 2023)

Ready your blade. Defeat the undead.

Gideon the Ninth meets the Game of Thrones White Walkers in this dark young adult fantasy about a disgraced ghost-fighting warrior who must journey into a haunted wasteland to rescue a kidnapped prince. 

In the Dominions, the dead linger, violent and unpredictable, unless a bonesmith severs the ghost from its earthly remains. For bonesmith Wren, becoming a valkyr — a ghost-fighting warrior — is a chance to solidify her place in the noble House of Bone and impress her frequently absent father. But when sabotage causes Wren to fail her qualifying trial, she is banished to the Border Wall, the last line of defence against a wasteland called the Breach where the vicious dead roam unchecked. 

Determined to reclaim her family’s respect, Wren gets her chance when a House of Gold prince is kidnapped and taken beyond the Wall. To prove she has what it takes to be a valkyr, Wren vows to cross the Breach and rescue the prince. But to do so, she’s forced into an uneasy alliance with one of the kidnappers — a fierce ironsmith called Julian from the exiled House of Iron, the very people who caused the Breach in the first place…and the House of Bone’s sworn enemy. 

As they travel, Wren and Julian spend as much time fighting each other as they do the undead, but when they discover there’s more behind the kidnapping than either of them knew, they’ll need to work together to combat the real danger: a dark alliance that is brewing between the living and the undead.

Oath of Fire by K Arsenault Rivera (August 2024)

This lush and gripping sapphic retelling of the Psyche and Eros legend combines Greek mythology with a fae court feel.

All Psyche ever wanted to do was help people, whether it’s in her job as a therapist or online as an influencer. So when a mysterious invitation arrives from the most captivating man she’s ever seen, asking for her assistance, she can’t refuse. But Psyche soon finds herself in a world of Courts, full of debauchery and treachery, where her only option for survival is to swear a strange oath to a mysterious masked woman named Eros. 

Now Psyche has to figure out how to fulfill her end of her bargain with Eros, while trying to navigate having a flame-winged goddess show up in her tiny Brooklyn apartment. Uncanny vistas, a spacious mansion, and decadent experiences are all Psyche’s for the taking — so long as she helps Eros, and so long as she never looks under Eros’s mask.

But how long can she keep her curiosity at bay when Eros makes her heart tremble? 

The Mirror by Nora Roberts (November 2024)

Book 2 in The Lost Bride trilogy by New York Times and Sunday Times bestselling author Nora Roberts. Book two in the haunting Lost Bride trilogy — a tale of tragedies, loves found and lost, and a family haunted for generations. 

In need of an escape from her ex-fiance’s betrayal, and the lucky recipient of a surprise inheritance, Sonya MacTavish leaves behind her life in the city and moves to a Victorian mansion on the coast of Maine. The house is beautiful but comes with surprises — footsteps in the night, doors slamming, music playing — and in her dreams Sonya sees glimpses of the past and the brides who once lived there. As the house reveals more of its history and the sad stories of the brides murdered there, Sonya discovers an antique mirror. She finds herself drawn to the mirror, sensing it holds dark secrets. What can the mirror tell her? Can it help her to understand how the seven brides died? Sonya will need the help of her friends and family if she has any chance of breaking the curse and making this house her home. 

A Tide of Black Steel by Anthony Ryan (September 2024)

From the international bestselling author Anthony Ryan comes the spectacular first novel in a new epic new fantasy trilogy inspired by Norse mythology. 

A new age has dawned. An age of blood and steel. An age of wrath. The land of Ascarlia, a fabled realm of bloodied steel and epic sagas, has been ruled by the Sister Queens for centuries. No one has dared question their rule. 

Until now.

Whispers speak of longships of mysterious tattooed warriors, sailing under the banners of a murderous cult of oath-breakers long thought extinct. A tide of black steel that threatens to vanquish all in its path. Thera of the Blackspear, favoured servant of the Sister Queens, is ordered to uncover the truth. As Thera sails north, her reviled brother, Felnir, sets out on his own adventure. He hopes to find the Vault of the Altvar – the treasure room of the gods – and win the Sister Queens’ favour at his sister’s expense. 

Both siblings – along with a brilliant young scribe and a prisoner with a terrifying, primal power – will play a part in the coming storm. 

The Age of Wrath has begun.