James Nicoll Reviews

Book of Night by Holly Black

#1 New York Times bestselling author Holly Black makes her stunning adult debut with Book of Night, a modern dark fantasy of shadowy thieves and secret societies in the vein of Ninth House and The Night Circus.Charlie Hall has never found a lock she couldn’t pick, a book she couldn’t steal, or a bad decision she wouldn’t make. She’s spent half her life working for gloamists, magicians who manipulate shadows to peer into locked rooms, strangle people in their beds, or worse. Gloamists guard their secrets greedily, creating an underground economy of grimoires. And to rob their fellow magicians, they need Charlie.Now, she’s trying to distance herself from past mistakes, but going straight isn’t easy. Bartending at a dive, she’s still entirely too close to the corrupt underbelly of the Berkshires. Not to mention that her sister Posey is desperate for magic, and that her shadowless and possibly soulless boyfriend has been keeping secrets from her. When a terrible figure from her past returns, Charlie descends back into a maelstrom of murder and lies. Determined to survive, she’s up against a cast of doppelgängers, mercurial billionaires, gloamists, and the people she loves best in the world — all trying to steal a secret that will allow them control of the shadow world and more.

Junkyard Blues by Scott Crowder

Stranded in a Starship Graveyard
Junkyard Blues is a sandbox scenario for M‑SPACE, set on a hostile world comprised of starship wrecks and strange artefacts.

Players take on the roles of stranded spacers and must venture across a vast starship graveyard to locate fuel – encountering strange aliens and desperate humans along the way.

Five factions are locked in deadly competition over basic resources – air, water and food. But cooperation might be the wisest choice.

Only a select few will be able to leave. Who stays and who goes?

Our Violent Ends by Chloe Gong

Shanghai is under siege in this captivating and searingly romantic sequel to These Violent Delights, which New York Times bestselling author Natasha Ngan calls ​“deliciously dark.”The year is 1927, and Shanghai teeters on the edge of revolution. After sacrificing her relationship with Roma to protect him from the blood feud, Juliette has been a girl on a mission. One wrong move, and her cousin will step in to usurp her place as the Scarlet Gang’s heir. The only way to save the boy she loves from the wrath of the Scarlets is to have him want her dead for murdering his best friend in cold blood. If Juliette were actually guilty of the crime Roma believes she committed, his rejection might sting less. Roma is still reeling from Marshall’s death, and his cousin Benedikt will barely speak to him. Roma knows it’s his fault for letting the ruthless Juliette back into his life, and he’s determined to set things right — even if that means killing the girl he hates and loves with equal measure. Then a new monstrous danger emerges in the city, and though secrets keep them apart, Juliette must secure Roma’s cooperation if they are to end this threat once and for all. Shanghai is already at a boiling point: The Nationalists are marching in, whispers of civil war brew louder every day, and gangster rule faces complete annihilation. Roma and Juliette must put aside their differences to combat monsters and politics, but they aren’t prepared for the biggest threat of all: protecting their hearts from each other. 

Twilight: 2000 Roleplaying in the World War III That Never Was by Tomas Härenstam, Chris Lites, Angus Abranson, Niklas Brant, Martin Grip, & Tobias Tranell 

A classic roleplaying game returns. This new retro-apocalyptic edition of Twilight: 2000 goes back to the roots of the franchise with open-world roleplaying in the devastation of World War III. Just like the original 1984 edition, this new game is set in a year 2000 devastated by war – now in an alternate timeline where the Soviet Union never collapsed.

Kundo Wakes Up by Saad Z. Hossain

A Companion to the Ignyte and Locus Award-Nominated novella The Gurkha and the Lord of TuesdayHundreds of miles away from the techno-utopia of Kathmandu, the all-powerful, all-seeing AI known as Karma has gone silent, leaving the dying city of Chittagong — along with all its remaining residents — to continue its inexorable fall into the sea.Kundo, once a famous artist with the Karma points to prove it, goes searching for his missing wife, only to uncover more inexplicable disapperances. And so Kundo and a group of motley companions embark on a tumultuous journey through an overwhelming maze made up of Chittagong’s neighborhoods, the hidden backrooms of video game parlors, and the depths of cyberspace, culminating in the realm of the djinn themselves, in search of love, redemption, and a good meal. 

The Thousand Eyes by A. K. Larkwood

The sequel to A. K. Larkwood’s stunning debut fantasy, The Unspoken Name. The Thousand Eyes continues The Serpent Gates series — perfect for fans of Jenn Lyons, Joe Abercrombie, and Ursula K. Le Guin.Two years ago, Csorwe and Shuthmili risked the anger of the wizard Belthandros Sethennai to gain their freedom. Now, they make their living exploring relic worlds of the ancient serpent empire of Echentyr. They think they’re prepared for anything — but when one of their expeditions releases an Echentyri soldier who has slept undisturbed since the fall of her homeland, they are thrown back into a conflict that has lain dormant for thousands of years. Shuthmili will give anything to protect the woman and the life that she loves, but as events spiral out of control, she is torn between clinging to her humanity and embracing her eldritch power. Meanwhile, Tal Charossa returns to Tlaanthothe to find that Sethennai has gone missing. Tal wants nothing to do with his old boss and former lover, so when a magical catastrophe befalls the city, Tal tries to run rather than face his past — but he soon learns that something even worse may lurk in the future. Throughout the worlds of the Echo Maze, fragments of an undead goddess begin to awaken, and not all confrontations can be put off forever …

Stars and Bones by Gareth L. Powell

A stunningly inventive action-packed science-fiction epic adventure for fans of Becky Chambers and Ann Leckie from the multi BSFA award-winner, Gareth L. Powell.Seventy-five years from today, the human race has been cast from a dying Earth to wander the stars in a vast fleet of arks — each shaped by its inhabitants into a diverse and fascinating new environment, with its own rules and eccentricities. When her sister disappears while responding to a mysterious alien distress call, Eryn insists on being part of the crew sent to look for her. What she discovers on Candidate-623 is both terrifying and deadly. When the threat follows her back to the fleet and people start dying, she is tasked with seeking out a legendary recluse who may just hold the key to humanity’s survival. Gareth L. Powell’s Embers of War won 2018 BSFA Award for Best Novel and was shortlisted for the 2019 Locus Awards and the 2021 Seiun Awards in Japan. Its sequels, Fleet of Knives and Light of Impossible Stars, were both shortlisted for the BSFA Award for Best Novel, and Fleet of Knives was also shortlisted for the 2020 Locus Awards.