James Nicoll Reviews

Once Was Willem by M. R. Carey (March 2025)

Presenting an enthrallingly dark medieval fantasy – a fable of twisted folklore, macabre magic and the strangest of found families – from M. R. Carey, author of the million-copy bestseller, The Girl With All the Gifts.

Eleven hundred and some years after the death of Christ, in the kingdom that had but recently begun to call itself England, I, Once Was Willem, rose from the dead to defeat a great evil facing the humble village of Cosham. The words enclosed herein are true.

I speak of monsters and magic, battle and bloodletting, and the crimes of desperate men. I speak also of secret things, of that which lies beneath us and that which impends above. By the time you come to the end of this account you will know the truth of your own life and death, the path laid out for your immortal soul, your origin and your inevitable end.

You will not thank me. 

Installment Immortality by Seanan McGuire (March 2025)

After four generations of caring for the Price family, Mary Dunlavy has more than earned a break from the ongoing war with the Covenant of St. George. Instead, what she’s getting is a new employer, in the form of the anima mundi, Earth’s living soul made manifest, and a new assignment: to hunt down the Covenant agents on the East Coast and make them stop imprisoning America’s ghosts.

All in a day’s work for a phantom nanny, even one who’d really rather be teaching her youngest charges how to read.

One ghost can’t take on the entire Covenant without backup, which is how she winds up on a road trip with the still-mourning Elsie and the slowly collapsing Arthur, both of whom are reeling in their own way from the loss of their mother. New allies and new enemies await in Worcester, Massachusetts, where the path of the haunting leads.

With the anima mundi demanding results and Mary’s newfound freedom at stake, it’s down to Mary to make sure that everyone gets out of this adventure alive.

It’s been a long afterlife, but Mary Dunlavy’s not ready to be exorcised quite yet. 

The Adventures of Mary Darling by Pat Murphy (May 2025)

Who is Mary Darling? In this subversive take on both Peter Pan and Sherlock Holmes, a daring mother is the populist hero the Victorian era never knew it needed.

“Murphy has a flair for description that brings every aspect of the setting vividly into focus.”
—SF Site

Mary Darling was the innocent young girl who was once kidnapped by Peter Pan. Mary is now the pretty wife whose boring husband is befuddled by her independent ways. But one fateful night, Mary becomes the distraught mother whose three children have gone missing from their beds. 

After her well-meaning uncle John Watson contacts the greatest detective of his era (but perhaps not that great), Mary is Sherlock Holmes’s prime suspect in her children’s disappearance. To save her family, Mary must escape London — and an attempt to have her locked away as mad — to travel halfway around the world. 

Despite the interference of Holmes, Mary gathers allies in her quest: Sam, a Solomon Islander whose village was destroyed by contact with Western civilization; Ruby, a Malagasy woman on an island that everyone thinks is run by pirates (though it’s actually run by women); Captain Hook and the crew of the Jolly Roger; and of course, Nana, the faithful dog and nursemaid. 

In a witty and adventurous romp, The Adventures of Mary Darling draws on the histories of women and people indigenous to lands that Britain claimed, telling the stories of those who were ignored or misrepresented along the way. 

Paths of Glory by Roger Undhagen, Tomas Härenstam, Svante Landgraf, and Mattias Johnsson Haake (November 2024)

Coming to the legendary Dead Forest in search of treasure, glory and a solution to the ancient curse laying waste to the forest, the adventurers soon find themselves embroiled in an epic conflict reaching back to the very foundations of the world. The quest will take the adventurers through the depths of the forest, under the mountain, and into a strange new land where the fate of the world will be determined.

Path of Glory was the first major adventure campaign released for the original Swedish edition of the Dragonbane RPG (Drakar och Demoner), in three installments during 1985 and 1986: The Dead Forest, Gates of Power, and Heart of Darkness. This new edition, reimagined and updated by Free League and the original author Roger Undhagen, collects the trilogy in a single volume.

This full-color, hardback edition has been given completely new illustrations by David Brasgalla and new cover art by Johan Egerkrans. The rules are fully updated to the latest edition of Dragonbane, and the book includes a large, double-sided map in format 432x558mm painted by Francesca Baerald.

Don’t Sleep with the Dead by Nghi Vo (April 2025)

Nick Carraway―paper soldier and novelist―has found a life and a living watching the mad magical spectacle of New York high society in the late thirties. He’s good at watching, and he’s even better at pretending: pretending to be straight, pretending to be human, pretending he’s forgotten the events of that summer in 1922.

On the eve of the second World War, however, Nick learns that someone’s been watching him pretend and that memory goes both ways. When he sees a familiar face at a club one night, it quickly becomes clear that dead or not, damned or not, Jay Gatsby isn’t done with him.

In all paper there is memory, and Nick’s ghost has come home.