James Nicoll Reviews

Gifted & Talented by Olivie Blake (April 2025)

Where there’s a will, there’s a war.

Thayer Wren, the brilliant CEO of Wrenfare Magitech and so-called father of modern technology, is dead. Any one of his three telepathically and electrokinetically gifted children would be a plausible inheritor to the Wrenfare throne.

Or at least, so they like to think.

Meredith, textbook accomplished eldest daughter and the head of her own groundbreaking biotech company, has recently cured mental illness. You’re welcome! If only her father’s fortune wasn’t her last hope for keeping her journalist ex-boyfriend from exposing what she really is: a total fraud.

Arthur, second-youngest congressman in history, fights the good fight every day of his life. And yet, his wife might be leaving him, and he’s losing his re-election campaign. But his dead father’s approval in the form of a seat on the Wrenfare throne might just turn his sinking ship around.

Eilidh, once the world’s most famous ballerina, has spent the last five years as a run-of-the-mill marketing executive at her father’s company after a life-altering injury put an end to her prodigious career. She might be lacking in accolades compared to her siblings, but if her father left her everything, it would finally validate her worth — by confirming she’d been his favorite all along. 

On the pipeline of gifted kid to clinically depressed adult, nobody wins — but which Wren will come out on top? 

The Sun Runners by James Bow (November 2024)

Lieutenant Adeheid Koning was only twenty-three when the Earth’s long fight against its environment ended in collapse and nuclear war. Earth’s sudden silence leaves the colonies of the inner solar system without life-lines, in various stages of self-sufficiency. Or, in Mercury’s case, not. To help her fellow stranded colonists of Mercury survive against starvation and a breakdown of order, Adelheid fights against some cold equations and makes some hard choices, ending up wearing an iron crown as queen of one of the rail cities of Mercury, constantly moving to stay ahead of the Sun. 

Fifty years later, Adelheid’s granddaughter Frieda is a seventeen-year-old princess who would rather be an engineer. Frieda’s life is shattered when a suspicious accident takes one of her arms-and is then turned upside-down when her mother dies from that accident. Frieda is left a young and vulnerable queen, locking horns with her grandmother, who is now regent and dowager. 

When the Earth makes contact again, after fifty years of silence, Frieda is eager to end Mercury’s isolation, but Adelheid is suspicious of the Earth’s sudden return, and wary of the other latitude towns’ desires to accept all that the Earth is offering, without question. 

With thousands of lives on the line, is it wise to hope for healing? Or are we forever defined by what we do in the dark? 

Tales from the Silence edited by James Bow (November 2024)

On August 4, 2151, the world will end.

It’s been a long time coming: climate disasters brewing conflict, conflict breeding chaos. But on that fateful day, someone will set off the nukes. On August 4, 2151, human civilization on Earth will fall silent.

There are survivors, of course-and not just on Earth. There are scientists on the Jovian moons. Miners in the asteroid belt. Thriving colonies on the surface of Mars and above the clouds of Venus. Far more precarious ones on Mercury. When the silence falls across human space, one thing is clear: Earth’s space-born children are on their own. No more supplies are coming. No more orders. No more meddling. No more help.

Set in the universe of James Bow’s new novel, The Sun Runners, Tales from the Silence is a gathering of award-winning science fiction, fantasy, and YA authors who explore the worlds the Earth left behind, as well as the Earth itself, as they struggle through Earth’s new dark age.

Join James Bow, Phoebe Barton, Kate Blair, Cameron Dixon, Mark Richard Francis, Jo Karaplis, Kari Maaren, Fiona Moore, Ira Nayman, Kate Orman, and Jeff Szpirglas as they tell the stories of what happens after the end of the world.

The River Has Roots by Amal El-Mohtar (March 2024)

“Oh what is stronger than a death? Two sisters singing with one breath.” 

In the small town of Thistleford, on the edge of Faerie, dwells the mysterious Hawthorn family.

There, they tend and harvest the enchanted willows and honour an ancient compact to sing to them in thanks for their magic. None more devotedly than the family’s latest daughters, Esther and Ysabel, who cherish each other as much as they cherish the ancient trees.

But when Esther rejects a forceful suitor in favor of a lover from the land of Faerie, not only the sisters’ bond but also their lives will be at risk… 

When the Tides Held the Moon by Venessa Vida Kelley (April 2025)

Benigno ​“Benny” Caldera knows an orphaned Boricua blacksmith in 1910s New York City can’t call himself an artist. But the ironwork tank he creates for famed Coney Island playground, Luna Park, astounds everyone, especially the eccentric side-show proprietor who commissioned it. Benny’s work earns him an invitation to join the show’s eclectic crew of performers — his first welcome in the city — and share in their astonishing secret: the tank Benny built is a cage for their newest exhibit, a living, breathing, in-the-flesh merman stolen from the banks of the East River under a gleaming full moon. 

The merman is more than a mythic marvel, though. Benny comes to know Río as a clever philosopher, an observant traveler, and a kindred spirit more beautiful and compassionate than any human he’s ever met. Despite their different worlds, what begins as a friendship of necessity deepens to love, leading Benny’s heart into uncharted waters where he can no longer ignore the agonizing truth of Río’s captivity — and his own. 

A cage is no place for a merman to survive. Though releasing Río means betraying his new family, bankrupting their home, and losing his soulmate forever, Benny must look within for the courage to do what’s right, and find a love strong enough to free them both. 

When the Tides Held the Moon is a beautifully illustrated novel with artwork throughout by Venessa Vida Kelley, known for her stunning romance and fantasy art. This novel includes two different full-color endpapers for front and back, fully-designed chapter headers, and twenty-six pieces of detailed illustrations throughout. 

Waterblack by Alex Pheby (January 2025)

The monumental conclusion to Alex Pheby’s Cities of the Weft trilogy.

One thousand million infants are dead, and Nathan Treeves is back. He’s become the Master of Waterblack, the City of the Dead.

And Sharli, once a sacrifice, then an assassin, is now a trained God-Killer. She has killed many — but failed in killing Nathan Treeves years ago.

Soon she, and the Women’s Vanguard, will have another chance, even as The Master, The Mistress and the Atheistic Crusade hurtle toward their final confrontation.

The world of Mordew returns in the epic conclusion to the Cities of the Weft trilogy. Welcome to Waterblack. 

Aunt Tigress by Emily Yu-Xuan Qin (March 2025)

From debut author Emily Yu-Xuan Qin comes a snarky urban fantasy novel inspired by Chinese and First Nation mythology and bursting with wit, compelling characters, and LGBTQIA+ representation

Readers of Seanan McGuire, Ilona Andrews, and Ben Aaronovitch will devour this gory story — and the sweet-as-Canadian-maple-syrup sapphic romance at its monstrous heart

Tam hasn’t eaten anyone in years. 

She is now Mama’s soft-spoken, vegan daughter — everything dangerous about her is cut out.

But when Tam’s estranged Aunt Tigress is found murdered and skinned, Tam inherits an undead fox in a shoebox, and an ensemble of old enemies. 

The demons, the ghosts, the gods running coffee shops by the river? Fine. The tentacled thing stalking Tam across the city? Absolutely not. And when Tam realizes the girl she’s falling in love with might be yet another loose end from her past? That’s just the brassy, beautiful cherry on top.

Because no matter how quietly she lives, Tam can’t hide from her voracious upbringing, nor the suffering she caused. As she navigates romance, redemption, and the end of the world, she can’t help but wonder…

Do monsters even deserve happy endings? 

With worldbuilding inspired by Chinese folklore and the Siksiká Nation in Canada, LGBTQIA+ representation, and a sapphic romance, Aunt Tigress is at once familiar and breathtakingly innovative. 

Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil by V. E. Schwab (June 2025)

Santo Domingo de la Calzada, 1532.

London, 1837.

Boston, 2019.

Three young women, their bodies planted in the same soil, their stories tangling like roots.

One grows high, and one grows deep, and one grows wild.

And all of them grow teeth.