James Nicoll Reviews

Rubicon by J. S. Dewes (March 2023)

J. S. Dewes, author of The Last Watch and The Exiled Fleet, returns with another science fiction space opera, Rubicon, that melds elements of Scalzi’s Old Man’s War with Edge of Tomorrow. 

Sergeant Adrienne Valero wants to die. 

She can’t.

After enduring a traumatic resurrection for the ninety-sixth time, Valero is reassigned to a special forces unit and outfitted with a cutting-edge virtual intelligence aid. They could turn the tide in the war against intelligent machines dedicated to the assimilation, or destruction, of humanity. 

When her VI suddenly achieves sentience, Valero is drawn into the machinations of an enigmatic major who’s hell-bent on ending the war―by any means necessary. 

Episode Thirteen by Craig Dilouie (January 2023)

From the macabre mind of Bram Stoker Award nominated author Craig DiLouie, Episode Thirteen is a heart pounding novel of horror and psychological suspense that takes a ghost hunting reality TV crew into a world they could never have imagined possible. 

“A beautiful Russian doll of a story… Episode Thirteen hooks you, creeps you out, and then it overwhelms you. It’s House of Leaves meets Haunting of Hill House, in all the best possible ways.” — Peter Clines, NYT bestselling author of The Broken Room 

Fade to Black is the newest hit ghost hunting reality TV show. Led by husband and wife team Matt and Claire Kirklin, it delivers weekly hauntings investigated by a dedicated team of ghost hunting experts.

Episode Thirteen takes them to every ghost hunter’s holy grail: the Paranormal Research Foundation. This brooding, derelict mansion holds secrets and clues about bizarre experiments that took place there in the 1970s. It’s also famously haunted, and the team hopes their scientific techniques and high tech gear will prove it. 

But as the house begins to reveal itself to them, proof of an afterlife might not be everything Matt dreamed of.

A story told in broken pieces, in tapes, journals, and correspondence, this is the story of Episode Thirteen — and how everything went terribly, horribly wrong. 

The Cage of Dark Hours by Marina Lostetter (February 2023)

The Cage of Dark Hours is the second novel in the epic fantasy trilogy from acclaimed author Marina Lostetter, where the defeat of a serial killer back from the dead has pulled the mask off the myths and magics of a fantastical city. 

Krona and her Regulators survived their encounter with Charbon, the long-dead serial killer who returned to their city, but the illusions of their world were shattered forever. 

Allied with an old friend they will battle the elite who have ruled their world with deception, cold steel, and tight control of the magic that could threaten their power, while also confronting beasts from beyond the foggy barrier that binds their world. 

Now they must follow every thread to uncover the truth behind the Thalo, once thought of as only a children’s tale, who are the quiet, creeping puppet masters of their world. 

Lost in the Moment and Found by Seanan McGuire (April 2023)

A young girl discovers an infinite variety of worlds in this standalone tale in the Hugo and Nebula Award-wining Wayward Children series from Seanan McGuire, Lost in the Moment and Found. 

Welcome to the Shop Where the Lost Things Go. 

If you ever lost a sock, you’ll find it here.
If you ever wondered about favorite toy from childhood… it’s probably sitting on a shelf in the back.
And the headphones that you swore that this time you’d keep safe? You guessed it…. 

Antoinette has lost her father. Metaphorically. He’s not in the shop, and she’ll never see him again. But when Antsy finds herself lost (literally, this time), she finds that however many doors open for her, leaving the Shop for good might not be as simple as it sounds. 

And stepping through those doors exacts a price. 

Lost in the Moment and Found tells us that childhood and innocence, once lost, can never be found. 

The Magician’s Daughter by H. G. Parry (February 2023)

A young woman raised on an isolated island by a magician discovers things aren’t as they seem and must venture into early 1900s England to return magic to the world in this lush and lyrical historical fantasy. 

Off the coast of Ireland sits a legendary island hidden by magic. A place of ruins and ancient trees, sea-salt air and fairy lore, Hy-Brasil is the only home Biddy has ever known. Washed up on its shore as a baby, Biddy lives a quiet life with her guardian, the mercurial magician Rowan. A life she finds increasingly stifling.

One night, Rowan fails to return from his mysterious travels. To find him, Biddy must venture into the outside world for the first time. But Rowan has powerful enemies — forces who have hoarded the world’s magic and have set their sights on the magician’s many secrets.

Biddy may be the key to stopping them. Yet the closer she gets to answers, the more she questions everything she’s ever believed about Rowan, her past, and the nature of magic itself.

Some Desperate Glory by Emily Tesh (April 2023)

A thrillingly told queer space opera about the wreckage of war, the family you find, and who you must become when every choice is stripped from you, Some Desperate Glory is Astounding Award Winner and Crawford Award Finalist Emily Tesh’s highly anticipated debut novel. 

“Masterful, audacious storytelling. Relentless, unsentimental, a completely wild ride.”―Tamsyn Muir 

While we live, the enemy shall fear us. 

Since she was born, Kyr has trained for the day she can avenge the murder of planet Earth. Raised in the bowels of Gaea Station alongside the last scraps of humanity, she readies herself to face the Wisdom, the powerful, reality-shaping weapon that gave the majoda their victory over humanity. 

They are what’s left. They are what must survive. Kyr is one of the best warriors of her generation, the sword of a dead planet. When Command assigns her brother to certain death and relegates her to Nursery to bear sons until she dies trying, she knows must take humanity’s revenge into her own hands. 

Alongside her brother’s brilliant but seditious friend and a lonely, captive alien, Kyr escapes from everything she’s known into a universe far more complicated than she was taught and far more wondrous than she could have imagined.