James Nicoll Reviews

2021’s The Cannonball Tree is the fifth installment in Ovidia Yu’s Crown Colony mystery series.

1944: The triumphant Japanese Empire has crushed all opposition. The Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere will surely be eternal. Alarming military setbacks are impossible.

Or so Singapore’s Japanese occupiers would assert. Despite best efforts to censor news, rumors persist that the Pacific War is not going well for Japan. The occupiers focus on local affairs and ignore wider developments.

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1979’s Destinies Aug – Sept ​’79 is the fourth issue of the first volume of Destinies, the ​“paperback magazine of science fiction and speculative fact”¹. Destinies was edited by Jim Baen, who is credited as James Baen on the cover and James Patrick Baen within.

Honestly, I thought I would have reviewed more issues of Destinies by now.

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Ann Liang’s 2024 A Song to Drown Rivers is a stand-alone historical novel.

Cruel Wu has subjugated noble Yue. Wu soldiers massacred the helpless people of Yue. Among the victims is Xishi’s beloved younger sister Susu. Xishi is filled with hatred towards the Wu.

Xishi is also a peerless beauty. Royal advisor Fanli believes Xishi’s beauty and her loathing of Wu will make Xishi into Yue’s greatest weapon.

But first! A word about the Spring and Autumn period.

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Colin Dunn’s 2021 2300 AD is an expansion of Mongoose Publishing’s current edition of Traveller. It is also the fifth version of the venerable near-future tabletop roleplaying game 2300 AD¹. The 1988 edition was reviewed here. Note that as this is an expansion for Traveller, you will need the Traveller core rules to use this set.

This review is brought by power of affordable bundles of holding and also spite².

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Masaoki Shindo’s RuriDragon (Japanese: ルリドラゴン, Hepburn: Ruridoragon) is a Japanese modern-day manga series. Originally a one-shot published in Shueisha’s Jump Giga magazine in December 2020, RuriDragon has been serialized in Weekly Shōnen Jump starting in June 2022. Currently, installments appear on the Viz site.

In the previous volume, half-dragon Ruri Aoki was genteelly blackmailed into joining a school committee. Ruri was surprised and a bit alarmed to discover that she had been paired with the blonde girl who openly dislikes Ruri. What possible cause could the girl (whose name Ruri couldn’t be bothered to remember) have for disliking Ruri? More importantly, how will learning the girl’s name affect slacker Ruri’s future actions?

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2010’s A Most Improper Magick is the first volume in Stephanie Burgis’ middle-grade Kat, Incorrigible historical fantasy series. The 2011 US printing retitled the novel with the series name: Kat, Incorrigible.

Hoping to save her oldest sister Elisse from an unfortunate marriage, fourteen-year-old Kat Stephenson embarks on a bold venture to find her fortune as a boy. She makes it almost to the end of the family garden before being foiled by observant Elisse.

How, then, to save Elisse?

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John Wyndham’s 1959 The Outward Urge is a collection of short stories detailing the exciting and often fatal adventures of the Troon family… IN SPACE!

Although the collection was originally billed at being by both Lucas Parkes and John Wyndham, I have decided Parkes does not warrant a byline because…

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Minsoo Kang’s 2024 The Melancholy of Untold History is a secondary-universe history… of sorts.

What, if anything, do a doomed storyteller, four angry gods, and a heartbroken historian, have to do with each other?

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2015’s The Just City is the first volume in Jo Walton’s Thessaly trilogy.

Astonished to discover that some of the women who flee from him flee because they most sincerely do not want to have sex with him, the god Apollo partakes in a social experiment with his wiser sister Athene. They will set up Plato’s Just City and see how it plays out.

Athene prudently remains a god. Apollo, wanting to better understand the human condition, willingly becomes a mortal for the duration of a lifetime.

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2015’s Usotoki Rhetoric Volume 6 is the sixth tankōbon in Ritsu Miyako’s historical mystery manga series. Usotoki Rhetoric was published in Bessatsu Hana to Yume from June 26, 2012, to March 26, 2018. The English translation of Volume 6 was published in 2024.

Private detective Iwai Soma and his young assistant Kanako Urabe have settled into a comfortable partnership. He provides the deductive and inductive skills needed to solve mysteries. Urabe is a living lie detector, on top of which she prods the otherwise indolent Iwai to find work and pay the bills.

This arrangement is upended.

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