James Nicoll Reviews

2015’s The Flux is the second volume in Ferrett Steinmetz’s ​‘Mancer trilogy. 

Paul Tsabo has a remarkable talent for tracking down ​‘Mancers, the magic users whose talents make them Public Enemy Number One. That’s why he’s serving on New York City’s anti-’Mancer task force. True, lately his hit rate has been off a little, but that is not because he has lost his edge. It’s because he lost his enthusiasm for hunting ​‘Mancers when he realized that he himself is a ​‘Mancer.

As is his beloved daughter Aliyah. 

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David Gerrold’s 1973 non-fiction book The Trouble with Tribbles may be the only SF-related biography I own whose subject is not a person but a story. By 1973, Star Trek novelizations and tie-ins were nothing new. Blish was credited with seven eight collections of Trek adaptations¹, as well as the tie-in Spock Must Die! And then there was Mack Reynolds’ obscure Mission to Horatius. Gerrold’s book was something else. Let the subtitle speak for itself:

The Birth, Sale, and Final Production of One Episode.

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Samuel R. Delany’s 1988 The Motion of Light in Water: Sex and Science Fiction Writing in the East Village, 1957 – 1965 is a Hugo-winning autobiography. The narrative covers the period from the death of his father (when Delany was still a young man) to the point when his career was just starting to take off. He had not yet written the majority of the works for which he is best known. 

One might ask why I, a humble middle-brow reviewer, was tapped to review this. I am wondering that myself. 

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Tanith Lee’s 2005 Metallic Love is a sequel to her 1981 novel The Silver Metal Lover.

The infant Loren is abandoned to an oppressive religious cult. Years later, just when she is starting to question the cult, she stumbles across an illicit copy of Jane’s Story, the first hand account of the doomed romance between Jane and Silver (the work we know as The Silver Metal Lover). The romantic tale strikes a chord with Loren. When she flees the cult, she takes her copy of the book with her.

How could she foresee that she would someday encounter Silver herself? Or rather, encounter what Silver has become?

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2002’s Volume One of Kozue Amano’s Aria picks up where Volume Two of her Aqua left off. Akari Mizunashi is still a would-be Undine on Aqua (a renamed Mars, after human terraforming efforts tapped unsuspected reserves of water). She is still recounting her adventures in a series of letters sent back to a friend on distant Earth. 

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Ferrett Steinmetz’ debut novel Flex is the first volume in his ​‘Mancer trilogy. 

The good news is that magic is so easy any idiot can try their hand at it. The bad news is that a lot of idiots do, which is why Europe is a howling wasteland of reality holes and why the authorities react to magical outbreaks with overwhelming force. 

Rewriting reality always comes at a cost … but it’s not just the ​‘Mancers who have to pay. Former cop turned investigator Paul Tsabo and his daughter Aliya survived a magically triggered gas-main explosion that left young Aliya horribly burned. Reconstructive surgery will cost a half million dollars ¹, which insurance company Samaritan Mutual is loath to pay. 

Lucky for Aliya, her father is a bureaucrat par excellence. In fact, he is one of Samaritan’s own, using his obsession with paperwork to track down rogue ​‘Mancers. Less luckily for Aliya, obsession is the stuff of magic. Paul isn’t just a bureaucrat. He is a full-fledged bureaucromancer. Paul is afraid it might have been the backlash from his own magic that set off the gas main. 

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Every year, Kitchener descends into the beer-fueled riot that is Oktoberfest. Usually I kvetch at the multitude of inconvenient incidents precipitated by one million drunken tourists. (Kitchenerites, of course, can handle their beer.) This year I decided to embrace the abyss. I will review a book about beer. Which one? Tim Power’s 1979 standalone fantasy, The Drawing of the Dark.

Things are looking grim for the West. One by one, Christendom’s strongholds have fallen to S uleiman the Magnificent’s armies. Irish mercenary Brian Duffy, having narrowly surviving the Battle of Mohács, has turned his back on war and settled in Venice. Years later, it seems that Venice too is threatened. When Duffy is offered a job as bouncer in distant Vienna, he is quick to accept.

Duffy’s timing is a bit off. The year is 1529. Vienna is the next stop on Suleiman’s European tour. Even as Duffy makes his way across the Alps, Suleiman and Grand Vizier Ibrahim are even now considering how to conquer the city of Vienna.

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For all my twitterings about books by women, my library has some major gaps. For example, almost of all of my books on spaceflight are by men. Almost all. I was delighted to find that my library had a copy of Amy Shira Teitel’s Breaking the Chains of Gravity: The Story of Space Flight before NASA , a copythat I had not even read .

Before I launch (heh!) into the review proper, I should point out that the subtitle is a misnomer. This is not the story of space flight before NASA but (as the author acknowledges) a story of space flight before NASA. Whose story? Here’s a hint. 

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2003’s Venus Preserved is the fourth and final volume in Tanith Lee’s Secret Books of Venus.

Lost beneath rising seas, Venus was resurrected as a submarine city, safe within its impenetrable dome. Not satisfied with granting apartments to those who can prove descent from former inhabitants of Venus, the brilliant minds behind Venus have turned to a bold stratagem to repopulate the city: 

Resurrect the dead! 

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The second collected volume of Kozue Amano’s Aqua was also the second and final volume under that title. In 2002, the series moved from Monthly Stencil to Comic Blade and the title became Aria.

Unfortunately, the only versions of volume two I can access leave out two of the six chapters. James has a sad. 

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