James Nicoll Reviews

2017’s In Other Lands is a standalone young adult novel by Sarah Rees Brennan. 

Abandoned by his birth mother, raised by his emotionally detached dad, and subjected to incessant bullying at school, thirteen-year-old Elliott does not have much to tie him to the mundane world. When he is offered a spot at school in the until-now-unknown-to-Elliott magical realm known as the Borderlands, he has no reason to say no.

Elliott may expect Hogwarts. What he gets is a place where modern conveniences do not work and nobody is taught interesting spells. This school is a boot camp designed to transform the naïve youths of today into the Border Guard of tomorrow. One consolation: Elliott now has ample excuse to display his skills at bitter sarcasm and complaint. 

Read more ➤

2015’s standalone futuristic sports story Zeroboxer was Fonda Lee’s debut novel. 

Zero gravity boxing — zeroboxing — provided Carr ​“the Raptor” Luka with his ticket out of Toronto and up into orbit, where the best people live. It’s a brutal sport — but for the handful who claw their way to the top, it can be lucrative. Despite his youth, Carr is a promising boxer, promising enough that respected impresario Gant offers Carr a contract. With luck and the right handler, Carr could become one of the luminaries of the Zero Gravity Fighting Association. 

Pity that Carr’s success is based on a lie.

Read more ➤

2015’s The Thing Itself is a standalone novel by Adam Roberts.

Perhaps in another trouser-leg of time, Charles Gardner’s Antarctic sojourn with fellow researcher Roy Curtius ended with professional accolades all round. In the timeline related in this novel, Gardner and Curtius not only failed to provide the world with tangible evidence of SETI, but Curtius went mad and Gardner only narrowly survived the murder attempt that followed.

A traumatized and scarred Gardner spent the next few decades tumbling down the ladder of British society, only coming to rest when there was nowhere else to fall. Obscurity and an unremarked death seemed all that was left to the alcoholic, abrasive former scientist. 

The researchers at an obscure Institute are convinced that Curtius holds the key to their ambitious research. They believe that Gardner can provide them with the leverage to render Curtius, long consigned to an institution for the criminally insane, tractable. Why bother? They are sure that Curtius holds the key to understanding the true reality behind the reality we perceive. 

Read more ➤

1962’s Hugo-winning Hothouse is a standalone SF novel by Brian Aldiss.

In a distant future, the Earth is tide-locked to the Sun, while the Moon has retreated to one of the Earth-Sun Lagrange points.On the illuminated side of Earth, a vast banyan tree dominates the land. In this overheated world, voracious plants dominate. Only four groups of insects still exist on the banyan-dominated land: wasps, bees, ants and termites. All other animals are extinct.

All, save for the stunted, degenerate descendants of humanity.

Read more ➤

To quote Becka Kinzie’s site:

Hello, I’m a freelance artist from the K‑W Region. I’ve also been working as a colour flatter and colouring assistant since the early 2010s. In my spare time, I create my own macabre series of comics, which are posted online. The pages are eventually made into comic book issues, and so far I have self-published 15 of them (for sale at events/conventions).

Kenzie’s first webcomic, Cadaverific, ran from 2008 to 2014.

Corey Bowman’s story should have ended the night the night he died. A minor altercation between Corey and a low-rent acquaintance ended in Corey’s accidental death. Yes, the story should have ended there, but it didn’t. Corey’s cousin J. P. just happened to have come into possession of a monkey’s paw — sorry, the Monkey’s Paw — and in an idle moment of grief, wished Corey was back among his friends.

J. P. was nowhere near specific enough about his wish.

Read more ➤

Was learning that the reason DreamHost (which hosts James Nicoll Reviews) was targeted for DDOS attack is because they decided to host the Daily Stormer, an American neo-Nazi and white supremacist news and commentary website. My site will be moving. Until it has been moved, I won’t be posting updates here. I will go back to posting reviews on DW.

Read more ➤

Taiyo Fujii’s Gene Mapper is a standalone futuristic thriller, first self-published in 2012. The 2015 English translation is by Jim Hubbert.

The great red-rust blight was a tragedy for the ten million Asians who starved to death as a result. For companies like L&B, it was an opportunity to replace unreliable natural crops with their carefully designed and wholly owned commercial seed. L&B promises a reliable food supply and security from famine to the world’s twelve billion people.

At least, that’s the plan.

Read more ➤

Eileen Dunlop’s 1982 The Maze Stone is a standalone juvenile fantasy.

Fanny Mowbray’s reunion with her birth father Dr. Mowbray might have been cause for celebration, if the reason for the reunion had not been the sudden death of Fanny’s grandmother (the woman who had raised her). Fanny is too grief-stricken to have any energy, or will, to revive her ties with her father or build new ones with her stepmother Mrs. Mowbray or her stepsister Hester.

An old mystery will bring the two teens together.

Read more ➤

2017’s White Trash Zombie Unchained is the sixth volume in Diana Rowland’s White Trash Zombie series.

After taking a few months off to collect herself after the events of White Trash Zombie Gone Wild, Angel Crawford is very nearly her old brain-eating self. Dividing her time between work at the Saint Edwards Parish Coroner’s Office and college bio classes, she studiously avoids alone time with her ex, Nick, for whom she still carries a torch.

In this instalment, Angel is given an excellent distraction from hunky Nick. Too bad that the distraction is an apocalypse.

Read more ➤

1980’s The Keeper of the Isis Light is the first volume in Monica Hughes’ Isis Trilogy.

Olwen Pendennis has been the keeper of the Isis FTL beacon ever since she was an infant, an infant orphaned by calamity on distant Isis. For her, life with no human companions is perfectly normal. After all, she has her wise robot Guardian to advise and keep watch over her, her amiable but formidable-looking Hairy Dragon Hobbit for company, and an entire planet to call her own.

On her tenth birthday — sixteenth by Earth years — her life changes forever. 

Read more ➤