James Nicoll Reviews

Home > Reviews > By Date

Reviews from June 2019 (21)

Every Single Day

The Continuous Katherine Mortenhoe

By D. G. Compton  

16 Jun, 2019

Because My Tears Are Delicious To You

2 comments


D. G. Compton’s 1974 The Continuous Katherine Mortenhoe (also published as The Unsleeping Eye) is a near-future SF novel. 

Katherine Mortenhoe is a forty-four-year-old woman whose computer skills have won her a minor niche in publishing. She’s settled for a humdrum marriage that is only marginally superior to solitude. She has led an unremarkable life. 

She learns that she has just four weeks to live. In the world of this novel, premature death is extremely rare, She has become a valuable media commodity. 


Read more ➤

Catch Me As I Fall

The Falling Woman

By Pat Murphy  

14 Jun, 2019

Big Hair, Big Guns!

3 comments

1986’s The Falling Woman is a standalone Nebula-Award-winning fantasy by Pat Murphy. 

Elizabeth Waters has escaped unwanted motherhood and a stultifying marriage at great cost to herself. Her reward: a career as a field archaeologist. Elizabeth is a valuable colleague at any dig because she seems to have a sixth sense for promising sites. 

This is because she has a literal sixth sense. She sees the shades of the dead. The ghosts of the past guide her. 


Read more ➤

Who Planted Thorns

Mushishi, volume 1

By Yuki Urushibara  

14 Jun, 2019

Translation

1 comment

Mushishi, Volume One collects the first five issues of Yuki Urushibara’s manga of the same title. 

Ginko’s Japan hosts all the familiar life Kingdoms: plants, animals, and fungi. Alongside these familiar lifeforms there exists a much older, more primitive biota that human senses are ill suited to detect. These lifeforms are collectively known as the mushi. Ginko is one of the few people who can detect mushi. He has used this to become an expert in their ways, a mushi-shi. 


Read more ➤

Does Anybody Hear Me

The Girl From The Well

By Rin Chupeco  

13 Jun, 2019

Doing What the WFC Cannot Do

1 comment

Rin Chupeco’s 2014 The Girl From the Well is a horror novel. 

In the centuries since her lord betrayed and murdered her, Okiku has never found the peace that would allow her to leave this mundane world. She cannot take revenge on the men who tossed her down a well; they’re all dead. Consumed by a fury she can never slake, Okiku has turned her anger in another direction. She wanders the Earth, killing those who murder children. 


Read more ➤

Eye for an Eye

The Kingdom of Copper  (Daevabad, volume 2)

By S A Chakraborty  

12 Jun, 2019

Special Requests

1 comment

2019’s The Kingdom of Copper is the second volume in S. A. Chakraborty’s Daevabad Trilogy. 

Nahri escaped her life as a confidence agent in French-and-Turkish occupied Cairo with a few, well-chosen words. Or rather, by accidentally summoning a djinn during a faked exorcism. The djinn Dara whisked Nahri off to Daevabad, the city of the djinn, where she was soon entangled in cut-throat court politics. Nahri is, it seems, the last remaining person with a blood tie to the previous dynasty, the Nahids. 

Her mere existence threatens the current ruler, Ghassan. Ghassan attempts to defuse the threat by marrying Nahri to his loyal, if dissolute, son Muntadhir. 


Read more ➤

Gone, Gone, Gone Away

The Ghost Bride

By Yangsze Choo  

7 Jun, 2019

Doing What the WFC Cannot Do

3 comments

Yangsze Choo’s 2013 The Ghost Bride is a standalone novel of the supernatural. 

Li Lan is the only child of a respectable Chinese family in colonial Malaysia. When the novel takes place, the British control Malacca (having taken it from the Dutch, who in turn had taken it from Portugal). The region’s colonial rulers are a fact of life, but one that is of little relevance to Li Lan’s daily life. 

That life is difficult. Her mother died of smallpox. Her father survived, but with scars, inside and out. He has retreated to his study, where he smokes opium and engages in aimless scholarly pursuits. He is squandering the family fortune. 

Li Lan, as the child of a well-to-do family, should have been financially secure; her family should be attempting to arrange a marriage with a young man of good family. She is neither secure nor betrothed. When her father does entertain a marriage offer, the groom is problematic. Lim Tian Ching is a scion of the well-to-do Lim family. It’s just that he’s dead. 


Read more ➤

Serve Someone

Black Butler, volume 1

By Yana Toboso  

5 Jun, 2019

Translation

4 comments

Yana Toboso’s ongoing manga Black Butler (Kuroshitsuji) debuted in 2006. Volume One collects the first four issues. 

Gloomy twelve-year-old Ceil Phantomhive is an orphan and a tween. He is also a canny businessman: he has guided the family business, Funtom Company, towards domination of the game and candy industries. 

Business success has not lifted his profound depression. He never smiles. Nonetheless his fiancée Elizabeth Midford (a fiancée at twelve?) and his servants adore him. 


Read more ➤

To Get What I Want

Crisis on Infinite Earths

By Marv Wolfman & George Pérez  

4 Jun, 2019

Big Hair, Big Guns!

3 comments

Crisis on Infinite Earthswas a twelve-issue miniseries from DC Comics1 published from 1985 to 1986. It was written by Marv Wolfman, and pencilled by George Pérez2.

There are many versions of the Earth, each with their own histories. The superheroes of Earth One made contact with their counterparts on Earth Two an indeterminate time ago. In what almost seemed to have become an annual tradition, Earth One’s Justice League periodically teamed up with Earth Two’s Justice Society to deal with crises affecting both worlds. 

Now there is a crisis affecting not just Earth One, and Earth Two, but all the worlds. 

Read more ➤

To Fall Down At Your Door

Walking to Aldebaran

By Adrian Tchaikovsky  

3 Jun, 2019

Space Opera That Doesn't Suck

0 comments

Adrian Tchaikovsky’s Walking to Aldebaran is a standalone science fiction novella. 

Lucky Gary Rendell has realized his childhood dream of being an astronaut! Even better, what was thought to be Planet Nine has turned out to be an enigmatic alien artifact and Gary has been assigned to the joint mission dispatched to examine the massive structure. 

Marvels wait inside. 


Read more ➤