James Nicoll Reviews

Sydney J. Van Scyoc’s 1976 Starmother is a standalone science fiction novel.

Cadet Jahna Swiss, of the Peace Service Corps, is astounded when she is pulled from her classes and dispatched to spend two years on Nedling, where she is to tend mutant children. Playing nanny falls well outside the traditional duties of the Peace Service.

Her first impression of Nedling is not promising. 

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2012’s The Apocalypse Ocean is the fourth volume in Tobias S. Buckell’s Xenowealth series¹.

Bred by the alien Nesaru to manage other human slaves, Kay survived the slaughter that ensued when humans liberated Nesaru-dominated Okur. As the book opens, Kay has found her way through the wormhole network to backwater Placa del Fuego, where the determined sixteen-year-old set out to conquer the world. Or at least the underworld. 

There is a small sticking point: the Doaq.

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K.B. Spangler’s 2021 coming-of-age space opera The Blackwing War is the first book in her Deep Witches Trilogy. It is set in the same universe as Spangler’s 2017 Stoneskin.

Tembi Stoneskin was rescued from abject poverty when the Deep, the vast, enigmatic entity that facilitates transgalactic teleportation, took a shine to her. As long as the Deep retains its affection for Tembi, she will be an ageless Witch, stepping from world to world as it pleases her. There is little chance Tembi will alienate the Deep. 

There is, however, every chance she will alienate her superiors in the Witch hierarchy. Youthful Tembi is that most dreaded of beings, an idealist. 

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Natsuki Takaya’s Fruits Basket (Japanese: フルーツバスケット, Hepburn: Furūtsu Basuketto) is a modern fantasy manga. Serialized in the semi-monthly Japanese shōjo manga magazine Hana to Yume, it ran from 1998 to 2006. Volume One contains the first six issues.

High school student Tohru Honda will not let circumstances get her down. True, her father died a long time ago. True, her mother recently died. True, the girl appears to have no contact with her long-dead father’s relatives, while her mother’s kin mostly despise the girl. But at least Tohru’s grandfather is willing to offer her refuge! 

At least her grandfather was until his home needed renovating. Until the renovations are finished, Tohru will have to fend for herself. Tohru would never dream of inconveniencing a friend. Thus her tent in the woods.

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2018’s The Consuming Fire is the middle volume in John Scalzi’s Interdependency trilogy. 

Faced with the impeding collapse of the Flow, the phenomena that facilitates the faster-than-light travel on which all the worlds of the Interdependency rely, Cardenia Wu-Patrick AKA Emperox Grayland II is determined to urge her subjects to recognize the impending crisis and consider ways to mitigate it. To this end, she uses her status as church figurehead to begin uttering prophecies of the Doom Which Is to Come. 

This succeeds in convincing a number of powerful people that Grayland II is quite mad.

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Premee Mohamed’s 2021 These Lifeless Things is a near-future cosmic horror novella.

Eva is fortunate enough to witness humanity’s first contact with otherworldly intelligences. More exactly, she is part of the very small fraction of the human population to survive Them.

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1979’s Thieves’ World is the first volume in Robert Asprin and Lynn Abbey’s shared-universe anthology series. 

Sanctuary: city of adventure! Or to put it another way, Sanctuary: cash-strapped pest-hole to which refugees, riff-raff, and rogues swarm, hoping that an empire uninterested in backwater cities will overlook them. Once a crucial destination along a challenging trade route, Sanctuary’s economy was kneecapped when trade routes changed. Inexorable decline set in. Tragic for the locals who cannot move away but an opportunity for others. 

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1987’s Swordspoint is the first novel in Ellen Kushner’s secondary-universe melodrama-of-manners Riverside series. 

Richard St. Vier ventures out of disreputable Riverside into the fashionable Hill to kill … but only when he has a contract. The aristocrats who call the Hill home have a taste for lethal arguments over points of honour. When they do not feel up to the task of gentlemanly murder, they employ professional duelists like St. Vier to fight in their stead. Everyone wins! Except for the losers, who are too dead to care. 

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Everina Maxwell’s 2021 Winter’s Orbit is a space opera. 

Prince Kiem has a well-established character … one such that his grandmother the Emperor has never entrusted Kiem with tasks of any consequence. But circumstances have forced the Emperor’s hand. Kiem finds himself saddled with unrequested responsibility, in the form of an arranged marriage.

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2019’s Mörk Borg (Dark Fort) is a dark fantasy tabletop roleplaying game. Original text, ideas and game design are by Pelle Nilsson; graphic design and artwork by Johan Nohr; English writing and creative consultation are by Patrick Stuart. 

The world may have dwindled down to a gloomy island from which escape is impossible, but at least everyone is doomed. Unfortunately for the player characters, they have not died — yet. Although there is every chance they will. So, there is that to look forward to.

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