James Nicoll Reviews

Inio Asano’s Dead Dead Demon’s Dededede Destruction (Japanese: Deddo Deddo Dēmonzu Dededededesutorakushon) is a science fiction manga. It has been serialized in Shogakukan’s seinen manga magazine Big Comic Spirits since April 2014. 

High schoolers Koyama Kadode and Nakagawa ​“Ontan” Ouran are best friends. Being a high schooler cramming for university entrance exams is troublesome at the best of times, so the whole alien invasion thing is an unnecessary complication to already problematic adolescence. 

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Bring Up the Bodies is the second volume in Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall historical fiction series. 

Anne Boleyn has triumphed. Despite the fact that Henry VIII’s wife Katherine is still alive and that current canon law offers few plausible legal paths to divorce, Anne is now Henry’s queen. Many of the authorities in European Christendom do not admit the legality of the arrangement. Thanks to the hard work of professional sycophants like Thomas Cromwell, and executioners eager to deal with naysayers, England’s do. That’s enough for Anne. 

At least for the moment. 

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Peter S. Beagle’s 1960 A Fine and Private Place is a standalone modern fantasy. 

To paraphrase Dickens, Michael Morgan was dead. There is no doubt whatever about that. The register of his burial was signed by the appropriate authorities. Michael was as dead as a door-nail.

But Michael Morgan was not quite gone.

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Cassandra Khaw’s Nothing but Blackened Teeth is a standalone ghost story.

Phillip has money, lots and lots of money. When he decides to treat his friends to a lavish getaway, he doesn’t just book them into a five-star holiday resort. Instead, he pulls strings to get access to Heian-era mansion. 

Because Phillip has more money than he knows what to do with, the mansion he selects is, of course, haunted. Because what could go wrong with a quiet weekend out in the woods in a haunted mansion?

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Megan E. O’Keefe’s 2021 The First Omega is a standalone dystopian novella. 

Unchecked climate change has transformed once verdant lands along Route 66 into parched deserts, driving refugees to the coasts and north to tropical Canada. But mere catastrophe can’t prevent multinational giant Pac-At from prospering. Its vehicles crisscross what’s left of formerly settled lands.

Bandit gangs once saw Pac-At transport vehicles as easy prey. No more. Pac-At has an cure for land pirates. The cure is called Riley.

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Hayao Miyazaki’s manga Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind (Kaze no Tani no Naushika) is a post-apocalyptic science fantasy. It was serialized in Animagefrom February 1982 to March 1994.

A thousand years after the Seven Days of Fire, declining human populations cling to existence in those few regions that are still habitable for humans. Much of the Earth’s land surface is covered in thriving ecosystems, but … all these systems — the so-called Sea of Corruption — feature ​“miasma,” a toxic fog lethal to unprotected humans. 

The Valley of the Wind is lucky. Continual winds keep the miasma at bay, protecting the Valley’s inhabitants. Life is still harsh and short but compared to elsewhere, it is paradise. 

Unfortunately for the Valley of the Wind, it is a vassal state of the Vai Emperor of the Torumekians. 

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Martha Wells’ 2021 Fugitive Telemetry is the sixth volume in the Murderbot series.

Preservation Station has a very low murder rate. The corpse in Trans Lateral Bypass corridor is an anomaly — and also a mystery. Murderbot is informally consulted and discovers that the murdered human has been dead for about four hours, and … and that it (Murderbot) is going to get dragged into the investigation.

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Lee Killough’s 1980 The Monitor, the Miners, and the Shree is a standalone hard SF novel. 

Unlike the Galactic Union, the Sodality that has replaced the Union has a strict no-contact rule where pre-spaceflight worlds are concerned. Thus, when the Sodality discovered that there was a previously unnoticed low-tech species on planet Nira, they forced the Megeyn mining company to shut down operations on Nira and leave the native Shree to develop in isolation.

The Sodality likes to keep an eye on developing worlds. Once every five hundred years, the Department of Surveys and Charters (DSC) dispatches a team of scientists to secretly monitor the Shree. Newly minted monitor Chemel Krar is in charge of the latest team. It is her task to ensure that the scientists hired by DSC do not violate the no-contact rule while spying on the natives. 

The expedition goes wrong surprisingly quickly.

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Stephen Graham Jones’ 2020 The Only Good Indians is a standalone horror novel.

Ricky, Lewis, Cass, and Gabe don’t talk about their last hunt together. The hunt in which they segued from triumphant success to horrific excess. Best never to mention their encounter with the elks. Easiest for Ricky, since he died under peculiar circumstances outside a North Dakota bar, but the others are pretty good at keeping mum as well. 

Ten years later, the surviving trio discover that while they’re done with old business, old business is not done with them.

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Chris Spivey and friends’¹ 2020 Harlem Unbound is the second, expanded, edition of the earlier 2015 Harlem Unbound. Harlem Unbound is a source book covering Harlem Renaissance era Harlem. It is intended for use either with Chaosium’s 7^th edition Call of Cthulhu² (CoC) cosmic-horror roleplaying game or their Pulp Cthulhu cosmic-horror roleplaying game

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