James Nicoll Reviews

George O. Smith’s 1958 The Path of Unreason is a stand-alone science fiction novel. 

Like so many brilliant physicists before him, James Carroll set out to solve the enigma of superluminal ​“Lawson radiation.” Like so many before him, the quest led to a total mental breakdown. The former genius was reduced to near-catatonia, rejecting attempts at communication with a simple ​“no.”

Carroll seems beyond help. But appearances can be deceiving. Perhaps it is the world that is beyond help. 

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Quan Barry’s 2020 We Ride Upon Sticks: A Novel is a supernatural historical comedy coming-of-age novel. [Editor: quite a pile-up of adjectives there!]

Considered separately, high school students Abby Putnam, Girl Cory, Boy Cory, Mel Boucher, Jen Fiorenz, Sue Yoon, Amy ​“Little Smitty” Smith, Julie Kaling, Becca Bjelica, Heather Houston, and AJ Johnson are ordinary teenagers. Together they are the Danvers Falcons field hockey team, whose failed teamwork is matched only by their appalling performance on the field. If the Danvers Falcons are not the worst team in the 1989 season, it’s not for lack of trying. 

A shockingly awful field hockey team is not their town’s only claim to fame. Danvers, Massachusetts, is the town that many of the Salem Witch Trial accusers called home. It is to this occult heritage a desperate Mel Boucher turns. Perhaps hockey success can be found in a mystical pledge to an infernal entity known only as … Emilio! 

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Jen Williams’ 2022 Seven Dead Sistersis a stand-alone horror novella.

Although the menfolk of Alizon Grey’s village are disinclined to waste effort on women, whom the men see as one-part domestic animal and one-part sinful Daughters of Eve, in Alizon’s case the men enthusiastically apply themselves to the task of transporting Alizon to Demdike Hill. 

The men do like a public burning, after all, and Demdike Hill is the traditional execution ground on which transgressors like Alizon are burned alive. 

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Fria Ligan’s 2017 Tales from the Loop is an alternative history tabletop roleplaying game, set in a retro futuristic world beautifully evoked by Simon Stålenhag’s art. Nils Hintze was lead game designer and Tomas Härenstam was editor and project manager¹.

Tales from the Loop is a mystery-solving roleplaying game in which Kids aged ten to fifteen are confronted by and solve (or fail to solve, for which there are always consequences) the mysteries that the adults around them are determined to ignore. 

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Loren J. MacGregor’s 1987 The Net is a stand-alone science fiction novel. The Net was the eighth book in Terry Carr’s Third Ace Science Fiction Specials.

Jason Horiuchi, chief executive officer of Horiuchi, Pte., could control the family trust from the comfort of a lavish office. She prefers to ensconce herself in the well-appointed but diminutive starship Argo, cosplaying a tramp freighter captain. Jason claims that her mobility gives her better insight into the trust’s far-flung holdings. Her success in reversing the trust’s decline would seem to support this. 

There is, however, a second, more compelling reason why Jason has adopted her current lifestyle.

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1979’s Master of Hawks, while it can be read as a stand-alone, is also the first of two novels in Linda E. Bushyager’s Master of Hawks fantasy series. 

The tiny kingdom of York embodies all the virtues one might wish in a magical feudal society. Too bad for York that it is next on the Taral Empire’s shopping list. York has fewer soldiers and fewer sorcerers than Taral. York may have the edge in cunning but that will not be sufficient. 

The man known as Hawk may be York’s best hope, and not merely because of his telepathic powers.

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2022’s The Quarter Storm is the first of Veronica G. Henry’s Mambo Reina occult mystery novels. 

Reina Dumond is a mambo priestess pledged to Erzulie; she follows traditions that date to a time before her ancestors were kidnapped and dragged from Benin to Haiti. Her father having brought his family from Haiti to the United States, Reina is also an American. She uses her holy calling to make a living. 

New Orleans provides Reina with a multitude of potential clients. Many of them operate under a misunderstanding about the purposes to which Vodou may be put. Some of her would-be clients are downright sketchy. Take young Sophie Thibault, for example. 

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Kay Chronister’s 2022 Desert Creatures is a stand-alone post-apocalyptic horror novel.

Nine-year-old Magdala, trying to deflect neighborly hostility, spun a marvelous tale of her father’s supernatural powers. Her fables did not had the effect that Magdala intended. Rather than being cowed into leaving father and daughter alone, the terrified townsfolk have driven the club-footed girl and her father out into the desert.

It’s a grim existence and likely to be a short one.

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2019’s Witch Hat Atelier, Volume Six is the sixth tankōbon in author/artist Kamome Shirahama’s Witch Hat Atelier fantasy manga series. Witch Hat Atelier (Tongari Bōshi no Atorie in the original Japanese) has been serialized in Kodansha’s Monthly Morning Two magazine since July 2016. The English translation of Volume Six appeared in 2020. 

No sooner have our central characters (protagonist Coco and her fellow student witches Agott, Tetia, and Richeh) emerged from their latest test than they, their badly injured teacher Qifrey, and their Watchful Eye¹ Olruggio are summoned by the Assembly to account for certain irregularities in the test.

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Marc W. Miller, Frank Chadwick, Timothy B. Brown, and Lester W. Smith’s1988 RPG 2300 AD¹ is the second edition of a 1986 near-future hard-SF roleplaying game originally titled Traveller: 2300, put out by Game Designer Workshop. In addition to the rebranding, GDW substantially expanded second edition 2300 AD: whereas Traveller: 2300​’s various manuals totaled 129 pages, 2300 AD​’s manuals totaled 232. To sweeten the deal even more, GDW was willing to swap copies of Traveller: 2300 for copies of 2300 AD.

Inside the hefty and durable box², gamers found:

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