James Nicoll Reviews

Teenage Mutant Blues

Young, Gifted & Queer (Cute Mutants, volume 2)

By S. J. Whitby

3 Aug, 2023

**Miscellaneous Reviews**

0 comments

2020’s Young, Gifted & Queer is the second volume in SJ Whitby’s Cute Mutants series. The first volume was reviewed here.

Imbued with superhuman powers, Dylan “Chatterbox” Taylor and her friends saved New Zealand from a supervillain. Collateral damage was light: only a few lost limbs. Their exploits were sufficiently public and their efforts to conceal their identities sufficiently inept that the government easily tracked down the so-called Cute Mutants to offer them a choice: submit to sanctioned training or face prison.

Dylan and the Cute Mutants chose training. It’s not clear that this was the correct choice.

The Passion Burning in My Eye

Zom 100: Bucket List of the Dead, volume 1

By Haro Asa & Kotaro Takata

2 Aug, 2023

**Translation**

0 comments

2019’s Zom 100: Bucket List of the Dead, Volume One is the first tankōbon of Haro Asa and Kotaro Takata’s on-going comedy horror manga. Titled Zon 100 ~ Zonbi ni Naru made ni Shitai 100 no Koto in the original Japanese, Zom 100 has been serialized in Shogakukan’s seinen manga magazine Monthly Sunday Gene‑X since October 2018.

A catastrophically terrible choice of employer has transformed once upbeat Akira Tendo into an overworked, underpaid, bullied drone too depressed to clean his tiny apartment.

Death would be sweet release.

The Road is Long

6^th Annual Edition: The Year’s Best S‑F (The Year’s Best S‑F, volume 6)

Edited by Judith Merril

1 Aug, 2023

**Judith Merril’s The Year’s Greatest Science Fiction and Fantasy**

7 comments

1961’s 6^th Annual Edition: The Year’s Best S‑F (also published as The 6^th Annual of the Year’s Best S‑F and as The Best of Sci-Fi) is the sixth annual anthology in Judith Merril’s The Year’s Best S‑F series. The stories included were first published in 1960 and 1961.

Alas, every series has its duds and volume six appears to be the dud in this series.