James Nicoll Reviews

K. Ancrum’s 2021 Darling is a stand-alone found-family thriller.

The Darling family has moved to Chicago. To teenaged Wendy Darling’s annoyance, her parents don’t allow the seventeen-year-old free run of the big city or even access to her long-time pen pal Eleanor. Instead, they treat Wendy like a naïve kid in a city — a city that Mrs. Darling knows for a fact contains at least one monster.

Wendy’s objections escalate into vociferous argument. This earns her a grounding. It does not, however, prevent an attractive stranger from entering her bedroom on a night when her parents are not home.

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Jerry Pournelle’s 1979 A Step Farther Out is a collection of science essays, some of which have aged more gracefully than others. All of them first appeared in the late, lamented Galaxy Magazine.

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Laura Frankos’ 2021 Broadway Revival is a stand-alone time travel novel.

Widowed David Greenbaum has lost his husband to drugs. He deals with his crushing grief by scheming to rewrite history itself. David could not save Ramon, but perhaps, just perhaps, David can save George Gershwin.

Step one: steal a time machine.

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Chie Inudou’s Blue Eye of Horus (Aoi Horus no Hitomi—Dansou no Joou no Monogatari in the original Japanese) is a historical manga focusing on the future Pharoah Hatshepsut. Volume 1 is the first tankōbon.

Years before the story opens, Ahmose established Egypt’s 18^th Dynasty by driving the cruel Hyksos from Egypt. Ahmose was succeeded by Amenhotep I and Amenhotep I by Thutmose I. Someday, Thutmose I will die and be succeeded in turn. Luckily for Egypt, Hatshepsut is in almost all ways qualified to take Thutmose I’s place.

Unfortunately for Egypt, the one quality Hatshepsut lacks is one that bars Hatshepsut from ruling traditionalist Egypt.

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1986’s The Cross-Time Engineer is the volume that launched Leo Frankowski’s increasingly dire Adventures of Conrad Stargard, a Morganade¹ adventure series on a long-suffering world.

Hungover, Conrad Schwartz sets out on an ill-fated hike. One temporal mishap later and the American-trained Polish engineer found himself somewhere he only knew from text-books.

Or rather, somewhen.

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Robert Sheckley’s 1971’s Can You Feel Anything When I Do This? is a collection of short science fiction stories.

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2017’s The Ship Beyond Time is the second volume in Heidi Heilig’s Girl From Everywhere nautical time-travel series.

Nix is at risk of erasure from history. She will never have existed if her addict father, Slate, perseveres in his quest to save his beloved wife by rewriting the history that led to both her death and Nix’s birth. Nix takes command of her father’s ship Temptation. Under her command, the ship will continue to travel between the eras, as well as to the lands of legend¹.

In theory. In practice, just how much control Nix has over events is unclear at best.

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2014’s The Causal Angel is the third and thus far final book in Hannu Rajaniemi’s Jean le Flambeur post-singularity caper series.

Mistakes were made. The All-Defector is wreaking havoc. The Sobornost, the post-human civilization that dominates the Solar System, appears to have descended into civil war. Love interest and co-protagonist Mieli has been kidnapped! Being a significant contributor to the current chaos, it is up to Jean le Flambeur to save the day.

Who is Mieli? Who is Jean le Flambeur? If you have to ask, you have not read the previous two books. Do not attempt this one without having read both The Quantum Thief and The Fractal Prince.

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2016’s Cat Temple’s Miss Chion, Volume One is the first tankōbon in Makoto Ojiro’s manga series. It was serialized as Neko no Otera no Chion-san in Weekly Big Comic Spirits from May 2016 to October 2018. There are nine volumes in total. There is no authorized English edition of which I am aware¹.

Suda Gen is unhappy living with his family and decides to transfer to an out-of-prefecture high school near a Buddhist temple, one that’s run by relatives. Although he knows that he stayed at the temple as boy, he remembers nothing about the temple or his kin.

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1965’s 10^th Annual Edition: The Year’s Best S‑F is the tenth volume in Judith Merril’s The Year’s Best S‑F reprint anthology series. 10^th Annual Edition was also published as 10^th Annual S‑F and The Best of Science Fiction 10. Best SF annuals present a selection of the best SF from the previous year. In this case, that year stretched from 1946 to 1964.

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