James Nicoll Reviews

Kate Elliott’s 2023’s The Keeper’s Six is an upcoming (in only one month!) fantasy novel. 

Although few on Earth are aware of this, Earth is but one minor realm among many. Venture through the alien and deadly Beyond and any number of other worlds may be accessed. Although Earth is a primitive backwater, it is the source of a few goods that are available only on Earth. Thus, it has its own Keeps, through which Earth may be accessed and trade items acquired. The Keeps allow intermittent contact with the other worlds scattered through the Beyond.

Esther and the other members of her magical Hex used to wander the Beyond. Forbidden to do so in punishment for her transgressions, Esther is stuck on Earth. Crisis will force her to break the terms of her sentence.

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Kate Elliott’s 2022 Servant Mage is a standalone (thus far) secondary universe fantasy novella. 

Having led the Liberationists to victory over the corrupt monarchy, the August Protector then centralized government on herself, the better to provide society with the moral guidance it so desperately needed. Subjects found themselves firmly guided towards roles that best suited their strengths and guided away from distractions (like literacy) that could only confuse them. In the eyes of the Protector, utopia has been achieved. For some inexplicable reason, a handful of malcontents persist in resisting the correct social order.

Fellian, for example, is not merely unhappy that her magic was used to justify making her an involuntarily indentured servant AKA a slave. She secretly teaches people to read, something that could get her hanged if she were ever caught. Events will transpire such that illegal literacy will be the least of her crimes.

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Kate Elliott’s upcoming space opera, 2020’s Unconquerable Sun, due out July 7^th, is the first book in her new series, the Sun Chronicles.

Princess Sun returns to Molossia System having routed the Phene enemy. No official accolades await her. As far as her mother Queen-Marshal Eirene is concerned, Sun was competent, as expected. Nothing worth comment. Sun may be Eirene’s heir but she is held to an impossibly high standard and never loved or praised.

Although she is not fully aware of her danger, Sun’s status as heir is under threat.

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I picked up 1992’s Jaran in 1992 and what with one thing and another only just now got around to finishing this anthropological romance (as mandated by this very commissioned review). I have read the Crossroads series so I am not unfamiliar with Elliott’s fiction; it’s just this one I didn’t read at the time. Why? It tickled a peculiar and no doubt shameful prejudice of mine, of which more later⁰.

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