James Nicoll Reviews

Silvia Moreno-Garcia’s 2021 Velvet Was the Night is a noir historical novel.

Mexico’s governing Partido Revolucionario Institucional (Institutional Revolutionary Party) has created a covert unit known as Los Halcones (the Hawks). Los Halcones’ mission: beat the shit out of anyone foolish enough to oppose the PRI and the institutions supporting it. 

Despite his distaste for violence, Elvis works for the Hawks. Maite is an apolitical, unremarkable secretary, of no interest to the Hawks. There is no reason for the two to ever cross paths. No reason, that is, except for a hungry cat.

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Silvia Moreno-Garcia’s 2021 The Return of the Sorceress is a standalone secondary-universe fantasy novella.

Yalxi, Supreme Mistress of the Guild of Sorcerers, has been deposed. But her usurper Xellah has made a fatal error: he has kept her alive as a prisoner so that he can make use of her magic-imbued blood. Dead foes may not be useful as sources of magic but living foes can escape, which is what Yalxi has done. 

Wounded and stripped of the Diamond Heart from which so much of her power came, Yalxi is nevertheless an opponent of whom Xellah should be wary. 

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Silvia Moreno-Garcia’s 2020 Mexican Gothic is a standalone Mexican Gothic novel. As you might expect.

Young socialite Noemí Taboada is yanked out of her comfortable school and party-going life by her father. He has recently received an astonishing letter from Noemí’s cousin Catalina, married some months previously to Virgil Doyle. Concerned for Catalina’s well-being, Noemí’s father has been unable to convince Virgil to bring Catalina to Mexico City for a psychiatric assessment. Having no better alternative, Mr. Taboada dispatches Noemí to visit her cousin.

If he knew more about the Doyles, he most certainly would not have done this, but of course the Doyles have gone to great lengths to avoid publicity.

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Silvia Moreno-Garcia’s 2020 Untamed Shore is a standalone thriller.

Viridiana is determined to escape her small Baja California town. Much to her mother’s displeasure, Viridiana turned down her boyfriend’s proposal and the secure but tedious domesticity that marriage offers her. As soon as the first opportunity to leave appears, Viridiana will take it. The only problem is, such opportunities are uncommon in Desengaño.

Then three rich Americans come to town.

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Silvia Moreno-Garcia’s 2019 Gods of Jade and Shadow is a standalone fantasy novel. 

Bitter old Cirilo Layva is a very big frog in the extremely small pond of Uukumil. The Layvas are the family of consequence in the backwater Yucatan town. Cirilo’s worthless grandson Martin revels in his high status and does nothing to deserve it. 

Eighteen-year-old Casiopea Tun is less fortunate. She is a Layva, but her mother married against Cirilo’s wishes. Now Casiopea is poor, orphaned, grudgingly tolerated relative. She’s family enough to live on the family estate, but so low status that she is basically an unpaid servant. 

Casiopea tolerates her circumstances because she has been told that Cirilo’s will gives her a bequest of one thousand pesos, which would be enough for to start a good life elsewhere. Cirilo dies and Martin gleefully informs her that the bequest was a lie. She will get nothing. 

Casiopea decides to take matters into her own hands. She breaks into her grandfather’s locked chest, hoping to find something she can use or sell. No luck there. She does, however, find an imprisoned god. 

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2017’s Prime Meridian is a standalone science fiction novella by Silvia Moreno-Garcia.

In the glorious world of tomorrow, anyone with enough money can buy a ticket to the Martian settlements. Anyone with the right credentials can indenture themself to buy that precious ticket.

Thanks to her decision to drop out of college to care for her dying mother, Amelia doesn’t have money or credentials. Instead, she is one of Mexico City’s precariate. A new life on Mars can only be a dream.

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Silvia Moreno-Garcia’s soon-to-be-released The Beautiful Ones is a standalone SF novel. (SF in my estimation; see the discussion below.)

Hector Auvray rose from humble origins because he is an extremely powerful, skilled, and artistic telekinetic. He may not be an aristocrat but at least he is famous and rich. 

Valérie Beaulieu is famous, rich, beautiful, and an aristocrat. None of this truly makes her happy, since women of her class have nothing they can really call their own. Her background and beauty have only made her a valuable commodity on the marriage mart. She knows that her impoverished family’s future depends on her. A dutiful daughter, she abandoned her one true love so that she could marry the wealthy Gaetan instead.

Hector was that one true love. Ten years after being spurned by Valérie, Hector has returned to the city of Loisail.

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Silvia Moreno-Garcia’s 2014 anthology Fractured: Tales of the Canadian Post-Apocalypse delivers exactly what it promises: post-apocalyptic tales told from Canadian perspectives. 

The moral here seems to be that it’s going to get worse before it gets better. 

Also, it’s not going to get better.

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2015’s She Walks in Shadows  (published by Prime under the less evocative but also less ambiguous title Cthulhu’s Daughters: Stories of Lovecraftian Horror) was compiled by editors Silvia Moreno-Garcia and Paula R. Stiles. The theme of the collection:

The present volume assembles stories about women, by women. Why an all-woman volume? The first spark was the notion, among some fans oft he Lovecraft Mythos, that women do not like to write in this category, that they can’t write in this category. […] We hope this anthology will help to dispel such notions.

It’s always a mistake to think that the mere existence of an anthology filled with cosmic horror stories will dispel delusions rooted in knuckle-dragging prejudice. Still, despite the generally troglodytic nature of the Lovecraft community, this anthology won a World Fantasy Award in 2015.

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2016’s Certain Dark Things is Canadian SF author Silvia Moreno-Garcia’s second novel. 

World reaction to the revelation that vampires really do exist has varied. Some nations opted for cautious, monitored co-existence. Others simply drove the vampires out. Twenty-first century Mexico did both: Mexico was for many years a haven for vampires fleeing their former home nations, but Mexico City was declared a no-go zone for the blood drinkers. 

Declaring it was one thing; enforcing it another. 

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