James Nicoll Reviews

2023’s Talonsister is the first of two books in Jen Williams’ latest secondary-universe fantasy Talon duology.

Transformed (at the cost of her memories and through the application of processed titan remains) into a nigh-superhuman Herald, Leven repaid the Starlight Empire with eight years of service. She is now retired.

Plagued by visions of northern Brittletain, Leven resolves to visit that mysterious island to see why she has memories of a region that, as far as she can tell, she has never visited.

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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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2018’s The Bitter Twins is the second volume in Jen Williams’ The Winnowing Flame trilogy.

The Jure’lia have returned to an ill-prepared Sarn. The tree-god who once protected Sarn is near-death. Its war-beast fruit have improperly ripened; they lack ancestral memories. The god-touched Eborans are a vanishing face.

All is not quite hopeless.

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2018’s The Ninth Rain is the first volume in Jen Williams’ Winnowing Flame trilogy.

Once the Eborans were rulers and guardians of their world; they were sustained and armed by their tree-god Ygseril. Eight times they fought the Jure’lia, invading horrors from beyond the sky. Eight times they won. In the aftermath of the eighth invasion, however, Ygseril died. Since then, the Eborans have suffered a long, inexorable decline.

Tormalin the Oathless abandons the remnant of once-great Ebora for a life of adventure and debauchery abroad, in the service of Lady Vincenza ​“Vintage” de Grazon. Vintage is determined to discover the true nature of the invaders and possibly a way to reverse the corruption each invasion leaves in its wake.

Vintage’s archaeology is surprisingly combat-intensive.

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