James Nicoll Reviews

2015’s The Mystic Marriage is the second volume in Heather Rose Jones’ Alpennia series.

Antuniet Chazillen has lost everything: her foolish brother has been executed for treason and her mother is dead by her own hand. Antuniet has been stripped of her aristocratic rank. Determined to restore the family honour, Antuniet flees Alpennia for Austria, there to use her alchemical skills to win back for her family the respect and position her brother cost it. 

In Austria she finds a treasure of rare value, a treasure others are determined to wrest from her. She escapes from Vienna to Heidelberg, but her enemies are still close on her heels. She sees no choice but to trade her virtue for transportation to safety.

Which means returning to Alpennia…

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When I was a high school student (back in the 1970s) high schoolers were not known for keeping up on the latest Governor General’s Literary Award winners. There was one notable exception, a winner that got an enthusiastic reception from teens. I speak of Marian Engel’s CanLit classic Bear, or as it was better known to kids in the Disco Era, that one where the lady fucks a bear.

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2001’s Scout’sProgress is the sixth book in Sharon Lee and Steve Miller’s Liaden sciencefiction adventure series.

AellianaCaylon has endured a short but miserable arranged marriage. Now single again, she is promised by her clan head, the Delm, that she will not be forced into another such marriage.Unfortunately, the Delm’s word is binding only while she remains inpower. Her successor can ignore the promise. And it seems that Aelliana’s malevolent brother Ran Eld, will ensure this happens.The Liaden social structure is such that Aelliana has little hope ofescape.

But little is not none.Aelliana wields a weapon her corrupt, spiteful brother cannot match:applied mathematics!

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2014’s Ghosteria Volume 1: The Stories is the first of two ghost-story collections by Tanith Lee. I wish I’d read this in time for Halloween. 

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Volume 10 of Kozue Amano’s manga Aria is very nearly the final volume of the series. With only a handful of volumes to go, will Akari ever graduate? And will she be upset if she does not?

Not graduating is, it seems, a very real possibility. 

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Although her publisher is presenting it as the first volume of a new two-book arc, 2016’s The Edge of Worlds is also the fourth volume in Martha Wells Books of the Raksura series. It takes place in the same Three Worlds setting as her previous Raksura books.

Consort Moon and the other members of the Indigo Cloud court waken simultaneously, disturbed by a shared dream. The meaning of the dream is unclear. Is it merely a rare side effect of the Raksura mental gifts … or is it a portent of doom to come? The court does not have long to ponder this before groundling strangers appear, led by a someone they know: Gold Islander Delin. 

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Assessing Naomi Mitchison by her science fiction is a bit like assessing Charles Darwin by his golf game. But her 1962 standalone Memoirs of a Spacewoman is the only work of hers I have read, so … here we are. 

The humans who set out to explore the rest of universe are a far more mature lot than the explorers who landed on Mars and Venus. In its youth, humanity was aggressive and expansionist. Now humans and their Martian partners take a more enlightened and dispassionate view of the universe. 

That’s the theory, anyway. 

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2007’s Piratica III: The Family Sea is the third and final volume in Tanith Lee’s Piratica series.

Former pirate turned privateer turned national hero Art Blastside has it all: fame, wealth, and family. If only she could be happy on land. If only she could stop doubting her husband Felix. If only Art could understand why it is she doesn’t love her daughter Africa.

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2010’s A Conspiracy of Kings is the fourth and most recent (but not final!) volume in Megan Whalen Turner’s Queen’s Thief series.

The new alliance between Attolia and Eddis, sanctified by marriage between the Queen of Eddis’ Thief and the Queen of Attolia, put the neighbouring kingdom of Sounis in a very awkward position. Divided, Attolia and Eddis seemed no match for Sounis. United, they force the King of Sounis and his barons to choose between several unpalatable options: make peace with Eddis and Attolia or ally with the expansionist Mede Empire. One option is humiliating but the other may be national suicide. 

There is a third option: civil war. 

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Once more into the Aria archive. This time is volume 9 of Kozue Amano’s utopia: melancholy, longing and deathtraps await!

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