James Nicoll Reviews

Micaiah Johnson’s 2020 The Space Between Worlds is a science fiction novel. 

Adam Bosch has invented a machine that gives Wiley City (and to a lesser extent the dystopian hellscape beyond its walls) access to the multiverse. New resources, new information … that’s the good part. But there is a catch. Indeed, a number of catches. 

Adam’s machine will only work to connect timelines that are quite similar. Even though there are an infinity of possible worlds, Wiley City only has access to 380. Travel between timelines is physically challenging. Not only that: living beings who travel to parallel worlds in which they have a living analog will die horrible deaths. 

Privileged people, important people, tend to have analogs in most of the other realities. They’ve led protected lives, as have most of their analogs. Traversing would surely mean death. But there are a lot of people who haven’t led protected lives. Beyond Wiley City’s walls live the poor, doomed to short and dangerous lives. Send such a poor person across the worlds and it’s just possible that the poor person may live. 

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2020’s Prime Deceptions is the second volume in Valerie Valdes’ Chilling Effect series.

In the previous volume Captain Eva Innocente escaped the clutches of a criminal empire known as the Fridge, giving it a black eye in the process of regaining her ship La Sirena Negra. Prudence would suggest adopting a low profile. Eva is terrible at being prudent, as suggested by the fact that when the book opens, someone is shooting at her.

Eva at least knows better than to accept job offers from her duplicitous sister Mari. As it turns out, ​“knows better” is different from ​“does not.” In Eva’s defence, the task seemed so straightforward.

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2017’s A Song for Quiet is the second volume in Cassandra Khaw’s Persons Non Grata series. 

Blues musician Deacon James leaves his father’s funeral and discovers that he is being stalked by a persistent madman. Life in Jim-Crow-era America is already hard enough for a black musician; there’s no room for complications. Whatever the lunatic wants, Deacon wants no part of it.

What John Persons would like to do is save Deacon, but Persons’ communication skills could use some work. 

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S. B. Divya’s 2021 Machinehood is an upcoming near-future thriller. Yeah, it’s not due out until spring 2021, but who can say if any of us will be around then? Also, I have the author’s permission to review the book immediately. 

Welga Ramirez, former American special forces agent turned bodyguard, faces mid-life retirement. At thirty-five, she is getting too old to appeal to her established online audience; a well-filled social media tip jar is a vital component of any gig-based occupation. It’s vital she find some new, age-appropriate niche. Her plan is to become an online cooking maven. Fate has another career in mind: counter-terrorism.

Protestors attacking the Funders (the wealthy who finance pharmaceutical research) obey certain rules. They commit flashy, news-friendly attacks resulting in minor wounds but not media-unfriendly deaths. This grabs attention without alienating potential supporters. Slaughter followed by suicide is considered a losing game. 

The previously unknown group calling itself Machinehood appears not to have read the memo. In fact, Machinehood appears determined to kick the board over entirely. How rude! Welga barely survives the first Machinehood attack. Her client is not so lucky. 

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2012’s Darkest Light is the second book in Hiromi Goto’s Half World series. 

Mr. Glueskin has been vanquished, allowing the age-old cycle of birth, reconciliation, rest, and rebirth to start once more. 

Mr. Glueskin has been reborn as sixteen-year-old Gee, an odd-looking outcast, haunted by a malevolent inner voice. The only person who can stand to be around him is his adopted grandmother Popo. He leads an odd, sad life. But it may be better than what’s coming. 

Mr. Glueskin’s followers cling to their pitiful existence in the Half World, preferring it to re-living past traumas (which is the only way to pass onto the Spirit World, after which one is reborn; lather, rinse, repeat), even though the only means to do so is to consume the souls of the dead Eel-armed Ilanna and bird-headed Karu, decide to drag their former boss back from the living world to glorious, sadistic, anthropophagy. 

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Nghi Vo’s 2020 When the Tiger Came Down the Mountain is a secondary universe fantasy. It is the second volume in her Singing Hills Cycle.

Cleric Chih and their guide Si-yu ride on mammoth-back to an isolated way station. They hope to find a place to rest for the night. Instead, they find an unconscious man and three tigers. Tigers are generally bad news for travellers. These particular tigers are of the shape-shifting, talking variety, they are also very hungry tigers. 

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Maggie Tokuda-Hall’s 2020 The Mermaid, the Witch, and the Sea is a secondary universe fantasy. 

Lady Evelyn Hasegawa’s betrothal to wealthy officer Finn Callum promises financial security to her debt-ridden aristocratic parents. This is an arranged marriage; she’s never met her groom, who lives at a distant imperial outpost in the Floating Islands. Evelyn must take a long sea voyage to join him, a voyage from which she will almost certainly never return. 

⸮But this is a sacrifice her parents are willing to make.⸮ 

Evelyn and a casket full of worldly goods are sent off on the good ship Dove. She’s anxious, of course: a new land, an unknown husband. She would be even more anxious if she knew that Dove is captained by a complete villain and crewed by people who are just as bad.

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2020’s The Bone Shard Daughter is the first volume in Andrea Stewart’s projected Drowning Empire secondary-universe fantasy trilogy. It’s just published!

The Emperor protects his people from the Alanga, godlike beings who once plagued the Empire. All he asks is total obedience and a small token of his subjects’ gratitude. A trifle, really, just a small shard of skull bone, which grants the Emperor access to their life energy. He uses that to power the automatons through which he rules the Empire. Otherwise his subjects are free to pay their taxes and do as they are told until such time as they die from the side-effects of being used as a living battery. 

The Emperor is growing old and it isn’t clear what will happen when he dies.

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Joyce Chng’s 2013 Rider: A Novel of Jin is the first novel in her Rider trilogy.

Lifang would like to be a Rider, one of the fortunate elites partnered with a Quetz (the enormous pterodactyl-like natives of Jin). Her family, however, believes Lifang can do her bit for the struggling human community on the planet Jin as an ​“agri-seer”. Which is to say, highly educated farmer.

If it were up to her family and her community, Lifang would not get the career she wants. Fate intervenes. 

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Nnedi Okorafor’s 2021 Remote Control is an upcoming science fiction novella. Unless you’re reading this after January 2021, in which case strike ​“upcoming.”

Sankofa wanders Ghana in the company of a fox, visiting community after community. The people she encounters fall over themselves providing her with food and clothing. In part, this is because Sankofa provides a useful service. In large part, it is because she can burn people down to their bones merely by willing it. 

Her story begins in the rural town of Wulugu, when she was just a sickly girl named Fatima.

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