James Nicoll Reviews

2024’s Can’t Spell Treason Without Tea is the first volume in Rebecca Thorne’s Tomes & Tea cozy fantasy series.

When cruel Queen Tilane off-handedly puts Reyna’s life at risk, the bodyguard decides she has had enough of Tilane’s ways. Reyna packs her meagre belongings and flees the castle. No more guarding an evil, vindictive tyrant. Instead, Reyna and her powerful magical girlfriend Kianthe will open a combination book and tea shop.

As far as the queen is concerned, leaving her employ is treason. The penalty for treason is death.

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The Feast Makers is the third and final volume in the Scapegracers modern fantasy trilogy. The Scapegracers trilogy is by August Clarke, writing as H. A. Clarke.

Sideways Pike and the rest of West High’s Scapegracer coven have successfully vanquished their enemies and retrieved Sideways’ soul. Now the soon-to-graduate high schoolers need to consider what they are going to do with the rest of their lives… which, thanks to the consequences of their actions in the previous two books, might be very short.

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2023’s The Warden is the first volume in Daniel M. Ford’s The Warden secondary universe fantasy series.

Aelis de Lenti un Tirraval is a high-achieving academic who is confident that she will receive a high-status first assignment as Warden. To her great vexation, she is assigned to serve in Lone Pine, a rural community barely large enough to warrant a name. She will serve as law enforcement and general problem solver.

She could turn down the post, but this would mean abandoning the career towards which she had worked so hard. Aelis accepts her assignment.

At least Lone Pine is small and isolated, unlikely to attract magical threats. Right?

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T. Kingfisher’s 2023 Thornhedge is a stand-alone fantasy novella.

A tower surrounded by thorns and brambles stands in an expanse of desolate former farmland. The fairy Toadling guards the tower. She dreads the day when a curious adventurer finally makes their way past the barriers.

One day, a curious adventurer makes his way past the barriers.

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Izzy Wasserstein’s 2023 These Fragile Graces, This Fugitive Heart is a science fiction mystery¹.

Theodora Madsen is a security expert, not a detective. However, when an old friend from Dora’s former commune arrives with unwelcome news, detective is the role Dora finds herself playing.

Dora’s ex-girlfriend Kay is dead.

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Kurt Pankaus’¹ 2022 Uncle Fluffy’s Post​-​Apocalyptic Sing​-​Along is, and I know this will surprise, delight, and astound you all, a post-apocalyptic sing-along album.

The collapse of civilization doomed a nameless joe’s dreams of making it big in the now-vanished pop music field.

Or did it?

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Demon Daughter is a secondary universe fantasy novel. Demon Daughter is the 12^th volume in Lois McMaster Bujold’s Penric & Desdemona series.

Adorable moppet Otta has lived all her short life on her father’s trading vessel Golden Chance. Like many children, she would like a pet. Her misguided attempt to tame a ship’s rat provokes the First Mate to throw the beast overboard. The consequences are far beyond anything the First Mate could have imagined.

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Dr. Kelly Weinersmith¹ and Zach Weinersmith’s 2023 A City on Mars is a non-fiction text. City asks three questions:

Can we settle space, should we settle space, and have we really thought this through?

The answers will astound space settlement fans!

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Lucy Kissick’s 2022 Clarke Award finalist Plutoshine is a stand-alone science fiction novel.

The public debate about terraforming is over, at least as far as the pro-terraforming faction is concerned. No longer will humanity be dependent on fragile habitats to survive in space. Uninhabitable worlds will be transformed to accommodate human needs.

Next up on the terraforming agenda: Pluto!

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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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