James Nicoll Reviews

Katherine Addison’s 2025 The Orb of Cairado is a stand-alone academic mystery novella. Orb is a Chronicles of Osreth work.

For most people, the destruction of the airship Wisdom of Choharo was significant because the emperor and all but one of his heirs died with the airship. Disgraced scholar Ulcetha Zhorvena’s best friend Maya perished with the Wisdom of Choharo. For Ulcetha, what was for everyone else a national tragedy was a very personal one.

Maya’s death has consequences Ulcetha could not foresee.

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David Graeber and David Wengrow’s 2021’s The Dawn of Everything is, as its subtitle proclaims, a non-fiction book presenting A New History of Humanity. Although really, what they offer is a new interpretation of history. Which would not be as snappy a subtitle.

There is a standard version of the progression of technology and civilization that many of us learned in school: a long uncharted stone age of wandering tribes leading simple, boring, uniform lives, the domestication of plants and animals, the rise of towns and cities, the creation of centralized states, and finally after some fuss, Canada. Whether or not all that was good is open to debate, but there is a certain degree of inevitability about it all. A leads to B leads to C and so on, each stage bringing additional complexity and challenges.

It would be disturbing if the facts did not to line up nicely with the model. Graeber and Wengrow suggest that they don’t.

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Riley Black’s 2025 When the Earth Was Green is, as the subtitle proclaims, about plants, animals, and evolution’s greatest romance: the one between plants and animals.

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Rebecca Fraimow’s 2024 Lady Eve’s Last Con is a stand-alone science fiction caper novel.

Confidence agents Ruth Johnson and her sister Jules have made a tolerable living bilking gullible rich travelers plying the interstellar lanes. Jules made the mistake of falling for her latest mark, Esteban Mendez-Yuki. Jules ended up dumped, heartbroken, and pregnant.

Ruth is determined to provide Jules’ kid with a nest-egg and Jules with revenge by proxy. Victory seems assured! How hard could it be to con one rich egghead?

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2022’s The Mushroom Tree Mystery is the sixth volume in Ovidia Yu’s Crown Colony Mysteries.

August 1945: the Japanese occupiers of Singapore are certain that the Japanese Empire is an invincible, indomitable power that is assured of endless triumphs. A recent series of defeats notwithstanding.

For Su Lin and the other inhabitants of Occupied Singapore, the signs are clear. Soon, Japan will fall. Singapore will be liberated. This is certain. Whether any Singaporeans will survive until liberation is less certain.

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T. Kingfisher’s 2024 A Sorceress Comes to Call is a stand-alone historical fantasy.

Fourteen-year-old Cordelia is impeccably well-behaved. Not from any particular dedication to conformity. Cordelia’s mother Evangeline is a sorceress of no small power who is in the habit of taking control of Cordelia’s body to enforce proper deportment on her child. Cordelia has spent her life being terrorized by Evangeline.

Now it will be Chatham House’s turn for terror.

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1946’s ​“Clan of the Fiery Cross” was a story arc on The Adventures of Superman radio series.

As manager of the Unity House Baseball team, Daily Planet staffer Jimmy Olsen’s first responsibility is to the team, not to individual players. Thus, as soon as Jimmy saw that Tommy Lee was a talented pitcher, he replaced Unity House’s current pitcher, Chuck Riggs, with Tommy.

Chuck does not react well to being replaced. In short order, Jimmy sees no alternative but to fire Chuck. Chuck’s misfortune is an opportunity for his uncle Max.

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Riley Black’s 2022 The Last Days of the Dinosaurs is a popular science book.

Last Days is not, as one might expect from the title, focused on the non-avian dinosaurs’ sudden demise, although that is covered. The subtitle reads ​“An Asteroid, Extinction, and the Beginning of Our World” for a reason.

Every beginning begins with an end. Sixty-six million years ago, an Everest-sized rock slammed into the Yucatan at interplanetary speeds, erasing one world and making room for ours.

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August Clarke’s 2024 Metal From Heaven is a stand-alone secondary universe industrial fantasy.

Ichorite is a marvelously useful material, the production of which has given Yann Chauncey and his family a considerable fortune. Ichorite is toxic; its fit-prone victims are known as the lustertouched. When Yann’s workers demand that Yann acknowledge the issue and do something to mitigate it, Yann does the only reasonable thing an oligarch in his position could do. He orders the protesters slaughtered.

The massacre is almost complete. Yann’s hired killers miss lustertouched Marney Honeycutt, an oversight that will have significant repercussions later.

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Nghi Vo’s 2024 The City in Glass¹ is a stand-alone secondary-universe fantasy novel.

The thriving port city of Azril so delighted the demon Vitrine that she took up permanent residence there. Every human foible was on display. The city offered a smorgasbord of passion and depravity to delight even the most jaded demon.

The angels were altogether less approving.

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