James Nicoll Reviews

C. L. Clark’s 2025 Ambessa: Chosen of the Wolf is a League of Legends: Arcane novel. I will unravel all that later.

Ambessa Medarda is perhaps the Noxian empire’s foremost military leader. A vision granted after she was badly wounded suggests she will one day lead the empire. Currently she does not even lead her own clan. Her beloved grandfather Hostlord Menelik leads.

Who will follow old Menelik? That is a question for another day. Menelik will surely live for many years to come.

Or perhaps, he will die immediately after his audience with Ambessa.

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Steven Brust’s 1987 The Sun, the Moon, and the Stars is the first volume in Terry Windling’s eight-volume Fairy Tales series, about which more later.

Protagonist Greg Kovaks is an artist. He has just hauled out the vast blank canvas that he calls the Monster. Like the canvas, his career so far is a blank.

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2023’s Magus of the Library, Volume Seven is the seventh tankōbon in Mitsu Izumi’s secondary-universe fantasy manga series (Toshokan no Daimajutsushi in the original Japanese). Magus has been serialized in Good! Afternoon since November 2017. The English translation of Volume Seven appeared in 2024.

Theo is a poor, mixed-race young man on his way to becoming a kafna, as librarians are known. He will be one of a legion of kafnas in the employ of the Great Library. Created in the aftermath of a continent-wide genocidal conflict, the Great Library preserves knowledge.

What does that mean in practice?

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Walter Jon Williams’ Ambassador of Progress is a stand-alone anthropological science fiction novel. Although Williams was a veteran author by 1984, Ambassador was his debut SF novel.

Fiona, her close friend Kira, and the rest of their starship crew intend to guide a planet (Demro to some, Achadan to others) towards modernity. Fione’s path takes her to Arrandal. Kira’s takes her to Neda-Calacas.

Arrandal and Neda-Calacas are about to go to war.

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1974’s The Hounds of Skaith is the second volume in Leigh Brackett’s Ginger Star trilogy.

Having rescued his adopted father Ashton and humiliated Skaith’s Lords Protector, Eric John Stark faces another challenge: surviving the consequences of his actions.

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Octavia E. Butler’s 2014 Unexpected Stories is a collection of science fiction stories.

Unexpected Stories is only barely a collection, as it contains but two stories. One fewer and it would be a novella. Or a short story.

Unexpected Stories is also the solution to a personal problem.

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Samantha Harvey’s 2023 Booker-winning Orbital is a stand-alone science fiction novel.

The Internation Space Station orbits slightly over 400 kilometers¹ above the Earth. What is a day in the life of its crew like?

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Haruki Murakami’s 2023 The City and Its Uncertain Walls is a surrealistic novel¹. The 2024 translation is by Philip Gabriel.

Ah, young love. How could it possibly go wrong?

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Kim Stanley Robinson’s 2012 2312 is a stand-alone science fiction novel.

KRS fans may want to consider the significance of this being reviewed under What’s the Worst That Could Happen.

Three centuries from now, humans have spread across the Solar System. Every wonder from Disco-Era Co-Evolution Quarterly space articles has been realized and while not every space community is a paradise, those of the Mondragon Accord are marvelous indeed.

Too bad the entire arrangement is more fragile than it appears.

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James Blish’s 1958 A Case of Conscience is a Hugo-winning science fiction novel. It is part of a thematic trilogy, After Such Knowledge, about which more later.

No sooner did Haertel give humans faster-than-light drives¹ than humans discovered that they share the universe with aliens as intelligent as humanity. Aliens such as the Lithians.

Father Ruiz-Sanchez is part of a four-man UN team assigned the task of assessing recently contacted Lithia. Is the planet and its highly intelligent natives an opportunity for Earth to exploit? Is it a deadly menace? Or perhaps someplace to ignore…

Jesuit Ruiz-Sanchez fears it is a deadly menace. He also fears his reasoning will not sway his teammates.

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