James Nicoll Reviews

The First Thousand Trees is the third and final (?) volume of Premee Mohamed’s Annual Migration of Clouds post-apocalyptic¹ coming-of-age series.

When Henryk Mandrusiak’s best and only friend Reid left for college and a life far away, Henryk concluded that nothing remained for him in the town² in which they both grew up. His uncle Dex lives in Sprucedown. Henryk sets out to join his uncle.

Moving from one community to another is always challenging, but even more so after the apocalypse.

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Premee Mohamed’s 2025 One Message Remains is a collection of secondary-universe fantasy short stories.

Poor Seudast! So far from God, so close to Treotan.

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Premee Mohamed’s 2024 The Rider, The Ride, The Rich Man’s Wife is a fantasy novella.

Rain should be welcome in an arid town like Wrathford, which is otherwise dependent on unreliable wells. But the infrequent rains come with an unwelcome price.

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2024’s We Speak Through the Mountain, a sequel to Premee Mohamed’s The Annual Migration of Clouds, is a near-future science fiction novella.

Nineteen-year-old Reid Graham was one of the lucky few invited to attend university at Howse University. Reid was also one of the lucky fewer who survived her trip across the post-collapse hellscape between her tiny home community and Howse, which is sheltered in Alberta’s Rocky Mountains.

Having reached Howse, Reid can put her troubles behind her. Will she?

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Premee Mohamed’s 2024 The Siege of Burning Grass is a stand-alone (thus far) military speculative fiction novel. Or perhaps anti-military is a more accurate term…

The war between the Empire of Varkal and Med’ariz rages on. The Meddon, the people of Med’ariz, have superior technology; Varkal has elan, human wave tactics, and a willingness to redirect as much of the economy to the war effort as it takes to win, regardless of the consequences. Varkal is not winning and is growing increasingly impoverished.

Alefret was a founding member of a pacifist pact. His principled pacifism has greatly displeased the Varkal government.

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Premee Mohamed’s 2024 The Butcher of the Forest is a stand-alone fantasy novel.

Woken in the middle of the night and firmly escorted from her home by the Tyrant’s men, Veris Thorn expects the worst.

As well she might.

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2022’s The Void Ascendant is the third and final volume in Premee Mohamed’s Beneath the Rising trilogy.

Nick Prasad survived the destruction of Earth at the manipulative limbs of cosmic horrors. He survived tumbling through dimensions. Arriving on alien Aradec, he embraced the role of designated prophet. True, he has had to enable some terrible things, but as long as his superiors do not tire of him, playing prophet allows him to put off his death. It’s not much but it’s all Nick can hope for.

Now, it seems that even personal survival may be out of the question.

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Premee Mohamed’s 2021 The Annual Migration of Clouds is a stand-alone post-apocalyptic novella. 

Reid Graham is ecstatic to receive a letter of acceptance from Howse University. Howse is not merely a respected centre of learning. It is one of the few places in Canada that retains high technology despite a series of calamities that have reduced the population of the world by two orders of magnitude. 

The catch? Reid has to get to Howse on her own. This is tricky. Howse is hundreds of miles away from Reid’s home; there are few automobiles still functioning. And … there are other problems. 

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Premee Mohamed’s 2021 And What Can We Offer You Tonight is a standalone dystopic tale of revenge. 

The world of the distant future is perfectly ordered and just. The wealthy are free to enjoy their wealth; the poor are free to work at ill-paid jobs and die of hunger and disease. All is for the best in the best of all possible worlds. 

Courtesan Winsome Winfield is murdered by a client of her brothel, the House of Bicchieri. That’s OK by the House: a free-spending customer is more important than a mere prostitute. 

The other courtesans of the House give their friend a quiet burial. 

Winsome’s resurrection is utterly unexpected. 

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Premee Mohamed’s 2021 A Broken Darkness is a sequel to Beneath the Rising.

A year and a half ago, wunderkind Johnny Chambers and her bestest friend Nick Prasad saved the world from the Dimensional Anomaly. True, they were a bit late and hundreds of millions of people died. The important thing is that seven billion people didn’t die. 

Nick hasn’t spoken to Johnny in the last year and a half. It’s not just because Johnny was responsible for providing other-dimensional beings with the chance to invade our world. Although that is a large part of it.

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