James Nicoll Reviews

(Date corrected. No, I am not sleeping especially well)

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1: Yes, ​“promises” and ​“delivers” are different words. Why do you ask? 

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In March 2026, long-time Theatres at Waterloo employee Nadia V. Ursacki died. In her honour, the theatre inaugurated the Nadia Ursacki Award, which will go to people who make outstanding contributions to the theatre.

Someone has to be one of the first two people to receive that award. One such person was me. At some point, I will get a plaque. I got a hat!

I am completely gobsmacked and very grateful.

On to F&SF:

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Mickey Prime by Edward Ashton (February 2027)

Mickey7 (inspiration for the film Mickey 17) is back in Edward Ashton’s latest novel in which a plague on Niflheim forces Mickey to return to his old job as an expendable.

Mickey Barnes is an ex-Expendable. For the past five years he’s spent his time tending tomatoes and cleaning out rabbit hutches instead of mucking around inside active reactor cores and getting dissected by creepers. When a sudden, virulent plague strikes the fledgling human colony on Niflheim, though, he’s forced to return to his old job. Mickey is pressed into duty as both a first responder and a lab rat, expected to die and be replaced as many times as necessary to find a cure.

Funny thing, though. Despite the best efforts of the colony’s medical team, Mickey seems to be the only person unable to contract the bug. As more and more colonists sicken and die and the colony spirals into panic, Command is forced to contemplate Reset — sterilizing the colony completely to eradicate the plague, then repopulating it with hundreds of stored embryos, to be raised under the watchful eye of a dozen freshly printed copies of Mickey Barnes.

No matter how bad things get, Mickey can’t let that happen. He has a daughter of his own now, and even if he has to die a hundred times in a hundred different ways, he’s determined to find a way to make sure that she survives.

It’s a lot, but after all, Mickey’s already died seven times. After that, how hard could this be?

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The Flower Court by Kate Elliott (January 2027)

Sapphic romance amidst a tale of palace intrigue from one of fantasy’s best – and best-loved – writers. 

To secure her beloved grandmother’s rescue from a vindictive master, lowly servant Kyuri makes a desperate bargain with the noble Dorven. She must accompany him into the Flower Court at the heart of the imperial palace to search for his missing sister. But the fate of the sister is unclear, and seems to be bound up in a power struggle between ambitious princes. 

In order to negotiate these dangerous currents, Kyuri is forced to work with Sulia, the Dowager Empress’s loveliest and most condescending servant. When the investigation leads the two women into deadly palace intrigue and exposes them to the threat of a ravenous fungal ghost plague, they must learn to trust each other in order to survive — and to have a hope of finding a future beyond servitude. 

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When Life Gives You Corpses by Lene D. Buttner (March 2027)

In this delightfully cozy and creepy YA romp, a cave monster masquerading as a search-and-recovery guide intends to find and eat a lost wizard — but catches feelings for him instead.

Theory has a monstrous secret. He isn’t an ordinary search-and-recovery guide at Fiendworld, the world’s premier magical-sinkhole-turned-amusement-park; he’s a cursed, human-eating mantis. But not to worry. He’s got an excellent solution for his particular diet. Whenever he’s asked to retrieve the corpse of a lost adventurer, he simply snacks on a finger or two — no harm done.

That is, until he’s given his latest assignment: recover the body of park management’s missing son. Great. Yet another foolish wizard who got lost adventuring, and this time the direct descendant of the very person who cursed Theory in the first place. Worse, when Theory reluctantly sets off on the search, he’s shocked to find the wizard somehow still alive.

Nim — the wizard in question — has no desire to be rescued. He’s on a mission to the bottom of the sinkhole, and refuses to return to the surface before he gets there. He may be a subpar wizard, as his parents constantly remind him, but he’s got a positive attitude, an enchanted backpack, and now a mysterious rescue worker to recruit to his cause! Even though said worker is quite rude and seems to be getting Nim into more danger than out of it.

To survive, Theory and Nim must brave man-eating fish, walls of tentacles, and devastating secrets: both their own, and ones the park desperately tries to keep hidden. And along the way, they may just discover that they’re stronger together than apart. 

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The Magical Cheese Emporium by Sarah Beth Durst (January 2027)

The Magical Cheese Emporium by Sarah Beth Durst is the fourth magical standalone adventure in the New York Times bestselling series that started with The Spellshop.

When Eloren joined the revolution against the empire, she didn’t expect to lose everything — or to find a safe haven in a magical cheese shop.

After the Great Library burned down and her position as Assistant Librarian with it, Eloren had no other choice but to return to the only other home that would have her: her grandmother’s shop.

Now, she’s stuck at the Magical Cheese Emporium in the remote island town of Dew, struggling to become the small business heiress she never wanted to be. But the unicorns won’t let her milk them, there’s a monster in the cheese caves, and Eloren is more into books than Brie. The only good thing about coming home is reuniting with Garyn, the childhood friend and clever inventor who, at some point, got a whole lot taller — and handsome.

When Dew’s governor imposes impossible taxes on small business owners, Eloren knows one thing: she didn’t take down the emperor just so someone else could exploit good people.

Eloren, Garyn, his (mostly) helpful contraptions, and a mouse made of cheese set off to rescue the cheese emporium and all the other local businesses. And in helping to save this community, Eloren might finally realize that home is where the Havarti is.

The Magical Cheese Emporium is a fantasy romance about the places that tell you you’re home when everything burns down and daring to see old friends with new eyes. Prepare for hard work, sparkly dreams, and lots of magical cheese.

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James Nicoll Reviews offers readers a relentless barrage of human-created reviews of human-created works. I am the John Henry of speculative fiction reviewing.

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May 2026

22 works reviewed. 11 by women (50%), 11 by men (50%), 0 by non-binary authors (0%), 0 by authors whose gender is unknown (0%), and 9 by POC (41%).

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Harbour of Hungry Ghosts by Eliza Chan (July 2026)

“My name is not Kim, it’s Kiamling. It means Sword Spirit. I was forged to cut down the undead. Demons and monsters aren’t just in your storybooks, they walk among us.”

The Au family serve the people of Hong Kong: blessing shrines, honouring the dead and dealing with dangerous monster incursions. The expectations on eldest daughter Kiamling are high, which is not something her strict grandmother will let her forget.

When the British disrupt the Hungry Ghosts festival and her grandmother is seized by a strange new monster, Kiamling must step up and lead the search. She is aided by unexpected allies: Archie, an earnest civil servant, Hoi gor, childhood sweetheart turned merchant-pirate and Jingling, her younger sister keeping secrets of her own. Kiamling must figure out who is behind the incursion and more importantly, how to defeat them.

With British fables mingling with local Chinese monsters, can Kiamling prove herself, when the old rules no longer seem to apply?

Babel meets Buffy the Vampire Slayer—a family of demon hunters find their hands full when unfamiliar monsters start stalking the streets of Opium War-era Hong Kong, in this historical fantasy adventure from No. 1 Sunday Times bestseller Eliza Chan.

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A Dance of Burning Blades by M. H. Ayinde (April 2026)

The epic second book in M. H. Ayinde’s relentlessly gripping Invoker Trilogy, following the Sunday Times bestselling debut A Song of Legends Lost. 

Tension simmers across Nine Lands. In the capital, the people of Lordsgrave seethe with resentment after the horrors of the greyblood attack. Clan Adatali are in open rebellion against the king. And as war in the Feverlands rages on, a humble tree feller who looks a lot like missing invoker Jinao Mizito, has not forgotten the promise he made to avenge his brother. 

Meanwhile, in the shadows, the king’s daughter Lyela continues to move her pieces across the board. Will the people of Nine Lands reclaim their stolen history and unlock the secrets that have been kept from them for centuries? A Dance of Burning Blades is a sweeping epic of revenge and rebellion set in a richly drawn world of warring clans and ancestor magic. 

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