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Blog Posts from November 2025 (3)

The Care and Feeding of Series

3 Nov, 2025

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Reactor sometimes passes on articles. This one, for example, would have been a moderation nightmare.

Series are great! Writers have the security of knowing there is a market for the installment on which they are working, publishers can confidently predict sales, and readers have the comfort of knowing there is more of what they liked on the way. Therefore, certain traditions have arisen to better support series. 

Here are five.

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November 2025 Patreon Boost

1 Nov, 2025

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You too can be one of the legions of James Nicoll Review supporters, financing my slow but steady advance towards review aleph null! With review three thousand in my rear view mirror, a countable infinity can’t possibly be all that far away!

(I majored in poly-sci econ, not mathematics)

Your options are: 

  • Send money via Paypal for the pure joy of giving me money. 
  • Commission a specific review..
  • Join my Patreon here.
  • Bundles of non-sequential fifty dollar bills, briefcases of bearer bonds or ingots of gold, platinum, or eka-thorium.

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Books Received, October 25 — October 31

1 Nov, 2025

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Dreamland by Olivie Blake (August 2026)

The headlines are calling it the summer of exsanguination” in LA — girls are being murdered, the Santa Ana winds are blowing a strange energy into the city, and all signs point to fire season. 

More pressing for Anya Morris, though, is the drudgery of living at home, working part time at the family store, and contending with her mother’s disdain for the acting career Anya knows she’s destined for but that feels more impossible by the day. It’s in this suffocating late summer heat that Anya receives a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, an invitation to work for the de Witt family, one of LA’s most influential film dynasties. Soon, she’s spending her days and nights at their strange villa high in the Hollywood hills, where she meets Jude, a recluse who is both the family’s heir apparent and its most closely guarded secret. 

There’s a magnetism to Jude that Anya cannot resist, despite warning signs that scream like sirens in the night. Because the villa holds generations of bloodstained history, and an occult family curse may even live within its walls — or within Jude himself. In this city, everyone cuts a deal with the devil. When Anya comes face to face with a devil of her own, she’ll learn just how far she’s willing to go to get everything she’s ever wanted. 

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