James Nicoll Reviews

Alexis Hall’s 2026 Hell’s Heart is an upcoming (in a few weeks) space opera.

In another time, a melancholic like Ish might have tried to escape their doldrums by signing on to a doomed quest, such as a pursuit of a nigh-legendary whale. God took whales from humans when they spurned his gracious gift by refusing to harvest them, so that is no longer an option¹.

Not to worry! The Solar System may no longer have whales. It very much does have leviathans of the deep… in Jupiter.

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Alexis Hall’s 2019 The Affair of the Mysterious Letter is a standalone fantasy mystery. 

Wounded in the war against the Empress of Nothing, Captain John Wyndham returns not to Ey, the straitlaced home of his youth, but to his college town, the cosmopolitan city of Kelathra-Ven. Despite years spent away at the front, John is at heart still a small-town boy. 

He ends up rooming with the flamboyantly decadent sorcerer(ess) Shaharazad Haas. Haas appreciates Wyndham for his placid toleration of Haas’ eccentricities. 

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