Latest posts
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The Starless World
Pros: A thoroughly enjoyable story, engagingly told, and perfectly situated in the world of Star Trek. The amount of tension, mystery, and science is enough not only to make this a viable product for an episode of the series, but I believe this is weighty enough to have been a whole feature length film. All…
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Vulcan!
Pros: There are a few things to enjoy here, and certainly one of the foremost is the cover. Even though the Arachnae creatures and Dr. Tremain do not resemble their descriptions in the novel, the style and coloring are outstanding as well as highlighting the main focus of the novel, namely Tremain being stranded alone…
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The Book of Three
There are few books who can claim a more formative role in my life than this one. I couldn’t say for certain the year, but what can be sure is that in the earliest years of the 1990s, the edition pictured above was one of the precious purchases from the quite magical yearly book fair…
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The Peacekeepers
Pros: Like its predecessor, Ghost Ship, this is a fully realized novel that earns its length. The plot is streamlined with little in the way of diversion or tangent, the characters are, in the main, faithfully rendered and respectfully handled, and the novel offers an interesting and challenging premise that fits firmly in the realm…
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Planet of Judgment
Pros: The writing here is of a much more professional caliber. For the first time in the novels, there is a direct correlation between Kirk, Spock, McCoy and their television counterparts, and scenes are infused with mannerisms and character ticks that make everyone project three dimensional images. It would be easy to fault the story…
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A Princess of Mars
Pros: There is something wonderfully magical about this book. Every time I come to it I’m amazed by its transportative qualities. Not simply transporting the reader to the mystical fields of distant Barsoom, but to a time in history when Mars itself was much more of a mystery and the conventions of science fiction had…
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Imzadi
Pros: This story is clearly told with a lot of love for the feature characters, and the topic is of immediate interest from the first moments that Will Riker comes face to face with Deanna in “Encounter at Farpoint”(1:1). David has a very strong feel for these characters, and I think this is the first…
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Shoeless Joe
Pros: It is very difficult to divorce this work from the more famous film that is based upon it, but much of what has made the movie so enduring is certainly original here. Ray Kinsella is certainly an ardent apostle in the church of baseball, and his love of the sport bleeds through on every…
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The Price of the Phoenix
Pros: Some of the philosophical ideas here are very in line with the questions that Star Trek has always been enamored of asking. What constitutes the individual? What are the limits and value of the Prime Directive? What is the moral value of created lifeforms? Despite the fact that this novel does not attack these…
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The Spy: A Tale of the Neutral Ground
Pros: Like the other works from Cooper that I’ve had the pleasure to engage with, here he finds these lovely and powerful moments that seem to elevate the work as a whole. These are seldom sustained and are often confined to the novel’s latter stages, but it is no less true here. A short discussion…
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Ghost Ship
Pros: Overall very strong first outing for the Next Generation novel series. Were this to be a filmed episode, it certainly would have ranked as one of the stronger first season entries. Unlike the early Original Series works, there seems to be fully formed characters here that in the main faithfully reflect their on screen…
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Spock, Messiah!
Pros: Compared to Spock Must Die, the overall writing style is stronger here both in description and characterization [See “Outnumbered though they were…scenes out of Dante’s Inferno” (87)]. The scientific premise of using a device that telepathically pairs a Starfleet surveyor with a native for the purposes of allowing the surveyor to speak and behave…
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Horus Rising
Pros: The novel is written solidly and with a talented hand. Abnett does a good job at recreating much of the preexisting aesthetic of the Warhammer 40K universe in a recognizable way that makes it immediately familiar to anyone who has spent time in the worlds of the game. One of the largest hurdles the…
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Solomon’s Seal
Pros: This is a story excellently told. It is crafted with great skill and care for the subjects with which it treats. Told from the perspective of its narrator and protagonist, Roy Slingsby, the tale follows him from quagmired estate agent and amateur stamp collector to the centerpiece of an island revolution on the far…
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Pacific Vortex
Pros: This is quite an easy read. It was the matter of a single day’s reading as I sat beside mom in the hospital. It has all the elements, the good and the bad, of a James Bond film and an Indiana Jones film. From feme fatales to mysterious lost civilizations, the adventure misses no…
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Spock Must Die!
Pros: Though not the first time Star Trek has tackled transporter malfunction doubles (The Enemy Within) this story poses one of my favorite Trek questions. If man has a soul, does it survive the process of being transported? Great use of contemporary scientific theory to support the fiction (tachyons, Hilbert space). The pace is swift…