This was like Reader II, except it omnibized Star Treks 5, 6, and 7, which had the misfortune of mostly consisting of those bizarre and awful episodes classic Trek did in Season 3.
02 January 2005
Archival Review: The Star Trek Reader III by James Blish
This was like Reader II, except it omnibized Star Treks 5, 6, and 7, which had the misfortune of mostly consisting of those bizarre and awful episodes classic Trek did in Season 3.
Archival Review: Star Trek: A Time to Heal by David Mack
You know, after his super-debut in Invincible and Wildfire, I'm becoming somewhat less enamored of Mr. Mack. This book is more OMG KEWL ACTION! except here it's interspersed with the TNG cast at its most ineffectual (I'm not sure anything a main character does actually substantially contributes to the resolution), as well as somewhat out-of-character. The politics, which I eagerly anticipated, are, well, kinda dumb. I have trouble seeing how Min Zife could have been elected to oversee the township zoning commission, much less a hundred-plus-planet interstellar nation, and the idea that a cabinet member would take a month off his job to personally arrange for the disposition of illicit cargo is stupid beyond belief. Hopefully A Time for War, A Time for Peace handles the politicking a bit better. This book flounders romantically, too, with Peart/Perim. It's take on Crusher/Picard is not much better, since it turns Bev Crusher into a pining schoolgirl.
Archival Review: Star Trek Fotonovel #3: The Trouble with Tribbles by David Gerrold
Archival Review: Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix by J. K. Rowling
This was a reread 'cause we got the paperback. It's probably one of the weaker Potter books-- maybe on par with Goblet of Fire, which at least had a gripping end sequence to make up for a plodding beginning. Dumbledore's a big dope as he himself points out, but then so is Harry, which is glossed over. Still, the examination of the flaws in Harry's character and his previously oh-so-wonderful parents are some of the reasons this series is not usual kiddie fare.
Archival Review: The Star Trek Reader II by James Blish
This is an omnibus of James Blish's classic Trek novelizations (though short storyizations is more accurate), specifically Star Treks 1, 4, and 9 (kinda random). It was typical James Blish. The early stuff was most interesting, since it would often wildly differ from the episodes.
Archival Review: Star Trek: S.C.E. #40: Failsafe by David Mack
This book could best be summed up with OMG KEWL ACTION! because I'm not really sure there was anything beyond that here. David Mack is rapidly becoming my least favorite Trek author to handle romance: even John Vornholt's are built up to and seem semi-plausible. But Ambramowitz/Hawkins? Okeday, then. Hurrah for being totally random. 'Bout the only worthwhile thing this story does is wrap up Gomez's feelings about Duffy being gone... which would've been more useful if we'd seen these feelings in the preceding books, or if they hadn't already been wrapped up in Breakdowns.
30 August 2004
Archival Review: Star Trek: Vulcan's Soul, Book I: Exodus by Josepha Sherman & Susan Shwartz
I read Vulcan's Forge and Heart when each came out, but since (like this one) they were all library reads, I've never reread them. I remember Forge as very good and Heart as fine, and must say that Exodus only falls into the category of fine as well. My biggest problem was the 24th-century plotline. As repeated ad nauseam on TrekBBS and Psi Phi, I don't really buy the idea that Uhura and Chekov function perfectly well into the post-Dominion War era (though I did like the authors' take on Chekov; Uhura less so). Curiously for a book that brings so many classic characters into the modern era, it seems to establish McCoy is dead.
The Watraii subplot and structure of the novel makes the whole thing feel like The Sundered II: The Vulcan Version. Hopefully the obvious route of the Vulcans-in-exile being the Watraii won't be followed. Or at least, it was obvious to me-- Killian Melloy at Wigglefish seemed to entirely miss it.
Not much seemed to happen in the 24th century, aside from some stereotypical our-heroes-ignore-orders business, but I did rather like the character of Karatek in the memory sections. He was a well-drawn ordinary man in extraordinary circumstances, always one of my favorite kinds of characters, and his relationship with his adoptive children was very touching.
Overall, the book was decent, but nothing too exciting. Maybe 6/10?
28 August 2004
Archival Review: Blue Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson
Blue Mars
Overall, this was probably my second favorite of the "Color Mars" Trilogy. I was very slow to get into it. However, by this point Robinson has refined almost all of his main characters, making them all very interesting and flesh-out, as opposed to the one-dimensional cyphers they were in Red Mars. I even liked Ann and Maya this time round, though it took me until almost the end of the book for the former.
The only viewpoint character I didn't really like was Jackie's daughter Zo; she was definitely the worst viewpoint character across all three books. Hiroko was actually bearable this time around, mostly because she spent the entire book missing. This was good, because I'd never really bought Hiroko as a character; she was always felt unmotivated to me, and I could never figure out why she was held in such high esteem; I personally just felt she was weird. Unfortunately Nirgal, Art, and Nadia draw the short-straw here after some wonderful fleshing out in Green Mars; the latter two's character arc is just kinda dropped and never concluded.
Throughout most of the book, my real problem was that I didn't really know what it was about. Red was about the colonizing and first revolution; Green was about the second revolution. Though Blue was initially about building a new Martian government (and there was some neat stuff here), the middle of the book felt pretty aimless to me. The end introduced the immigration crisis, but it was at this time I realized what the book was actually about.
Unlike the first two, Blue Mars is not really about the history of Mars. This novel is about long life, and the problems of living the centuries that the First Hundred can. Michel returning home to Provencal was one of the best parts of the novel; the looking-back provided was wonderful. Maya coping with her increasing distance from her own past (a plotline introduced in Green) was also very interesting. Sax's determination to solve this problem gave a strong focus to the end of the novel, because we saw through him and through Maya just how serious this memory problem was.
The best part of the problem was, well... the solution. The scene where Sax summons the remaining Hundred to Underhill, and they take the treatment was downright wonderful. If any part of the book was going to move me to tears, this was it. Sax's almost stream-of-consciousness rush of memories was extraordinary. The ending was also great in that it finally restored the bond the Hundred had had during the journey on the Ares but lost since. As the memories poured in, for the first time in centuries, the Hundred understood one another once more, and lost the distance that had been created between them. Sax and Ann finally figuring out why they were antagonists was great; as were the two brief bits with them rock climbing and sailing. (By the by, Sax's boat is almost as cool as the Zygote boulder-cars. Almost.)
Though I have had much praise for the book here, I would still place it second beneath Green Mars because of its lack of a strong plotline (the memory thing and coping with being so old is more of a theme until the very end) but above the plodding story and one-dimensional characters of Red Mars.
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