History is usually written by the victors, which often means that certain facts are left out or certain figures are deliberately misrepresented. Richard III, who has the dubious reputation as one of the most reviled kings in English history, is perhaps the paradigmatic example of a history written by the winning side. He was reviled by the Tudor apologist Thomas More and immortalized as an evil and crippled hunchback in the play of William Shakespeare. It is, ironically enough, his notoriety that has attracted his most ardent apologists, most notably the Richard III Society - formed in 1924 by a group of amateur who believed that Richard III had been unjustly vilified throughout history and thus took upon them the task of defending his reputation (read more at www.richardiii.net). The revisionist attempts of Richard III’s supporters generally fail to elicit academic approval, yet this type of historical revisionism has been extremely successful within the genre of historical fiction where novels such as Sharon K. Penman’s meticulously researched Sunne in Splendour offers a portrait of Richard that is vastly different from Shakespeare’s infamous villain.

Freda Warrington’s novel The Court of the Midnight King is part of this particular tradition of Ricardian historical fiction, but she takes the revisionism a step further by intertwining the story of Richard with another secret history. Warrington’s representation of 15th century England differs from the conventional historical knowledge on several points. She paints a world where paganism hasn’t been entirely suppressed by Christianity. Alongside the world of men and priests thus exists a hidden world of goddess worship, here represented as a uniquely female brand of spirituality. Warrington’s novel thus also draws upon the “feminist” tradition of historical fantasy in the vein of Marion Zimmer Bradley.

The basic plot of The Court of the Midnight King spans the period of civil war in England, known as the Wars of the Roses, experienced through the eyes of Katherine Lytton and Raphael Hart. They are both children of Yorkist sympathizers and their families suffer because of the allegiance of their fathers. More importantly, both Kate and Raphael are children of women who travel the hidden path of the Earth Goddess, the Serpent Mother Auset – and both of them cross paths with Richard III. Raphael is orphaned by Lancastrian forces at a very young age, a trauma that leaves his without memory and open to visions when he is found by the victorious Yorkists. He forms an immediate connection to Richard, the young Duke of Gloucester and brother of Edward IV. He later enters the household of Richard of Gloucester as one of his most loyal and trusted knights.

Whereas Raphael is an orphan who makes Richard his family, Kate grows up in a household shaped by an ailing father and a strong mother. Like her mother, Kate is inducted into the mysteries of the Sisterhood of Auset and must therefore straddle two very different worlds, something she finds extremely hard to do. In order to avoid a distasteful marriage, Kate leaves her family home and enters into the service of the Neville family, one of the great powers behind the Yorkist regime. First as a lady-in-waiting to Isabelle Neville who is wed to George, the Duke of Clarence and brother of Edward. After Isabelle’s death in childbirth, Kate enters the service of Anne Neville who is married to Richard of Gloucester with whom Kate has an ambivalent and tension-ridden relationship.

It is through the eyes of Kate and Raphael that Warrington tells Richard’s story – a story that the astute reader will find significantly different from the “official” one yet still based on a thorough knowledge of the period and events in question. When it comes to the figure of Richard and the Wars of the Roses, Warrington’s narrative doesn’t deviate very much from historical fact – one event is decisively altered but she has otherwise simply presented her interpretations of some the unsolved riddles of Richard’s reign, fx the fate of the Edward IV’s two sons.

Warrington’s novel offers an alternate history in the sense that she creates a world suffused where women’s spirituality has not altogether been assimilated by the Christian Church and where women can wield spiritual and magical power, albeit in a hidden way, across the otherwise dividing lines of social class and political faction. Warrington presents the reader with a world animated by spirit, a world where nature is quite literally alive in the form of elemental spirits as well as the hidden world of Faerie. Warrington intensely descriptive prose borders on the “flowery” or “purple”, but it is quite suited to the strange and enchanted world that she has created – and it is precisely this atmosphere of “enchantment” that is one of the novel’s strongest points.

When it comes to character, Warrington’s work is somewhat uneven. Kate is by far the novel’s strongest and most engaging character. She is feisty, head-strong and passionate, which I found very appealing and if she sometimes sounded too much like a modern woman, then her status as a priestess of Auset makes her opinions and attitudes quite plausible in relation to the narrative’s inner logic. Richard remains a ubiquitous yet elusive character as the reader only experience him through the eyes of others. To Raphael, Richard is the embodiment of knightly virtue and the epitome of royal authority. Kate, however, has changing opinions of Richard, which helps the reader to discern the nuances and flaws the Raphael’s shining idolism cannot detect. Kate is at once attracted and repulsed by Richard, attracted by his obvious charisma yet repulsed by his fearful, priggish and judgemental attitude towards the Sisterhood of Auset and the hidden world.

Raphael is by far the weakest among Warrington’s characters. He doesn’t really seem to be distinguished by anything else than his honourable behaviour and devout loyalty. He is a rather bland and uninteresting character, which lead me to question his function in the story. As it turns out, Raphael and his visions has quite an important function in The Court of the Midnight King because Warrington does not only wish to write an alternate history about Richard III, she also wants to interrogate his infamous reputation. In order to do so, Warrington resorts to two different strategies. Firstly, she introduces a separate narrative, set in a contemporary college environment where a young female student becomes fascinated with the enigma of Richard III and quietly attempts to unravel fact from fiction when it comes to his reputation. Secondly, Warrington lets Raphael be haunted with a series of sinister and prophetic visions about Richard that essentially corresponds to some of the most infamous aspects of his posthumous reputation. The problem is just that Warrington handles these aspects of the narrative very clumsily. The sinister nature of Raphael’s visions are not really consonant with the story’s internal logic and they appear jarring, and in one instance, downright ridiculous. The contemporary narrative doesn’t work any better. For the most part it appears utterly unconnected to the central story and when the two narratives begins to intersect, Warrington’s writing disintegrates into a heavy purple prose and a florid and romantic form of mysticism that doesn’t suit the novel at all. She would have done better to stick to the central narrative of an alternate 15th century England and leave the interrogation of Richard III’s reputation well alone. As it is, her clumsy handling of Richard’s historical infamy remains the novel’s deepest flaw as it mars an otherwise fascinating narrative. Fortunately, the reader has the option of simply bypassing the contemporary narrative as it is largely unconnected to central storyline and enjoy the rest of the story.

Trine D. Paulsen

Star Trek has always been known for throwing plenty of backstory out there in passing in its episodes, to pave the way for an hour of television. That backstory is then largely forgotten in future episodes since the majority of Star Trek’s run on television has involved stand-alone episodes. That leaves plenty of fertile ground for authors to fill in, which would certainly be a reason why Star Trek tie-in novels are as prolific as they are.

Star Trek Terok Nor tells the story of the occupation of Bajor by the Cardassians. Star Trek: The Next Generation first brought us the story of Bajor in a few of its later season episodes. It then became one of the main storylines of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. The very final episode of the show showed us an ending of the story. Day of the Vipers by James Swallow shows us the beginning of the story. Terok Nor, as we learned on Deep Space Nine, was the Cardassians name for the space station when it was under their control. At this point however, the space station that would become the crown jewel of Cardassia’s occupation of Bajor, and later Deep Space Nine, is only a distant dream.

The novel stretches over a ten-year period, from the first Cardassian vessel traveling to make first contact with the Bajorans, all the way through the days immediately following the beginning of the occupation.

Given the timeframe of the novel most of the characters that we meet are new original characters for this story. However a young Dukat, before he becomes the Gul Dukat who is a recurring character all throughout the run of Deep Space Nine, is one of the central characters of the book. In the beginning he is the first officer of the first vessel to visit Bajor. We then watch him move up in the ranks and in power and influence throughout the novel. More importantly to a good story we learn WHY he is driven to move up in the ranks and to make it his mission to see Bajor under Cardassian rule. There is more to the story than simply waking up in the morning, deciding to hop into a spaceship and make a trip at warp speed to begin a long and complex campaign to take over the world of another civilization.

Make no mistake about it, the Cardassians are the villains of the story. But like good villains that aren’t one-dimensional they have motivations for behaving as they do. It is not evil for evil’s sake. In their minds they are entirely justified in doing what they do. Cardassia is a very resource poor world with a population that scrapes by to provide the essentials. In Bajor, they see a world that has a bounty of resources that they under-appreciate to the point of being wasteful. In Cardassian eyes they are lazy, undisciplined, and underachieving as a society and need a “firm Cardassian rule in order to make something of themselves.

Within the overall cultural motivations we have a variety of personal motivations ranging from the desire to best serve Cardassia, to personal ambitions of wealth and power, to motivations of religious faith. On the other side of the coin Cardassia was able to exploit a number of Bajoran motivations as well. Bajor didn’t willingly cede its world over to an alien race. There were segments of their society that welcomes an alliance for a variety of reasons, some personal and some societal. All of these sub-plots swirl beneath the main plot, the one we know from being Star Trek fans, and come together in the climax, in a number of surprising ways. While the end result is anticipated, the events along the way are quite surprising at times.

James Swallow wrote a very complex story and had a very good grasp of all the characters. He gave us a very good cross section of both Bajoran and Cardassian societies, from religious clerics, to politicians and their political power grabs, to career soldiers, to secret operatives, and maybe especially of Mace Darrah. Darrah is a Bajorian Militiaman who is determined to uphold his duty and serve his people as a lawman even as his society and his marriage crumble around him. While Dukat is the central villain of the story, Mace Darrah is the central hero. Given the nature of the story he was never going to have a totally heroic victory in this book. But he did get a nice little personal victory. Perhaps the stage is set for him to make a heroic comeback against all odds. But maybe he will suffer a heroic and tragic death to set the stage for the rise of other resistance fighters, such as Kira Nerys. According to her backstory she is born about 15 years after the end of this book. One would presume that she will factor into the next book based on the timeline, and the fact that she’s on the cover of the next book. Heroes inspire other heroes, so perhaps Mace Darrah will become Kira’s role model. We will see.

Throughout the story kept moving at a fast pace, even as it got more and more complex with the addition of conspiracies and even conspiracies within conspiracies. The story was well managed and was extremely plausible.

Another thing I liked was that not only was the story not Federation-centric but it didn’t cast the Federation in a particularly favorable light. They are not eager to get involved, for reasons from their point of view that are strategically plausible. It’s easy to understand Bajor’s later distrust of the Federation. It goes to show that the Federation isn’t always a bunch of Boy Scouts. Their policies are sometimes dictated by politics and other concerns just as any real organization would be. So while we had plenty of Star Trek science fiction in this story, it also maintained a strong grip on plausible reality. I thought this was a good story that just happened to be told in the Star Trek universe.

My biggest concern coming into “Day of the Vipers” would be whether or not I would care about all the new characters that we would see in the story, especially since the majority of them will probably be ground beneath the wheels of time as the series progresses over a period of about 52 years from beginning to end. For the most part these are forerunners to the characters that are “near and dear. But thankfully Swallow did not create Jar Jar Binks and gave us characters that add to the richness of the Star Trek universe, not characters that are best forgotten. Day of the Vipers was an outstanding beginning of the trilogy. We’ll see if the authors who will be concluding the series give us as compelling of a story. I rate Day of the Vipers as a 7.5.

Jeri Smith-Ready’s Wicked Game is a fun little vampire yarn with some interesting new twists. While some of those new twists bring on new thoughts that I might prefer never to have come up, others may enjoy them for what they are. Wicked Game tells the story of a small town radio station manned by vampires stuck in their respective ‘birth years’ and thus the experts on each era’s music. While they have a cozy gig at the station with an understanding boss and onsite apartments designed to protect them, their future with the station is on shaky ground with they find out it could be sold to a huge radio conglomerate famous for homogenizing their stations.

Ciara Griffin is a small time con artist looking to go legitimate with a regular job. When she hears about an internship at the local radio station, she’s all for it. But she isn’t yet aware that the famous DJs are actually vampires and that her internship might be a little more exciting than she expected. Getting through the interview, while horribly dreaded and sweated through, winds up being the easiest part of the job. Ciara soon learns that WMMP’s revenues must go up by a large percent in a short period of time in order to keep the radio station going as it is. Her resulting mad dash to increase revenues creates some wonderful publicity, a load of new listeners and a media storm that causes more problems than it solves.

This book is definitely a fun and interesting twist on the urban vampire tale that has become so popular these days. Expect adult situations, blood, death and a healthy seasoning of cheesy puns for a light stew fit for an enjoyable evening spent on the couch at leisure.

Captain Kirk’s Guide to Women is written by John “Bones” Rodriguez, who is admitted Star Trek fan. It takes a Star Trek fan to write this book and a Star Trek fan to appreciate it. The subtitle of the book on the first page is “How to Romance Any Woman In the Galaxy”. Obviously this book is meant to be tongue-in-cheek and does not take itself too seriously. Nor should its reader. Nor its reviewer. So I fully intended to cut this book some slack. I am a Star Trek fan so I expected to enjoy this book in the spirit that it was intended.

I went into the book expecting humor. It did deliver a bit. In general though it wasn’t terribly funny. It also tried to be somewhat serious and be something of a self help book for Star Trek fans who I suppose are futile with the fairer sex. The message preached through the example of James T. Kirk’s captainly exploits, partially on the bridge of the Enterprise but mostly as they directly related to his many female encounters, is to be confident, goal oriented, and “boldly go” with regards to women. The poor alternative is to be passive, or nondescript background dressing like a Red Shirt. They tend to die quickly and so will your relationships I guess.

That’s a pretty good message. But a self-help or motivational book is probably going to need a bit more example and build up of the reader’s confidence than merely entries on all of the women that Captain Kirk encountered throughout the series. While these entries tried to incorporate humor using episode-centric in-jokes, it didn’t really work and the entries looked more like something out of a baseball reference book. Except this subject matter does not really lend itself to that.

So I got a laugh or two out of Captain Kirk’s Guide To Women, but not as many as I’d expected. So it didn’t find its niche as a funny or satirical book. I also saw the positive messages that he filled the book with. But if I needed relationship help I think Relationships For Dummies would probably be a more comprehensive help book. Thus, it also doesn’t find a niche as a motivational book.

What it is is a quirky book. I can’t even call it a must have book for Trekkies. If you’re one of those who desperately wants to know the entire list of 21 women who Kirk had involvement with during the series, as well as the actresses who portrayed them, this book might be for you. If you just can’t live with not having a Star Trek book on your bookshelf, at least this one comes in at 84 pages so it doesn’t take up much room at all, and it’s a quick read.

I didn’t have tremendous high expectations for Captain Kirk’s Guide To Women. I expected a light hearted quick and easy read that would give me some laughter. I don’t see how the classic 0-10 scale really applies in this case. I couldn’t in any good conscience give this more than a 5 being more of a novelty or gimmick book. I would have given credit where it was due, but I think I’ve done enough reviews to know what a 9 or a 10 is to me. 85 pages of this type of material just couldn’t reach that level But I don’t think it hit its desired target especially well so I really think that a 1 on my scale applies. There was no “enjoyment”. Without a high level of humor it was just a quick 80 page reference book of Captain Kirk’s conquests. If I was going to heartily enjoy a Star Trek reference book there would be other topics I would go for if I was going to pull one off the shelf.

I’m sorry Captain Kirk’s Guide to Women, but like Captain Kirk’s relationships themselves you are brief, shallow, and quickly forgotten.

There are four young dragon riders and four dragons whose destiny is to seek out the Dragon Oracle.

This first book in a new young adult series starts with a meeting. Elian, a young boy, whose life changes when he encounters a Dawn Dragon – Aurora.
In a far away land a young girl, Nolita, also encounters her dragon, Firestorm.
However, they both have quite different reactions to their destinies. Elian embraces his, were Nolita flees from hers.

However, four dragons and their riders are required to carry out the Dragon Oracles quest. To find Four Orbs.
Without Nolita and Firestorm the future is uncertain for Dragon kind.

Personal Thoughts – I like dragon stories. There is something about dragons that feels fantastical to me, so it was a delight to get to read a new series based on dragons.

The story begins with Elian when he meets his dragon, Aurora – a lovely name I felt for a dragon. He soon sets aside his fears and embraces his destiny.
However a dragon hunting party tracks the pair. Another young rider, Kira, and her dragon Longfang come to Elian's rescue. And we learn that Aurora can move between worlds.

When the two dragons and their riders join up for the same journey, we get to learn a bit more about dragons and what motivates them. I enjoyed the bonding process between riders and dragons as each dealt with their situations uniquely.

Their journey to the Oracle brings them to Nolita, who is shunning Firestorm, due to a terrible fear of dragons. Nolita’s issues give this story an interest twist as she must face her fears before she can carry out part of the Oracle’s Quest.

The dragons for me are the most enjoyable characters. Their world is interesting, I liked the idea of duty and destiny which influence their actions. And there were plenty of unanswered questions about their society for the next book.

The strangest character is Kasau, the dragon hunter. He is shrouded in mystery throughout the story. We’re never told how he can sense the dragons or why he is driven to kill them. Plenty of questions left unanswered with his character too.
I couldn’t help but dislike him a little though, as I grew quite attached to the dragons.

Plenty of interesting ideas in this first book and a good start to lead us into a more volatile situation as the series continues.

In the 1100s, a group of twelve knights on the Crusaders received an mystic lily from an angel of the Lord in North Africa. The lily conferred unique powers to each of the knights—such as psychic power and the ability to crush bones from afar. Upon returning from the Holy Land with a sacred relic, the knights created a powerful order that was eventually undermined by the Church. As a result, the sacred lily was hidden away and a council of twelve continued the order in secret.

In 1890, three descendants of the original twelve knights find themselves searching for the relic. They each have gifts from the lily; but many of the descendants also have been cursed—they have a tendency to go mad.

In London, chilly Miranda travels to her stern and unknown grandparents, because her mother has been put in an asylum. Miranda has been taken away from her mother's world of artists and suffragist activists to live with her father’s family, who are ashamed that she is illegitimate. Her only solace is her deck of tarot cards, which allow her see the patterns of the future.

In a tower outside Prague, lonely deformed Jacinth, a Parisian orphan, lives in isolation. She is visited by her jailor/caretaker Nicolas Tremayne, who bids her to use her gift of farsight—a sort of astral projection---to find other descendants of the lily. Jacinth’s journeys provide some of the most luminous descriptions in the novel:

"She rose up, hovering just above the bed for a moment or two, and then rising higher to the ceiling…She floated through the top of the tower, then drifted in the air above it. Filled with a surge of energy, she shot up, like an arrow, into the sky and through billows of rain clouds that would have chilled and wetted her, had she possessed a body….She lingered for a moment, high in the atmosphere, hundred of feet up, the face of the earth obscured by white and silver cloud."

And in the Irish countryside, young Jack meets the ancient and laudanum-addicted James Maslin in his seemingly abandoned ancestral home. He discovers Maslin's terrible curse—the ability to see into past that puts him into a deathlike trance, and his connection to the lily and Tremaynes.

Ms. Singleton weaves together these storylines in a narrative that travels across locales, time periods and even space. The pacing is as gripping as Dan Brown’s bestselling The DaVinci Code; she mines religious conspiracy tropes with historical accuracy and a fervent belief in the supernatural. Though marketed as a young adult title, it has significant crossover appeal.

Ms. Singleton is one of the premier stylists in speculative fiction. Her prose is like poetry and belongs on the same shelf as such prose-magicians as Patricia McKillip, Tanith Lee and Jack Vance.

She's a writer's writer; her attention to craft adds a richness to the twisty plot that is missing from most thrillers. Her characterizations are poignant; even the villains have a human aspect. For now, Singleton's work is only available in the UK, but two US editions of her previous novels are coming out in the near future. Here’s hoping that they garner enough praise to have this fine novel get a wider readership.

Queenpin is the story of a young woman in a nameless town, presumably somewhere in the US. She catches the eye of Gloria Denton, a woman working with the mob, involved in several illegal activities. The young woman – who is not named during the course of the book – impresses Gloria, and Gloria takes her under her wing and begins teaching her the ropes. She launders money, makes deliveries and pick-ups, and in general, runs errands for Gloria.

However, when our young apprentice gets herself in a bind she has to decide how far she’s prepared to go to protect herself.

If you do not wish to be exposed to any spoilers, you should stop reading now. In order to write an objective in-depth assessment of the work the content must be referred to. Otherwise you end up saying, “It isn’t good” or “I didn’t like it” or something comparably generic, and that isn’t a critical assessment – it’s a judgment that’s unsupported.

The first thing I had trouble with was the anchorless aspect. I had the southwest in my head just by assumption, but was completely thrown by a comment one of the characters made, referring to the police as “Mounties”. Perhaps it’s because I’m a Canadian, and the Mounties have been our national police force for 88 years, and prior to that part of the country was policed by the RNWMP, who were also dubbed Mounties… But it pulled me right out of the story. I was baffled – had Americans ever called their police Mounties? Maybe they had, but as I tried to search online to see if I could support the phrase I was disconnected from the experience of reading the book. At the time, I could only find Canadian references to Mounties, so I eventually returned to the book with the nagging question weighing on my brain. I have since been told that county cops in some places are sometimes called Mounties, but this was one of the main reasons the anchorless aspect of the book didn’t work for me. I can speculate that it’s supposed to be Any Town USA – much the same as not naming the protagonist makes her Any Woman – but suggesting any town in the US is a reach. I would assume the intent is to suggest the events could happen anywhere, but I’m not sure I agree. In the Bible belt? Doubtful. And it was something I was prompted to think about when I hit the Mountie line, because I certainly didn’t believe it could be Any Town Canada.

Another reason the anchorless aspect didn’t work for me was because I never got a sense of place. Perhaps the fact that I’m not American worked against me. After reading the book I spoke to a few other people. One had assumed it was set in New Jersey, another suggested Kansas City, and Chicago-area was also suggested. It’s for the reader to decide if that matters to them, and some readers may not be bothered by this at all.

This brings me to the idea of the protagonist as Any Woman, or Every Woman. Neither sit well with me, perhaps because I am a woman, and the protagonist isn’t any woman I’ve ever known.

I could believe in Gloria. From the scars she carried to her ability to read people to the way she handled herself situation after situation I fully believed in her as a very tough, shrewd woman managing herself in a dangerous criminal enterprise, always looking out for her own best interests first, but still having the capacity to care about her underling and try to shield her. She brought that feminine aspect to her job: After discovering her apprentice had betrayed her, had Gloria been a man I feel certain the book would have ended there, or at least been forced to change narrators by necessity of the death of our protagonist. Instead, Gloria shows mercy.

However, what I didn’t believe in was Gloria giving her young apprentice so much rope so fast after the apprentice betrayed her. I believed Gloria spotted the carefully executed con in a heartbeat, only waiting to confirm the details before confronting her underling. When Gloria confronts her it’s chilling. Scenes like that showcase Abbott’s obvious ability to create tension and leave a reader on the edge of their seat, as they wait to see what will happen.

Throughout the story we’re given the impression through the protagonist’s own communication with police that almost all the local officers are on the take, paid to the look the other way, and the ones who aren’t can’t get around their shady bosses and make any charges stick.

That left me wondering how it was possible that there would be a huge shake-up in the police department, new cops coming in who weren’t on mob payroll, without Gloria knowing about it. If Gloria’s bosses wanted to hang her out to dry, and had cut her out of the loop in order to expose her, I could have accepted that. However, if that were the case they wouldn’t have been persuaded not to move against Gloria’s apprentice after her betrayal, and there is no indication that was the case from within the story.

In other words, this foolproof, tightly run criminal enterprise was really a boat with holes taking on so much water you couldn’t bail it out fast enough.

Which brings us back to our protagonist. Why did she want the life? I really have no idea. I guess it came down to easy money, escaping poverty. Whatever the case, we’re presented with a girl who seems to have good instincts for deceit from the beginning, but who is unable to control herself and stay focused. This is where several little problems come up.

For one thing, you can’t plan attraction. There was nothing ever to indicate what appealed to our young apprentice, and you also can’t rely on luck to attract attention. Vic, our protagonist’s love interest, does nothing to try to get her, specifically, to notice him. As someone who went in and out of casinos daily, our protagonist would have witnesses scenes like the one that ultimately introduces her to Vic many times before. Seeing high rollers on a winning streak would be nothing new. Her sudden, compelling interest in him is a fluke, and that’s what makes it hard to believe it was all part of a carefully planned, elaborate con job.

Add to that, her sexual predilections. I had trouble with this. As much as I don’t enjoy reading pages and pages of graphic sex, vague references to doing that and that were as generic as the nameless protagonist and unidentified location were intended to be, and didn’t work for me either. I suppose the reader is expected to fill in the blanks with what extreme sexual activities we think fit the bill, but perhaps I’ve read too many books that contained just enough extreme sex for me to be left thinking whatever this girl conceived in her mind as being that dirty and unspeakable probably wasn’t that dirty. I had the feeling I was supposed to be shocked by their activities, but this rang hollow for me, since I didn’t know what they were doing. There were other things in the book that did shock me, but this wasn’t one of them.

And again, being a perfect sexual fit for someone isn’t something you can scheme that easily. It’s one thing if you’re seducing a much older woman who’s lonely, but this is a young, attractive woman who could have her pick of men to satisfy her. She’s also in a business that requires discretion, and she’s not going to settle for average in the relationship department.

Our protagonist’s sexual addiction to Vic was another problem for me. She becomes the infatuated teenager with stars in her eyes who can’t keep her legs together – and blows off her job at times to satisfy her urges. One thing to note from that is how careless that is, particularly in her line of work, and then again, we’re asked to believe her boss doesn’t notice as this goes on for several weeks.

Ultimately, we’re asked to believe this impulsive girl who can’t control herself is going to upstage her boss and outmaneuver her in the end. That’s where the story unraveled completely for me. Whatever her faults, Gloria was always careful. Her life depended on it. She’d been warned before and was never careless. She would have noticed what was going on. One could ask if perhaps it was a test, and speculate that Gloria did see what was coming but wanted her apprentice to walk into the trap so that she could deal with her and try to ensure her future loyalty, but if that was the case Gloria wouldn’t have needed to do anything to handle the situation afterwards. She would have been prepared for all of the fall-out and confronted her underling immediately, which she didn’t do.

I believe Gloria would have been extremely vigilant in the wake of her apprentice’s betrayal. After all, this is a woman with the scars on her chest, demonstrating the lessons she’d been taught about loyalty. It is not just her underling who will be on the chopping block if she screws up again – Gloria herself will fall as well because she stepped out on the limb for her, and she knows it. Therefore, I find it impossible to believe Gloria would have taken such a risk with her apprentice so soon after the betrayal and subsequent murder.

Furthermore, when the cops want to speak to our protagonist, we’re told that she’s been paying attention and is pretty sure Gloria didn’t have anyone following her. And yet she wasn’t paying attention enough before to realize she was being followed, observed? You aren’t a pro at spotting surveillance the first time you try to do it. This is something that would have been part of her job, and early on, at the track, she was tested in her ability to handle unexpected situations.

How could Vic have been planning to set her up from before their first meeting, and our protagonist not even notice?

Finally, we come to the end of the book, and the apprentice has moved up in the world, taking over the equivalent of Gloria’s position with a different boss. Do I believe that another shrewd mastermind of a budding criminal organization in the same town wouldn’t have a better sense of what really happened to Gloria, that the apprentice snitched to the cops?

In a word, no. To not at least be highly suspicious…

We’re asked to believe this young girl is smarter than them all, that for the years of experience within the mob that they have, none of these seasoned criminals can see the truth about her and how disloyal she can be.

The scars on Gloria’s chest were proof enough these people would handle a woman as readily as a man. They didn’t play around.

Which left me wondering how our protagonist managed to have two good legs left to walk away on in the end. Certainly if Amos Mackey could find her, Gloria’s bosses would have come calling first, and demanded their pound of flesh for her sins. I don’t care if their organization was faltering: My impression of these types of criminal organizations is that you don’t let anyone rat you out and live to tell about it.

There are parts within the story that do show what a capable storyteller Abbott is. Ultimately, I found myself more interested in Gloria than our protagonist, which speaks to Abbott’s ability to create compelling characters. The consequences of the apprentice’s betrayal were shocking, and even as a reader not fully engaged in the story I felt the dramatic tension and wanted to know how things would unfold. Perhaps that’s a greater compliment to the author than one would realize, because if you’re fully engrossed in a book that’s working for you, it’s easy to believe in such scenes. It’s much more difficult to pull in someone who hasn’t given themselves over wholly to the world you’re portraying.

While this particular offering of Abbott’s didn’t work for me personally, it has been widely praised and nominated for awards, and I am clearly in the minority with my opinion. All I can say is that I will be seeking out more work by Abbott in the future, in the hopes that other books capitalize on what I perceive to be her strengths.

“Grand Designs” is a collection of 7 novellas, originally published as eBooks, set in the Star Trek Corps of Engineers series. This is the 9th collection of this series, spun off of Star Trek: The Next Generation and Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. When there is a daunting engineering problem, rather than send in a standard Starfleet vessel and crew, Starfleet can send the U.S.S. da Vinci and its Corps of Engineers. Under the command of Captain Montgomery Scott at Starfleet Command, no engineering problem is too great for Captain Gold and his crew.

The collection brought us stories by Allyn Gibson, Kevin Killiany, Dayton Ward & Kevin Dilmore, David Mack, Dave Galanter, and Paul Kupperberg. Almost all of them have written in the Corp of Engineers series before, and that showed as they seemed to have a good handle on the characters. As hinted by the title Grand Designs, all of the projects facing the crew in this book were large, with big implications. I also thought all the stories were original, deviating from the usual Starfleet objectives of diplomacy, conflict resolution, or armed conflict. I found this crew to be very engaging and likeable. As I compared it to a couple other crews from extensions of the Star Trek Universe I found that my interest in this crew of characters was rivaled, in my opinion, only by Peter David’s New Frontiers crew.

I do feel that one cannot just step into this book and read from the beginning. There are events that are referenced repeatedly in the novellas which I would presume occurred in a recent book. The crew is still reeling from the loss of 23 crew members in some tragedy on a recent mission, and were still becoming comfortable with a few of the characters in this version of the crew, who were new replacements for fallen comrades. While this was referenced plenty of times in the stories, actually reading these events would probably make those elements more relevant and powerful.

This brings me to one thing that annoyed me about the book. Certain impressions and descriptions of characters, how they were disliked by other crew members or were not yet comfortable because they were filling the post of a fallen crewmember who was greatly beloved, were continually outlined almost verbatim in most of the seven stories. That may be a function of the editing rather than the writing. I can see how the information is relevant in understanding characters and how they relate to one another. But when each story is part of a collection there is no need to be repetitive with that information. When I got to those sections it just felt like an annoying case of déjà vu.

I have to also mention that this book is 627 pages of novellas about an entire crew of engineers. There will be a lot of classic Star Trek technobabble in the stories. If you’re a person who gets lost in all that discussion this book, and probably the entire series I’d guess, may not be for you. I have never been put off by the technobabble but even I found my head spinning by many discussions of probability, the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle, and Schrodinger’s Cat in the last story, which was otherwise one of my two favorites in the book.

The fantasy classic the cover of my copy proclaims and I suppose that is what it is. You would be hard pressed to find another single volume fantasy novel of such depth. It is the first book I read by Kay, and although in hindsight I must admit I like The Lions of Al-Rassan better, I am as impressed with this novel after a reread as the first time I read it.

Tigana is set on the peninsula of the Palm, a land loosely based on the city states of Renaissance Italy. Two decades ago two sorcerers from nations overseas invaded the hopelessly divided Palm and swept away all resistance. Now the Palm is neatly divided between Alberico of Barbadior and Brandon of Ygrath. The two Tyrants are warily watching each other afraid to make the first move against the other for different reasons. Alberico is cautious by nature and his true ambition lies in his homeland. He also knows himself to be the weaker of the two sorcerers. Brandon's attention is occupied by revenge.

While Brandon swept though the western Palm on his way to meet with Alberico and decided the faith of the Palm his son Stevan was sent to take the province of Tigana. Resistance in Tigana is unexpectedly strong however and Stevan perishes in the fighting. Maddened by grief Brandon leaves Alberico be and turns back to raze Tigana. He murders a generation, pillages the cities and topples Tigana's famous towers. But his revenge does not stop there. He is determined to erase the name Tigana from history. He uses his sorcery to make the name Tigana impossible for anyone to understand except those born there. When that last generation dies so will the name of their home.

Unfortunately for Brandon, one of the princes of Tigana, Allesan, has survived. Judged too young to fight at the time, he now works tirelessly to remove not only Brandon but also Alberico from power. For years he has rallied people to his cause and waited for the right moment to strike. Finally events in the Palm offer hope for his plans to succeed. After two decades the Palm is headed for an inevitable confrontation between Brandon and Alberico.

I found the idea of wiping the name Tigana from memory an interesting concept for this novel. When you think about it, the idea is not new. In fact it has been used many times in history. The English tried it in Ireland, the soviets changed the name of the Tsarist capital, in China, for a while, history began with the Long March, in Australia end the US native children where taken away from their families to be raised in the way their captors thought proper. There are many more such attempts in our history to erase the cultural identity of a people. One of the things that make Tigana such a good novel is the way Kay drives the impact of that home.

This great act of evil could easily turn this novel into a standard good versus evil plot of course. The way Kay avoids that particular trap, is another reason why I like Tigana. In less than 700 pages Kay presents a number of well developed, very human characters. Each with their own motivations to act as they do, each of them aware of the price of their actions. Brandon for instance is not only bent on revenge. He is also a competent ruler, intelligent, passionate in a way, very much aware of the consequences of his actions and willing to pay the price for choices made. Allesan on the other hand constantly struggles with the price to be paid for saving Tigana. How much can he ask of his followers, how much innocent blood will be spilt in his name? Does his cause justify the means he employs? To find out where your limits are sometimes you have to cross them.

Kay's writing has always been a bit of a challenge for me. His command of the English language is impressive, at least to someone who speaks it as a second language. The way Kay uses language makes it a slow read for me. I have to pay close attention to what he is saying and sometimes pick his sentences apart completely to fully understand them. One might mistake this for verbosity but I think of it as a very efficient way of using language. In this one volume Kay manages a level of sophistication many writers would need a trilogy for. At least. He presents a world with plenty of cultural detail and political complexity, seen through the eyes of a number of well developed characters. This makes it an intense novel, especially since Kay seems have a flair for the dramatic. Tigana is a novel meant to be read with nothing less than full attention. The story demands it. If you can handle Kay's style, and let's face it, not everybody appreciates it like I do, this book will rank among your favourites. For me it is a demanding read, but definitely rewarding.

My latest review is the Star Trek “Strange New Worlds 10” short story collection. The stories in this collection were the winners of the annual submission contest. I reviewed the 9th edition not too long ago and really enjoyed it.

I enjoyed volume 10 as well, although not nearly as much as its predecessor. There were still a wide variety of stories, spread across all of the series. It may be that part of the lull in the book was due to the story arrangement. It may have been intentional or perhaps it was random placement but the Grand Prize story, set in the original Star Trek era, was the first story in the book. It was a very good story. But then the stories that came after weren’t quite at that level. The “Speculations” stories, which were the last in the book, were also very good. Solid beginning, solid ending, and kind of indistinct in the middle, where the stories just blended into other stories and nothing seemed to stand out. Taking nothing away from the efforts of the other stories, and certainly keeping in mind that the eligible stories in this collection came from previously unpublished authors, it seemed like some of them tried so hard to be unorthodox that I missed the point of them. The emphasis of a couple others seemed just to be bringing together characters who had never shared a scene before. It was fun, but the stories didn’t resonate in the same way that the previous collection did. The collection of stories taken as a whole just didn’t flow.

That said, there were very high points too. Why would a being be desperate to be assimilated by The Borg? Why would The Borg have no interest in that assimilation? Those reasons make for perhaps the funniest Star Trek story I have ever read.

I always enjoy short story collections because it’s like panning for gold. There are always nuggets to be found, and the next one could be mere pages away. This collection had its nuggets too, which made it worth the journey. It just happens that in direct comparison to the previous collection, there weren’t quite as many as last year. According to the forward this is the last collection. That's unfortunate. I just wish that they'd been able to go out with a volume that was as outstanding as 9 was.

“The Buried Age” by Christopher Bennett finally tells the of the events in Captain Jean-Luc Picard’s life from the time of the Ferengi ambush that led to the loss of the Stargazer up until the very beginning of him taking command of the Enterprise. “The Buried Age” refers to the discovery of previously unknown history of the galaxy, but also to that buried age in the Star Trek timeline that had remained ignored until now.

It’s always been intriguing, as it was teased in the first season episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation where we saw the return of the Stargazer and the revelation that it was the Ferengi behind the attack. Other episodes also alluded to the fact that Picard captained The Stargazer for quite along time. But in classic Next Generation style of never bogging things down with character development, as they really disliked anything other than standalone episodes, they never discussed that era of Picard’s life in greater detail.

It begged to be written and now all these years later Christopher Bennett has filled in that gap. This was not a classic “Starfleet” story either. Picard’s love of archeology comes to the forefront. We also get some insight into the psychology of the man, what makes him tick, and why the Picard we would later see remains by and large aloof from the rest of his crew.

Another of the shows mysteries, the character of Guinan, gets a little exploration as well. We also get to see Picard’s first meetings with a couple familiar faces, which meshes very well with the show’s feel that Picard had a slightly higher level of trust or relationship with these characters.

Bennett obviously did a good amount of research into the show itself and offered up answers to a lot of loose ends or unexplained questions regarding how certain things came to be on The Enterprise. The story itself was very engaging, but tying things into the show that we know was also a nice treat.

Picard is on the trail of perhaps the most significant archeological find in the history of the galaxy. Still he manages to discover more than he had expected. Probably the biggest revelation of the book came well before the end of the book. In reading the story and knowing the show, I expected something. That something came before the very end of the book which managed to add surprise to it. To a small extent the last section of the book were somewhat anti-climactic and maybe a bit more typical of a Star Trek book with some Starfleet ship combat and of course another win for the Federation. However, that led to a couple unexpected characters getting to come to the forefront. As a fan of the show that did add to the book. Those were the sort of surprises that the book had to reveal, as opposed to huge plotline surprises, since the events had to remain consistent with the history established on the show. So no visits to the homeworld of The Borg for Picard in this book.

I liked how great effort was made to develop Picard and some of his relationships and give the story the feel of belonging in the history of the characters, as opposed to it just being another adventure they went on that didn’t happen to make it to the TV screen. This book added a fullness to the character of Captain Jean-Luc Picard that was not there before. I could see Bennett doing additional novels on behalf of some of the other characters. Perhaps someone else will take the torch from him, but I would like to see Bennett take on Lieutenant Worf or Commander Data. If he does I will be watching the bookshelves for those novels.

This book follows on from Imperial Assassin. Femke and Reynik are on the run from the Assassins Guild, and as they flea the City, the Assassin Shalidar kills Emperor Surabar. This leaves the pair as fugitives, with one remaining allies, Lord Kempton, named as the successor to Emperor Surabar. Femke and Reynik must find a way to reinstate Lord Kempton for him to assume the throne.

Personal thoughts:
The plot once again follows the two main characters, Femke and Reynik in their attempts to protect Lord Kempton and find the entrance to the Assassins Guild, hidden beneath the Emperor’s Palace. We also follow Shalidor’s plans to assume power through his adoptive father and I enjoyed the cat and mouse game between Shalidar and the Guildmaster. It was also nice to have Calvyn return in this book and this brought a more magical presence to the story as Lord Kempton asks the help of Magician’s to defeat the Assassins and break the bond that threatens Reynik.

I felt the characters continued to be strong and enjoyed more revelations about their goals and past creeping up throughout the plot. My only criticism I have is the use of descriptive words throughout the passages. Mark Robson’s first series is aimed towards the younger reader. However, I feel this series would better suit teenagers, and therefore the descriptive wording takes away some of the possible sharpness of the scenes. Other than that, once again, I really enjoyed this book. The storyline is concluded, a few surprises along the way and left with a possible opening to a new series.

“Demands of Honor” is book two of the Errands of Fury Star Trek series. This book is set in the Classic Star Trek era. In an interesting twist though, Kirk, Spock, McCoy, and company were secondary characters in this story. The focus of this story was Michael Fuller and his Starfleet Security team. Typically the role of the redshirt in the original series has become stereotypical that it is now a running pop culture joke. This book puts them in a role other than cannon fodder.

Also in the forefront was political drama as the Federation and Klingon Empire teetered on the bring of war. Council Member Duras showed that his family’s penchant for sneakiness and treachery stretched farther back in time from the Next Generation Era. The crew of the I.K.S. D’k Tahg had no doubt that he was up to something. The question was what, and would they be able to find out before it was too late to do anything about it?

Errand of Fury was an appropriate title for this novel. Several characters confronted the demons of their past. First Officer Karel on the D’k Tahg sought to avenge the death of his brother. Michael Fuller was still haunted by the death of his son in battle against the Klingons.

As the Federation and Klingon Empires stared each other down, the primitive race of Klingon inhabiting a dilithium rich planet in System 7348 were caught in the middle. The younger Adon and his clan sought to save their race from an act of treachery. He too had a personal score to settle.

The focus on different characters in the Star Trek universe was a two-headed monster. It was a breath of fresh air. The Enterprise has a crew of several hundred. Presumably all these Star Fleet personnel are highly trained and competent at their jobs. Yet it seemed to be Kirk, Spock, McCoy, Sulu, Chekov, Scotty, and Uhura getting all the action, leading all the missions, etc. The security personal? They go on an away mission and they die. “They’re dead Jim!”

On the other hand, when you read a Star Trek book you’re expecting to see certain characters. It was strange to see the senior officers confining themselves to the bridge of the Enterprise while there was a lot of action going on in an away mission. The storyline justification for that seemed odd, when circumstances in the show didn’t often keep Kirk confined to his ship. So I found myself mainly wondering when the Security personnel would meet their seemingly inevitable demise. Would they be the sacrificial lambs to add gravity to the plot as things teetered on the edge of war and the plot switched back to the main characters? Since these are “temporary” characters, it was hard to really care about the characters. Whether these characters would die, heroically or tragically or whether their demons would get the best of them and add fuel to the plot fire did make the story “interesting” but not a classic. It wasn’t a bad book, but it was short and pretty predictable. But if you’re a fan of Redshirts and yearn to see them have a life expectancy of longer than about 5 minutes you'd definitely enjoy this book.

My latest review is the Star Trek Novel “Burning Dreams” by Margaret Wander Bonanno. The story focuses on Captain Christopher Pike, captain of the USS Enterprise before Captain Kirk. It expands upon the events of the events of the original pilot for Star Trek, The Cage, and The Menagerie, which picked up that storyline and provided Paramount with a chance to use the unaired footage from the original failed pilot.

Bonanno does a good job of flashing between story elements that are happening in different timeframes. A large part of the story is presented to us via recollection, which was also used successfully in Strangers From the Sky, which I have reviewed previously. Mr. Spock was the focus of the contemporary storyline. It is set about 54 years after he had last been to Talos IV, risking a Federation death sentence to return his former Captain Pike to Talos IV, where the grievously maimed Pike could live out the rest of his life in the illusion of being healthy and able bodied. Spock is summoned back to Talos IV once again. Once again he is willing to risk the Federation death penalty. The reason why would tie in with the rest of the story, provided by Christopher Pike’s recollections of his life as he continued to live a productive, but illusory, life on Talos IV

Christopher Pike has always been an intriguing character. He was the Star Trek captain who could have been had Paramount greenlit “The Cage” rather than deeming it “too cerebral”. The re-shot pilot of course cast William Shatner as Captain James T. Kirk, and made Mr. Spock (the only returning character from the original pilot) the First Officer. That was the appeal of the book for me, filling in that missing history, taking the promising stories left by “The Cage” and “The Menagerie” and running with it.

I wouldn’t say it was an emotionally deep book. One doesn’t feel really attached to Christopher Pike. It’s more of a “history of Christopher Pike” showing the events in his life that led up to and shaped those very brief snippets that we saw. While I was left feeling more informed about the backstory of Christopher Pike he was not fleshed out in a way that makes me extremely curious to read anymore Pike stories. I felt like this was closure, and everything that I needed to know about Christopher Pike I learned here.

This was a Star Trek story that wasn’t a classic James T. Kirk story. Even Spock was a secondary character. I did like how it stuck firmly to being a Christopher Pike story, not relying on meetings with other more well known characters to make it more “appealing”. The sequences with Spock helped to explain how he had developed the loyalty toward Pike to risk a death penalty not once but twice, to go to the quarantined Talos IV system on Pike’s behalf. In both novels I’ve reviewed, Margaret Wander Bonanno fills in backstory of the Star Trek universe, using a parallel story in a more familiar Star Trek time period as a backdrop. I like that a lot, adding to the richness and fullness of the universe.

I think if Captain Christopher Pike, the first captain of the Enterprise, intrigues you this book would make a good read. If your history of the Enterprise starts with James T. Kirk in the captain’s chair you’ll probably find more entertaining Star Trek book’s on the shelf, as Kirk is not a part of this story at all.

It was late Tuesday night/Wednesday morning that I finished my previous book and posted a review. Here I am back again less than 48 hours later with another review. I started “Star Trek: Strange New World 9” at about 1 AM. I expected to turn a few pages just to get a little taste for my latest book before going to bed. But I kept turning pages. And turning. And turning. I finally put it down at 3 AM out of necessity for sleep, not out of desire to stop reading.

That’s maybe the highest compliment that I have for this book, and I have a number of them. 47 hours. Work shifts. Grocery shopping. The routine of life. But 381 pages read. Despite everything else, I still tore through this book. If I’d have been able to read it cover to cover in one sitting I truly would have.

“Strange New World 9” is the ninth installment of this annual collection of short stories, representing the winning contributions of non-professional authors to the Strange New Worlds short story contest.

Beginning to end, these stories were outstanding.

The book was sectioned into the original series, the Next Generation, Deep Space 9, Voyager, Enterprise, and Speculations. There was something for everyone, from the lighthearted to the deeply profound. Ferengi,, Vulcans, Klingons, Tribbles, Borg, Jem’Hadar, the Prophets, genetically engineered supermen, and more surprises – it’s all there. Whatever your Star Trek fancy you’ll find it here, unless it’s the techno-babble that you fancy. These stories are about the characters, not starships and phasers, and EPS conduits.

Where this collection of short Stories differed from the “Constellations” collection of short stories that I reviewed a couple months ago is that where “Constellations” stories were written in the spirit of an episode of the TV show, the “Strange New Worlds” went beyond the TV show. In many ways they picked up where the TV show or the movies left off, or filled in gaps in series history. For example, I think the best storyline that Star Trek has ever done is the Dominion War in the late seasons of DS9. Granted, this was one of the few storylines that Star Trek has done, as the original series, and The Next Generation stayed away from story arch. I loved the entire Dominion War arch. Of course it was extremely Deep Space Nine-centric. I’ve always been fascinated with what the Enterprise was doing during the war. It was the flagship of the Federation so of course you knew it was heavily involved out there in the unspoken Star Trek universe. There are two stories that give us a taste. The war though was not the whole story. It was just the canvas that each story was painted on.

This collection was everything that I like in a collection of short stories. Every story with an exciting new setting, characters, and mood. Most of what I liked about it was that it was fresh. This is a review so I imagine that I am free to indulge in speculation and blind opinion. I think what I liked most about this collection was the freshness. I opine that this is because, as a result of this book being the product of a short story submission contest, rather than a professional novel under the guidelines of usual guidelines, storylines didn’t have pass through the judging eye of the caretakers of the Star Trek Universe. Stories didn’t have to meet the standard of being “canon” to the established Star Trek universe. There were ground rules to the contest of course. Grounds for disqualification included:

a) “any story focusing on explicit sexual activity or graphic depictions of violence or sadism,
b) any story that focuses on characters that are not past or present Star Trek regulars or familiar Star Trek guest characters
c) stories that deal with a previously unestablished death of a Star Trek character, or establish major facts about or make major changes in the life of a major character…
d) Stories that are based around common cliches, such as “hurt/comfort”…or “Mary Sue” stories…”

(From Contest Rules, Section 8 : “Story Disqualifications", page 371)

But beyond that, I think the authors were free to have fun. They didn’t have to worry about being told “No, Commander Data can’t be on Earth during the Dominion War, as in your story, because it was already established in book blah blah blah that the Enterprise was patrolling the Bajoran Wormhole”.

It was exciting. It was fresh. It dared to explore “Strange New Worlds”. It explored them boldly enough that I will be watching out for Strange New Worlds 10, and probably 1-8 as well in my future book buying ventures.