Archive for Reviews

Book Review: “Nascence” by Tobias S. Buckell

Other than the Sherlock Holmes omnibus and Neil Gaiman’s excellent Smoke and Mirrors, I haven’t really read any single-author short-story collections in… well… ever. I actually went upstairs and checked my shelves, and while I do have an Arthur C. Clarke collection and a Walter Jon Williams collection, I can’t remember ever reading them. I guess I like my short fiction in shorter installments than collection-length, or if I’m reading a collection I like many authors to be part of it, such as Year’s Best anthologies or themed collections.

So when our esteemed editor asked me to review Nascence, Tobias S. Buckell’s new book, I didn’t realize it was a collection until I started reading it. I thought it was a new novel. I wasn’t disappointed, mind; I’d just heard Buckell’s “Anakoinosis” on the Dunesteef and enjoyed it, so I figured, hey, this ought to be pretty good.

And it was. In a way.

Nascence is a collection for writers more than for casual readers. It has several stories, and also the story-behind-the-story that I think most of us enjoy reading. But where a collection by another author might collect his or her best stories, Nascence… doesn’t. In fact, Buckell explains that right in the beginning of the book.

Nascence contains 16 stories (one of them twice) that chronicle Buckell’s self-described failures as he went from an eager young college-aged writer to the novelist we know today. From 1996’s “Spellcast” to 2004’s “A Slow Burn Passion”, Buckell takes us through these “unsellable” tales, reflecting upon what mistakes he made and how he worked to correct them in future fictional endeavors. As a writer — although not one of Buckell’s level of recognition — I’ve seen myself making all of these mistakes. I’ve read other books about writing that describe the mistakes and tell writers how to avoid them. But where Nascence differs is that we actually see these “failed” stories in their entirety, and are able to look at Buckell’s analysis and his writing and see that, yes, Virginia, I have made these mistakes before.

I found Nascence to have more impact upon me than, say, Stephen King’s On Writing. While successful, Buckell is about my age (within a year) and is on the up-slope of his writing career — a place I’m trying to get to. Writers who find books about writing by well-established, older authors boring or unhelpful may identify better with Buckell and the tales he tells in Nascence.

The book ends with the version of “A Jar of Goodwill” that was published by Clarkesworld in 2010. While it is technically the strongest story in the volume, I have to admit that I actually preferred its 2000 incarnation. As I read that final piece, I kept mentally referring back to the older version that I’d just experienced. The 2010 version had bigger ideas, but the 2000 version was more visceral, and I connected better with the characters. Had I been an editor in 2000, I might have bought the original version. But then again, maybe that’s why I’m not an editor.

I would recommend Nascence to any writer aged 35 or younger. Older writers who are just starting out may feel resentful of certain events in Buckell’s career — specifically, the fact that he got into Clarion when he was young enough to simply take the summer off from college and do it, instead of having to take a leave of absence from a full-time job — but I think they too would still benefit from the lessons Buckell shares with readers. Still, in my opinion this is the book you want to give the young writer in your life, the one who keeps sending you stories that you just don’t have the heart to say “what’s the point?” or “this isn’t interesting” to. However, I don’t know that this book will really be grokked by casual (or even serious) fiction readers who aren’t also writers, and it may not be the best book for them.

Note to parents: This book contains scenes of sci-fi and military violence, as well as occasional sexual situations. Also, adult language. I would say it’s safe for teens of all ages, but with the caveat that less mature teenagers may not be able to deal with some of the subject matter. Of course, you should use your own discretion when it comes to your children.

Book Review: “Seize the Fire” by Michael A. Martin

One of the things that I love about the Star Trek: Titan novels is that the editors at Pocket/Simon & Schuster allow the authors to really expand upon the scientific points in the stories. Even when the point of the story is to expound upon the Typhon Pact, science still gets done. In Seize the Fire, the second Typhon Pact novel, there’s enough science and technology to keep Titan fans happy, and as the story wears on, the action is enough to keep the editors feeling like the book is moving along at a good clip.

To recap, the Typhon Pact bands together six traditional Federation enemies (Romulans, Gorn, Breen, Tzenkethi, Kinshaya, and Tholians). Seize the Fire covers the Gorn, who we first (and only) met in the original series episode “Arena”. The Gorn suffered a defeat that day, leading to a thriving Federation colony on Cestus III (I believe the current President is from there). In other adventures, Riker was involved in an uprising to overthrow the Gorn government, so he has some backstory with them. But really, this book — like Zero Sum Game did for the Breen — establishes who the Gorn are, their caste system, their technology and terminology, and the way they behave around other races. The beginning of the book outlines that the Gorn warrior caste lost their one major hatchery, and now have to look for a new one. Fast-forward about a year, and a Gorn fleet has found an ancient alien artifact that could be used to terraform (ecosculpt, as they call it) a planet on the outskirts of explored space into an ideal hatchery world.

Except that the planet is already populated.

In comes Titan, who doesn’t want to see the indigenous race be destroyed by the terraforming device. The problem is that the people on the planet — Hranrar — haven’t demonstrated that they have warp-capable spaceships, so the Prime Directive is in play. It’s up to Riker and his crew to stop the Gorn from killing the Hranrarii before Typhon Pact reinforcements arrive… and before Gog’ressh, a renegade Gorn captain affected by radiation poisoning, destroys the ecosculptor in an attempt to remake the warrior caste in his own image.

One of the great strengths of the Titan novels has been characterization, and author Michael A. Martin — one of the co-writers of the first two Titan novels, which defined the crew and ship — includes updates on everyone we want to know about. Other than the main three characters (Riker, Troi, and Vale), he spends quite a bit of time on series regulars Evesh, Modan, Dakal, Torvig, and Dr. Ree. Unfortunately, being constrained by the story and the fact that he has to get from A to B to C kind of limits and two-dimensional-izes some of the main characters. To wit:

  • Commander Vale is annoyingly snarky. We get it, Christine — you’re a female Kirk.
  • Emo-Efrosian chief engineer Ra-Havreii continues to find things to whine about.
  • Other than a passing reference to her holopresence system, Melora Pazlar has very little to do in the way of character development. She’s Lieutenant Commander Exposition this time around.
  • Commander Keru is suspicious of everyone. At least he’s stopped moping around about Sean. That happened eleven years ago. I realize it sucked, but… man, eleven years!
  • We have some supernumaries on the bridge by name of Lavena and Rager. How is Rager still only a Lieutenant, anyway? She was an ensign on TNG, and one would think that the Dominion War would’ve kicked her up at least another grade by now.

The story is really about the Gorn — a couple of tech-caste characters are given main focus in the novel, along with Gog’ressh, and it is they who provide much of the impetus to move the plot forward. The main Star Trek characters are Riker (by virtue of being the captain) and Tuvok (who has some experience with terraforming devices — the term “Genesis” is bandied about quite a bit). Also added to the mix is SecondGen White-Blue, from the previous Titan stand-alone novel; he (it?) is an artificial intelligence who has made friends with Torvig. I think we’re supposed to get some sort of ironic vibe from that (Torvig is a cybernetic being; White-Blue is a machine intelligence who wants to learn more about organic life forms), but I didn’t. And finally, Mr. Gibruch, the second officer, appears to be a cross between Predator and a pipe organ — a cool image, but I didn’t feel invested enough in his character to really care about him.

While the climax of the story had plenty of action and a satisfying ending, I think overall the book had some flaws that should have been addressed. First and foremost, we don’t actually see Tuvok’s role in the climax — it just sort of happens, and then is vaguely discussed in the denouement. Secondly — and also related to Tuvok — there’s a flashback to show us why he hates Genesis-type devices so much, but it isn’t paid off satisfactorily (at least to my mind). And speaking of italicized sections, there’s a bit with the ecosculptor that feels like an artifact of an earlier story, perhaps something that the author edited out in revision and didn’t remove before the final cut. It makes sense, I guess, but again, no payoff.

Overall I found this to be a stronger novel than Zero-Sum Game, although I felt there were areas that could have been improved or expanded upon. Also, there was plenty of filler to cut, and while I know how hard that can be, sometimes your favorite scenes (like the whole bit with Noah Powell) just have to go. As with the Breen in the previous novel, we definitely got insight into the way the Gorn work, and I commend Martin for his excellent work there, but parts of the book were too two-dimensional or slow for me, and as I said previously, there wasn’t enough payoff*. Still, for having to somehow work the far-away spaceship into the main plot, this was done far better than many Voyager stories that somehow were shoehorned into what was happening on the homefront. And even if you don’t read Typhon Pact but you like Titan, you’ll like this book. A solid Star Trek outing all around.

* I think that, at the end, Martin was laying the groundwork for a Big Boss that Titan can take on in future novels, but I was a bit disappointed that I didn’t know more about what was coming. Contrast that to Treason by Peter David, where the new Big Boss for Calhoun and co. is clearly laid out by the end of the novel.

“God’s War” by Kameron Hurley

God’s War by Kameron Hurley opens with our hero, Nyxnissa, who has just sold her uterus for petty cash and then blown it all on drugs and gambling. Then things get worse. This book picks up the reader and drops them onto an alien planet, thousands of years in the future. It is a world where technology is powered by genetically engineered bugs and the colonists are tearing their world apart to fight a holy war, the origins of which no one quite remembers.

All the men of Nyxnissa’s nation are drafted into the army. Women are allowed to volunteer. Nyxnissa served her time on the front, and came home a hero, with a body covered in burns. Once the magicians — this book’s practitioners of the Sufficiently Advanced Technology — finished putting her back together, she joined the bel dames, an order of sacred assassins who hunt down deserters in the name of God and the Queen. She isn’t particularly successful at it. When she’s offered a job that promises to shake all the vultures off her back, she has to take it, no matter how low her odds of surviving it seem to be.

The other protagonist in God’s War is a young man name Rhys. What terrible thing drove him over the border to Nyx’s country, which is not a safe place either for foreigners or beautiful men, is revealed slowly over the course of the book. He is as close to a pacifist as anyone can be in war-torn Nasheen, and as close to a romantic interest as Nyxnissa is capable of having.

While it is unmistakably science fiction, this book’s form reminds me of some of my favorite urban fantasy. The focus stays on Nyx and her band of hired misfit. None of them can afford to worry about interstellar politics or the power struggle between the Queen and her bel dames. They’re too busy trying to and take care of the people they love. Some romance has been waved in the direction of this book, but thankfully it is not allowed to dominate the narrative.

This book is brutal. Everyone and everything in Nyx’s world has scars from the war. The author is unflinching in her descriptions of violence. I’ll admit to skimming some of the more graphic passages. I’d hesitate to call it gratuitous, though. Hurley understands that the life of a woman who collects blood debts is not one awesome shoot-em-up adventure after another. In the course of the book, Nyxnissa is broken down to the last slivers of her character. Her choices would not make sense without the violence that surrounds her.

God’s War runs for quite a while before it tells the reader what it plans to be about. I did not mind that, because I was too wrapped up in watching Nyxnissa as she struggled to survive from one day to the next, as she tried (and inevitably failed) to stay ahead of the people who hated her. By the time the book gets around to mentioning the starships, the aliens, and the effects that three thousand years on an alien planet have had on its human population, they were just another set of interesting details added to the plot that had already sucked me in.

Islam permeates every part of God’s War. I don’t recall another work of science fiction that featured a planet that was not only colonized by Muslims, but by waves of different Muslims of different ethnicities and traditions. The religions in God’s War seem rich and detailed to me. I would be very interested to hear the reactions this book gets from its Muslim readers.

Now I am trying to find time to reread this book. I was not completely sold on the way it ended the first time around. As time has passed, though, I find myself growing more and more attached to God’s War. I’m glad I had a chance to read it, and I recommend it highly. God’s War is a fine piece of writing, and not one that its readers will easily forget.

Kameron Hurley and God’s War were featured on John Scalzi’s The Big Idea series.

Book Review: “Soft Apocalypse” by Will McIntosh

Apocalypse fiction has been around for many years, usually in the form of a cataclysmic event — asteroid impact, nuclear bomb, giant space squid — that destroys a good chunk of the entire planet and leaves the survivors to fend for themselves in a world gone mad.

But after reading Will McIntosh’s new novel Soft Apocalypse, I can tell you that sitting in the belly of an intergalactic Sarlacc might actually be better than the road we’re on now.

Soft Apocalypse is the story of Jasper, a college graduate with a sociology degree, no job, and nowhere to live. While that does sound like the fate of many liberal arts majors these days*, where Soft Apocalypse differs is that it begins in 2023, ten years after an economic depression that has left 40 percent of Americans unemployed. The story begins in Metter, Georgia, about half a centimeter** east of the midpoint between Macon and Savannah, where Jasper and what he calls his tribe are harvesting wind energy from cars passing on I-16***. A policeman drives the tribe away, and after a short while they end up in Savannah, where Jasper grew up.

But this is not the Savannah you and I know, or the Savannah you saw in Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil. No, just like larger cities, Savannah is in the midst of its own troubles. Jasper gets a job at a convenience store and a house with his friends Colin and Jeannie, and he starts trying to eke out a life during this soft apocalypse.

As the novel progresses, Jasper does things that we might, in saner times, say that no human should be forced to do. He changes residences, lives as a nomad in east Georgia, falls in love with a woman who is extremely wrong for him — and everyone else — and is forced to watch a friend die in a scene that is both hideous and inventive.

To my mind, the main theme of the novel is “just how much of your civility are you willing to hold onto when no one else is civilized?” Most of us have said we’d be willing to kill to protect those we love, or if we were forced into a kill-or-be-killed situation, but for Jasper it’s harder than he expected. Still, he’s pretty lucky, compared to people who’ve succumbed to manufactured diseases, gangs, drugs, or even simple starvation. And he has friends, too — friends like Cortez, a fighting man and natural leader, and Ange, his off-again-on-again lover.

McIntosh projects the future of Soft Apocalypse in a thoroughly realistic fashion, and although world events occur relatively tangential to Jasper — they don’t really affect him as much as local ones like the Wal-Mart closing, but then, how many of us**** feel like the tragedies in Japan or New Zealand, or the regime change in Egypt and the unrest in Libya, really have an impact on our lives? Most Americans wouldn’t even know something was happening in Libya if it wasn’t making it more difficult to fill our gas tanks (or if their favorite Monday night shows hadn’t been pre-empted by the President on March 28). The future of Soft Apocalypse is much harder than anything we’re going through now*****, and McIntosh acknowledges that while also making some so-obvious-it’s-hard-to-see commentary on the present. (He has a great line about starving people, expensive cars, and oil.)

Overall I found Soft Apocalypse to be an engrossing read, as well as a fast one — I read 60 percent of it on a plane flight to Minnesota****** — and I attribute the latter to a combination of good pacing and the story’s ten-year timeline. Though it’s not a happy book, there are moments of win peppered throughout, and the ending is both satisfying and thought-provoking in exactly the same way the rest of the book is.

How far would you go to protect your tribe? Maybe after reading Soft Apocalypse, you’ll think a little harder before you answer that question.

Note to Parents: this novel contains explicit language and graphic violence, as well as sex, occasional torture, and mature themes. I don’t recommend it for anyone younger than 15, and only to highly mature teenagers between 15 and 18. Of course, you should use your own discretion when it comes to your children.

Special thanks to Night Shade Books for providing a review copy.

* I know, I know, low blow. But I’ve worked in academia and employment and let’s just say the prospects aren’t good.

** According to Google Maps on my phone.

*** I’m not really sure how much they’d be getting. I’ve been on 16, and there were very few cars. My guess is that people were commuting from Macon to Savannah.

**** By “us” I mean the average American citizen, not the average sci-fi consumer, who is generally more in-tune with world events.

***** Interestingly, many of the difficult lessons Jasper and his tribe learn are covered in Robert Heinlein’s Time Enough For Love, under the “things every man should be able to do” heading.

****** Don’t worry; I won’t make you do a word problem. It’s about three hours of air travel from Atlanta to Minneapolis, but since I read on my iPad I can only use it at safe cruising altitude, or on the ground. I read the 60 percent noted above in about two hours. For reference, you can figure out how fast I read when I say that I read Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows in 5.5 hours.

Book Review: “Dancing with Bears” by Michael Swanwick

The law-breaking but good-hearted character is one that most of us have come across in our consumption of media. From smuggler Han Solo to counter-terrorism agent Jack Bauer, we’ve time and again rooted for men and women who break the rules in pursuit of a greater good — often reluctantly.

And then there’s Darger and Surplus, who have absolutely no desire to be a force for good. They’re in Russia to make money via a complicated con involving seven beautiful women and an ambassadorship. This is the general plot of Dancing With Bears, the new novel by Michael Swanwick.

The principle characters of Dancing With Bears are Aubrey Darger, a debonair Englishman, and “Surplus” — that is, Sir Blackthorpe Ravenscairn de Plus Precieux — who is a dog. Well, a dog genetically engineered to have the intelligence and bearing of a man, but a dog just the same. Together, Darger and Surplus use their not-inconsiderable intelligence to try and make a buck, or a ruble, or whatever the local currency might be. These gentlemen are dropped into a futuristic Russia, but not a future you might expect. At first, when reading the novel, I thought we were in an alternate past, but as Swanwick takes us through the story, it becomes clear that the technological utopia came and went. There’s still touches of technology here and there, but on the whole the Russia through which Darger and Surplus travel is quite non-technical. Think New Crobuzon with less machinery.

Our story begins with Darger and Surplus in the service of a Byzantine prince and ambassador to Moscow, who is conveying the Pearls of Byzantium — seven physically-flawless women genetically engineered for maximum pleasure, but who can only touch their intended husband — to that great city. Early on they rescue a man from a cybernetic wolf and have a small layover at his home, during which the man’s son, Arkady, is exiled for attempting to profess his love to one of the Pearls. Later, when the group arrives in Moscow, Surplus is forced to take on the mantle of ambassadorship while Darger begins searching for their true prize: the lost library of Ivan the Great. These two missions bring our heroes in contact with a huge cast of characters and a broad series of machinations to bring about a revolution in Moscow.

What sets Darger and Surplus apart, I think, is their complete disinterest in anything that doesn’t directly benefit them. I mean, Han Solo came back to save Luke; Mal Reynolds never committed a crime that harmed the common people; and John Glasken, despite being a lout and a womanizer, played a large part in improving Australica for all its citizens. But Darger has no desire to give the library to the Russian people, and Surplus certainly isn’t being an ambassador for his health (although if, as has been said in the news, having sex keeps you healthy, Surplus certainly will live a long life). No, the two of them are running a very large con* with the goal of getting rich.

Darger and Surplus, though, aren’t the only interesting characters in Dancing With Bears. We also meet:

  • The Three Stranniks, who have their own goals for Arkady and Muscovy.
  • Zoesophia, the leader of the Pearls, whose depths are… well… deeper than Surplus (or anyone else) expected.
  • Anya Pepsicolova, Darger’s guide to the undercity of Moscow.
  • Chortenko, an advisor to the Duke, whose eyes see everything and who has a thing for kennels.
  • The Duke of Muscovy, who spends a lot of time lying down on the job.
  • Kyril, a foul-mouthed boy who becomes a companion of Darger’s.

…as well as a collection of minor characters that includes genetically-engineered nine-foot-tall bears — presumably the ones with whom the dancing is done that the title alludes to.

Dancing With Bears introduces strong characters, a future world that will appeal even to the steampunk and urban-fantasy crowds, and enough plot twists to close a grocery store’s worth of bread inventory*. While I found the immense amount of intrigue a little too tangled for my liking, I was able to set that aside because the book was so rich in character- and world-building, two things which I personally really enjoy. The pacing is a bit slow at first, and there are a couple of “as you know, Bob” moments, but once the characters arrived in Moscow I found myself quite interested in what would happen next.

My only previous exposure to the author, Michael Swanwick, was in his novel The Iron Dragon’s Daughter. I definitely liked Dancing With Bears more than Daughter, perhaps because — at least, in my opinion — the ending was more satisfying and there were more characters to root for.

You’ll be rooting for Darger and Surplus as you read this book. Check it out.

Note to parents: This novel contains explicit material, including sex, violence, and language, as well as scenes of torture and drug use. I personally would not recommend this for anyone under the age of 15 — and even then, only to mature teens — although you should of course make your own judgment regarding your children.

* In addition to the novel itself, you may also be interested in a series of flash fiction running on the Starship Sofa podcast, “How to Run a Con”. In it, Michael Swanwick is joined by Gregory Frost to portray Darger and Surplus as they explain to the average listener the ins and outs of being con men. It begins in Episode 176.

** Did I stretch that metaphor so far? Sorry about that. But it sounded good in my head.

Book Review: “Agatha H. and the Airship City”, by Phil and Kaja Foglio

I love webcomics. I think Ozy and Millie is better than Calvin and Hobbes. I’m shocked that studios haven’t secured the rights to comics like Questionable Content, Something Positive, or even XKCD (wouldn’t that pair up well with Big Bang Theory). And for years I’ve been following the hilarious but slowly-told story of Sabrina Online. But despite all the webcomics I read, I’ve never taken the time for Phil and Kaja Foglio’s Girl Genius. I’d certainly heard of it; it just hasn’t yet found its way into my Google Reader.

So I think that makes me the right kind of person to review Agatha H. and the Airship City, by Phil and Kaja Foglio*. I mean, I had no idea that this was a “Girl Genius” novel to begin with, after all, until I actually received the book.

Agatha H., in one sentence: it’s a fun book. I immensely enjoyed reading it. It’s a madcap comic adventure combined with steampunk (or “gaslamp”, as the authors say on their site), a little Bas-Lag, and some well-used adventure fantasy tropes. The dialogue is funny and sharply-written — to be expected from authors who make popular comic strips — and the world is complex and fully-realized.

The novel retells the origin story of Agatha Clay, a young woman living in Transylvania in an alternate, steampunk style of Europe. “Sparks” — basically supervillains — held the continent in their grasp until Baron Wulfenbach showed up to impose order by any means necessary. When he and his son, Gilgamesh, show up at the University where Agatha works, a fight in the lab leads to Agatha’s mentor being killed and Agatha herself going on the run. Soon, though, she is captured by the Baron and brought to his castle, where she finds out that the world isn’t as black-and-white as she thought, and neither is the Baron.

I would say that, if this book suffers in any way, it’s that some humor conventions of webcomics just don’t translate into print all that well. Take, for example, the scene where Agatha and Gilgamesh are on an out-of-control flying machine. In a webcomic, you can have an entire conversation over the course of a strip or two while the heroine is plummeting to her death. But in the novel, it seemed as though they should’ve hit the ground long before Agatha attempted to fix the machine. Another instance: the underwear gag. I’ve seen it used quite successfully on television and in other comics, but after the shock of its first appearance, future ones felt somewhat forced.

But while those parts didn’t work, the rest of the book certainly did. I laughed a lot, and I definitely empathized with the characters — although one does pull a heel turn that I wasn’t expecting and really didn’t understand the point of, except to move the plot along. The fight scenes were well-written and well-choreographed, from Agatha’s swordfight with the princess to Von Pinn taking on a pirate queen to the Baron himself against the Slaver Wasps. A few genre conventions are turned on their heads (isn’t that right, Princess?), while others (like Agatha’s physical shape) are cheerfully indulged.

Toward the end, the book got really quick to read, and each time I turned the page I wondered how everything was going to get wrapped up. I felt like maybe there was room for another chapter, like the ending needed a little something more to be fully satisfying… but then, there’s plenty more to be written, especially if further adventures of Agatha are to be retold as novels. And hey, if not, I can always read the comics.

Overall, I like I said, the book was a lot of fun to read. I got through it fairly quickly, owing to the fast pace and the desire to find out just what the hell is happening to Agatha. Plus, the nuanced nature of the Baron added a layer to the story that some adventure novels just can’t pull off. Agatha H. and the Airship City is worth reading, and — at least, in my case — it got me interested in the Girl Genius comic as well.

After all, I have to know what happens next.

* For some reason, I feel like I’m used to seeing them credited as “Kaja and Phil Foglio”, so it seems weird to type it the other way. But Phil’s name comes first on the cover, so that’s how I’m putting it here.

Review: “I Am Not a Serial Killer” by Dan Wells

Cover of "I Am Not a Serial Killer"I Am Not A Serial Killer by Dan Wells is the story of a fifteen-year-old sociopath. It’s the sort of young adult book that gets shelved in with adult novels, because the experiences of a fifteen-year-old white boy are the sort of thing that everyone is supposed to be able to relate to. (Where this particular book ends up in the bookstore is governed by some arcane system that I do not fully understand. It took two Borders employees the better part of a quarter-hour to find my copy, and not for lack of trying – what I will miss most when my local Borders closes are the people who worked there.)

Our hero, young John Wayne Cleaver, is trying very hard not to become a serial killer. He’s a lonely sociopath who has been obsessed with serial killers ever since he saw a picture of John Wayne Gacy in the newspaper when he was eight. He is smart and self-aware enough to be terrified by all the things in his life that seem to be pushing him down that road. He believes that the strict system of self-imposed rules which he lives under will keep his dark impulses in check. Like a lot of sociopaths, he’s capable of pretending to be an ordinary human being, until he is put under stress — in this case, by the appearance of what might be a real serial killer in his quiet town.

This is Dan Wells’s first novel, a fact that is in no way borne out by the quality of the writing. His prose is clear and direct, with an edge of sardonic humor that keeps the reader from getting too wrapped up in all the terrible things that are happening until the author decides to go for the big scare. Staying inside his young sociopath’s head lets him avoid some of the more obvious cliches. John Wayne Cleaver is not inclined to guilt. He is capable of operating with scary precision at times when an ordinary character would be curled up and gibbering on the floor. He likes dead bodies.

I Am Not A Serial Killer is a fast read. Dan Wells does a superb job of using suspense to keep the reader interested, without hording all the secrets for a dramatic reveal at the end. The beginning, which is devoted to the trials of a fifteen-year-old boy’s life, is saved by his humor and the mental-whiplash-inducing mentions of the supernatural element that drives the rest of the book. Watching that supernatural horror stalking the townsfolk is only slightly scarier than watching John Wayne Cleaver’s self-control crumble.

Whether or not this book lives up to the standards of the horror genre is not something I feel that I can fairly judge. I am not a horror reader. I will say that I Am Not A Serial Killer is a fun book and a nice change from my usual fare. It’s always nice to find a stand-alone novel with a satisfying ending that also has sequels. I will be interested to read those sequels – if Mr. Wells continues to improve his writing, they should be very strong books indeed. I recommending tracking down I Am Not A Serial Killer in your local bookstore — finding it may be an adventure, but the effort will be worth it.

Book Review: “Paths of Disharmony” by Dayton Ward

Boy, does it suck when everything goes horribly wrong. For 200 years, these dudes have been our friends, ever since we helped them make peace with these other dudes who were our friends even longer. But now they’re all pissed at us. So let’s send our most awesome dude to their house and hold a giant party, inviting everyone. That’ll totally work! Until the few asshats who kind-of-sort-of know these friendly dudes’ roommate call in all their asshat friends and start throwing down.

That’s pretty much the entire plot of Star Trek: Typhon Pact #4: Paths of Disharmony. Also known as the one with Captain Picard and the dreadlocked Andorian on the front cover.

In all honesty, this is quite possibly the best of the Typhon Pact novels so far, and I’m not really surprised at that. It’s the most popular ship and crew in Star Trek, plus a race that has really gotten kind of short shrift in televised Trek (Enterprise notwithstanding), plus a classic Trek “let’s go to a planet and solve a problem” episode. It’s written by Dayton Ward, who has done some really great Trek writing over the years. And, of all the Trek tie-ins written since the end of Voyager, this one brings together the largest amount of the most popular crew (four-sevenths of the central TNG cast).

Paths begins with the Enterprise being sent to Andor, a staunch Federation member for more than 200 years, because their people are up in arms that genetic research is being done to help them find ways to reproduce that don’t involve four distinct sexes. Lieutenant Thirishar ch’Thane, late of the Deep Space Nine relaunch, is a part of that team. Support on Andor is turning against the Federation, and the Andorian presider hopes a scientific conference will be the answer. Like I said, pretty standard TNG at this point.

Aboard the Enterprise, we find Picard, Beverly, their son Rene (who is now one year old), Worf, and Geordi. Added to their number are science officer Elfiki, contact specialist (and somewhat annoyingly Mary-Sue-ish*) T’Ryssa Chen, security chief (and Worf-squeeze) Jasminder Choudhury, assistant chief engineer Taurik, and ship’s counselor Hegol Den. Picard is mentally battling with himself as to whether or not he should take a promotion to Admiral (or even Ambassador), and he and Beverly are definitely looking to make things a little more stable for their son. Geordi is having love issues (a common theme for him). And everyone is worried about the Typhon Pact.

Upon arrival at Andor, the crew splits up into their traditional small groups — Picard does some diplomacy and is enticed to visit an archaelogical dig; Beverly works with the genetic scientist who caused all this trouble; Geordi builds a power station; Choudhury has to secure the conference building; and up on the ship, Worf is left in charge. Through all of this we meet many secondary Andorian characters, as well as a lot of enterprising young men (and women) — mostly in security. About 40 percent into the book, a rebel group of Andorians strikes at the Federation personnel, but it’s not until halfway through — the traditional cliffhanger point — that we see who’s really behind all of this anti-Federation settlement.

As one would expect, after the Typhon Pact drops a bombshell that shakes the Andorian people’s trust in the Federation, the true villains make a series of attacks somewhat reminiscent of the Picard-on-the-surface-Riker-on-the-ship that we saw in Insurrection. Our heroes must stop these terrorists.

You can guess how that turns out.

In exactly the same way that Rough Beasts of Empire didn’t, Paths of Disharmony manages to make me care about all the secondary (and even the minor) characters enough that I didn’t get lost when we jumped from place to place. With the exception of a huge digression (Picard’s archaeological trip, which seemed to me to be an excuse to tie in Enterprise), the writing is well-paced and the action is gripping.

I know there are at least two more Typhon Pact books in the offing, but they’ll be hard-pressed to top this one. Definitely worth it, for both casual and die-hard Star Trek fans who are looking for the next chapter in the lives of our Next Generation friends.

* I don’t blame Ward; he didn’t invent the character, and he actually gives her some respectable things to do in this episode.

Book Review: “Rough Beasts of Empire” by David R. George III

I’m really hoping that the Star Trek Typhon Pact tie-in novels aren’t going to suffer from the odd-numbered curse all the way through, because I don’t think I can handle spending another $8 on book five if it’s going to be as disappointing as Rough Beasts of Empire, the third book in the saga.

I had really hoped Empire would be great. After all, the author, David R. George III, wrote what was to my mind the best installment in the Lost Era, Serpents Among the Ruins (if you like Trek and you haven’t read it, you should rectify that situation immediately). George has also written other very enjoyable books in the Trek universe. But, unfortunately, this Typhon Pact novel just doesn’t cut it.

I’m usually a fan of multiple interlocking stories that come together at the end. I even liked Love Actually, despite the extremely-tangential way some of the storylines touched each other. But compared to Empire, that film’s stories were completely intertwined.

There are four distinct stories in Empire, and the only way to explain them is to keep them separate, like they are in the novel.

The Tzenkethi. As with the other Typhon Pact novels, Empire exists to show us a Star Trek race that we haven’t seen. The Tzenkethi are a merit-driven caste society of beautiful beings with no bones and a very unique approach to the use of floor (and ceiling) space. Their names are so complex that I can’t even remember what the main Tzenkethi character was called. Something with an A at the end. Anyway, this Tzenkethi was sent to be the Typhon Pact’s ambassador to Romulus, although she had a secret mission. Which was addressed so infrequently that I totally forgot about it until the very end.

Vulcan-Romulan Reunification. Spock is still on Romulus, trying to bring both sides together. This was by far the least interesting of all the storylines because, (a), we’ve been dealing with it in novels for far too long and, (b), we know it’s never going to succeed. It’s just an excuse to get a picture of Leonard Nimoy on the cover of the book. In any case, an assassination attempt is made upon Spock, which leads him to approach Praetor Tal’Aura* with a groundbreaking proposal.

The Romulan Senate. The Ortikant family, led by Gell Kamemor**, is heavily involved in the reformation of the Romulan Senate under Tal’Aura.

Captain Sisko. I firmly believe that this is the story George wanted to tell when he started writing this book. It is the most interesting, the most nuanced, and the most compelling. In the beginning, we see Sisko commanding the starship New York during the Borg war in Star Trek: Destiny. This actually happens before the first two Typhon Pact novels, which confused me at first, but I got over it. Anyway, after the battle, Sisko goes home to Kasidy and his family, but remembers that the Prophets told him he would only know sadness if he made a life for himself on Bajor. So he makes the questionable decision to leave Bajor and return to Starfleet. He is assigned a starship on patrol along the Romulan border, where he becomes Emo Sisko.

There’s also several minor sub-plots, including the return of a somewhat-overused-as-a-plot-device character, the summit between Empress Donatra and Praetor Tal’Aura, the observations of Senator Durjik, and an out-of-nowhere flashback to Sisko’s experiences during the last Tzenkethi conflict which completely pulled me out of the story.

The plots above only barely touch, and I don’t feel as though they were adequately tied together (especially Sisko’s, which only very slightly interacted with any of the others). I really feel this is two books — Sisko’s story, and the Romulan story. Unfortunately, I couldn’t really get into the Romulan story because it was too boring, and I couldn’t really get into the Sisko story because I can’t believe that Sisko would walk away from his family just because the Prophets told him to. I can think of at least three better ways to get Sisko into the story, and I’m probably not the only Trek fan who read “reunification” and thought “oy vey, enough already.”

I realize I’ve been pretty negative overall, but mostly what I’m negative about is the plot and the story. George’s writing is still top-notch, even when he’s dumping scads of exposition, and as with the other Typhon Pact novels there are plenty of hooks into other Star Trek shows and books that fans will remember and recognize. I just don’t think this book was interlaced enough with its A and B plots to really interest me; therefore, I’ll have to recommend that you give this one a pass and just read the spoilers online.

* You may remember her from Star Trek: Nemesis as the Romulan woman who left the Senate chamber just before everyone turned into stones and crumbled to dust.

* See Serpents Among the Ruins, where she was the chief Romulan negotiator on the Treaty of Algeron, best known for preventing the Federation from developing or using cloaking devices.

Book review: “Zero Sum Game” by David Mack

In the summer of 1988, my mom picked my sister and me up from our summer camp and said that my dad had gotten hurt at work (his foot) and was in the hospital. We were going to go see him, but since we’d be there for a while, she’d take us to the bookstore first. I remember picking out a book, and then on the way to the front, I noticed a whole shelf of Star Trek novels. I grabbed the one with the coolest cover.

That was my first exposure to non-YA genre fiction. The book was Diane Duane’s My Enemy, My Ally, still one of my favorites.

Since then, I have read hundreds of Star Trek novels across all five series. I used to read every single one, but now I pick and choose. I’ve been pretty judicious lately. However, I decided I’d give the Typhon Pact novels a try, and started with the first one, David Mack’s Zero Sum Game.

Although marketed as a Typhon Pact novel, Zero Sum Game is really a DS9 book at its heart. It also kind of requires that you’ve read the Destiny trilogy so you know about the characters, and that you’re at least aware of the events in Keith R.A. DeCandido’s A Singular Destiny (read the spoilers; I found the book kind of boring and Mary-Sue-ish). For those who aren’t: Ezri Dax is now the captain of the starship Aventine, and her crew contains folks from DS9 and TNG — including Simon Tarses. The Typhon Pact is a group of traditional Trek enemies that formed in the wake of the Borg invasion chronicled in Destiny; it includes the Romulans, the Tholians, the Gorn, the Breen, the Kinshaya, and the Tzenkethi. I seem to remember the reason for their creation as being pretty flimsy, but that’s neither here nor there. It seems as though the Typhon Pact novels are going to humanize Trek enemies who haven’t gotten a lot of play over the years. First up, the Breen, who speak in machine language and whose faces have never been seen. In the DS9 years, the Breen allied themselves with the Dominion, and that’s really about all you need to know.

In Zero Sum Game, Starfleet Intelligence has learned that the Breen are developing a slipstream drive to rival the Federation’s fastest propulsion technology, which is installed aboard the Aventine. Dr. Bashir, who has done a few missions for SI in the past, is tapped to infiltrate the Breen because he is genetically-enhanced, thereby giving him the ability to learn, process, and react faster than your average SI agent. His briefing is conducted by the other enhanced individuals Bashir met during DS9, including Sarina Douglas, with whom he’d fallen in love at one point. He agrees to go on the mission, with Douglas as his partner, and after an overly-convoluted plan to get them inserted into Breen space on the correct planet, they get their — and every Trek fan’s — first view of what the Breen are really like.

And that is, by far, the best part of the book. Not the action sequences, not the narrow escapes from death, not the way Douglas overcomes her captors or Bashir fights moral battles with himself over killing, and definitely not the B-plot of Dax trying to keep the Aventine on the Breen border so they can pick up Bashir and Douglas when their mission is complete. All of the plot and action is average Trek, and there’s actually quite a lot of improbable goings-on that seem to work out perfectly for our heroes. Even the ending is pretty unbelievable, and the coda wasn’t as surprising (to me, anyway), as I think it was intended to be.

But the Breen… ah, the Breen. I’d hate to spoil it all by saying everything Mack came up with to make them interesting, but the reason they really wear those masks and armor is almost worth the price of admission. As with many Trek novels, there’s plenty of space to explain and describe things that just can’t be covered in a television episode, and Bashir and Douglas’s mission to the Breen world is enough to fill a couple of episodes by itself.

The novel is $8, whether it’s electronic or paper, and I’m quite pleased that Mack writes such long stories because there’s almost nothing that annoys me more than paying $8 for something that’s only 225 pages with large print and big spaces between the lines. While all Kindle books use more or less the same font size and kerning, Zero Sum Game is 352 pages in print, so I definitely didn’t feel cheated by paying $8 for it. However, after the heart-wrenching character deaths in SCE: Wildfire and the sweeping grandness of Destiny — probably the best cross-series saga available in the Trek universe — I felt a little let down by Zero Sum Game. I’ll still read Mack’s next book, because he can easily reach the bar he set with Destiny, but I don’t feel as though I needed to read this novel the way I needed to read Destiny or Invasion or The Lost Era.

A few last words on the Typhon Pact miniseries: I happen to be the kind of person who can’t stop reading a series once it’s started, so I’ve already bought the second in the miniseries. It’s the Titan entry, and I happen to enjoy the Titan novels — they seem to have taken the mantle of the single-episode novel that TNG and TOS used to have, back in the day. I also understand the concept of needing a Big Boss now that the Borg are out of the picture. I even understand wanting to show us the Trek races we don’t know very well and humanizing them so we sympathize. But I’m not sure the Typhon Pact is a credible enough enemy, and I don’t fear them the way I feared the Borg or the Romulans. Where these books will shine is the exploration of the lesser-known enemy races, and also in the interactions between characters. Mack wrote Dax’s crew as a cohesive unit, and I don’t remember if he invented Lieutenant Kedair but she is definitely an interesting addition to the cast; the way he showed us the Breen was also quite well-done. So far in Book 2, I’m learning quite a bit about the Gorn.

I think my problem is that I’m just not as excited about these books as I was for Destiny, or for new entries in New Frontier, or even for stand-alone Trek novels like in the 90s and early 2000s. And I think that really does a disservice to both Star Trek and to the novelists they’ve tapped to write these books — Mack, Michael A. Martin, David R. George III, and Dayton Ward, who have written some really great Star Trek fiction in the past. Perhaps when taken as a whole, after I’ve read them all, the Typhon Pact miniseries will feel like a complete storyline and I’ll feel better about recommending the entire series. But not yet.

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