The Buried Age

Posted on July 27, 2010 by smellincoffee

The Buried Age
© 2007 Christopher L. Bennett
439 pages

Captain Jean-Luc Picard’s life changed when, in approaching an uncharted star system,  an aggressive alien vessel attacked him in mid-warp, crippling his ship, the USS Stargazer, and dooming it after twenty years under Picard’s command. Although he succeeded in defeating his foe, creating the Picard Maneuver to do so, the ship itself had to be abandoned. Following a court-martial and disturbed by the loss of the people and ship he loved so dear, Picard opts to take extended leave from the service and explore the world of academia, pursuing a doctorate in archaeology. Disturbed by his increasingly sedentary lifestyle, his old friend Guinan appears with information that may spread light on a galaxy-wide extinction event several millions years ago — information that Picard can’t help but be intrigued by. Leading a team of civilian scientists, Picard journeys to a planet far beyond Federation borders which holds breath-taking secrets. This is the start of an extraordinary journey, one that will require Picard to work with Starfleet more and more and set him on the path to command the Enterprise-D.

Along the way he will shape the lives of and in return be shaped by several  young lieutenants — an android whose talents and development are neglected by a Starfleet that doesn’t know what to do with him; a bitter young Betazoid whose expertise has heretofore been ignored in favor of her beauty and empathic abilities; and an intelligent and compassionate young woman named Janeway who is at Picard’s side when they make their first big discovery: a survivor from those millions of years ago, held in stasis and awaiting to be freed. Their experiences together will change them forever.

The Buried Age is an excellent novel. Although it carries Star Trek in the title, The Buried Age offers an experience beyond a simple “episode in a book”.  It functions well as both a science fiction novel and a character drama, allowing Picard and others to explore a grand story involving a benevolent, highly-cultured galaxy-wide civilization that met sudden destruction.  Bennett relies more on science than most Trek authors, and the science in his works is more developed than simple background technobabbles. What makes the book for me is its spellbinding writing and characterization:  I visibly trembled while reading some portions of the novel, so caught up was I in the emotions Bennett forces his characters to endure. It’s an especially strong Trek novel, given its abundance of subtle references to the series.  The book’s essential function is to bridge Stargazer and the The Next Generation, and he does this well — not only in telling the story of what happened to Picard after the court-martial but before TNG’s first episode, but in focusing on Picard’s character as he struggled to figure out where his life should go once he lost the life he matured with. Bennett also explores Data and Troi’s early development and sees Picard prepare his first command team aboard the Enterprise-D.

Highly recommended to Star Trek fans, recommended to general sci-fi readers as well.

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Teaser Tuesday (27-7)

Posted on July 27, 2010 by smellincoffee

Teaser Tuesdays aren’t quite as bloody as French history, but they are as much fun. From ShouldBeReading.

Poor France: it was roughly a hundred years since the country had been torn apart by the Wars of Religion; two centuries back she was being ravaged by the Hundred Years’ War. Only one century ahead she would be approaching the chaos of revolution; two centuries on and Paris would be plunged into the bloody insurrection of 1848; three centuries, and the country would be barely recovering from Occupation and Vichy. Now it was the time of the “Frondes”. 

137, La Belle France: a Short History, Alistair Horne.

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Dynasty of Evil

Posted on July 25, 2010 by smellincoffee

Darth Bane: Dynasty of Evil
© 2009 Drew Karpyshyn
296 pages

Twenty years ago, a disgruntled miner-turned-revolutionary-turned Sith Lord destroyed the whole of the Brotherhood of Darkness and became the sole Dark Lord of the Sith. Taking the name Darth Bane, he quietly eradicated the remnants of his old life. Taking a young girl named Zannah with him, Bane transformed what it meant to be a Sith, beginning a new order that maintained only two Sith should ever exist — a Master to embody power and and apprentice to crave it, seek it, and claim the title of Master for herself through a challenge to the death. The weak perish and the strong survive; this is Bane’s way of the Sith.

A lifetime of wielding the dark energies of the Force have atrophied Darth Bane, but his apprentice — an accomplished Sith sorceress whose manipulation of the Force can drive her enemies insane — has yet to challenge him and claim the title of Dark Lord for herself. Disgusted by her apparent lack of ambition, Bane searches for a way to lengthen his own life so that he might find and train a better apprentice. Dispatching Zannah on a mission to investigate the murder of a Jedi knight — for anyone who can overcome a skilled Jedi is of interest to Bane — the Dark Lord himself travels to the galaxy’s perilous deep core to look for a planet where a Sith lord once ruled for centuries, relying on arcane knowledge to achieve near-immortality.

Zannah takes opportunity of her liberty to find her own apprentice in preparation for her overthrow of Bane, and she is not alone in seeking a confrontation with him: a woman who witnessed her father tortured at the hands of Bane in The Rule of Two has come into money, and is using it to pay a talented bounty hunter and assassin to track Bane down.  The characters’ journeys come together in the depths of a mountain prison, where the five stalk each other — some looking for salvation, others for revenge and glory.

Although somewhat short — fontsize is fairly large, making the page count misleading — Karpyshyn succeeds in giving his central character a fitting resolution, a demanding task considering the amount of tension Karpyshyn has been developing since The Rule of Two. His cast of characters is strong and must be so, for the novel is dominated by character drama: while Bane, Zannah, Princess Serra, and the others all have action-laden jobs to fulfill,  they’re only background. Two of the new characters held my attention: Serra, the royal princess whose hatred and desire for revenge against Bane draws her into the dark side, a move contested only by her faithful bodyguard Lucia — who once idolized Bane during his revolutionary years in the Sith army. The fifth character makes the ending almost unpredictable:  before completing the novel, I could not say with surety which resolution Karpyshyn would choose.

The Darth Bane trilogy has been a pleasure throughout, and its capstone is fitting if a bit light.

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In search of Asimov

Posted on July 24, 2010 by smellincoffee

I have been aggressively raiding used-book stores recently and wanted to show off some of my victories. Click the image for a preview of some of this year’s reading… 😉

Of the books shown, I’ve only owned three for some time: I’ve had Triangle, which collects the three Empire novels, for well over a year. The Roving Mind was purchased a few months back, and Stifffed…I found that at my local library’s discard pile/bookstore a year or so ago.

That book on the far right end of the top shelf is that which launched my Asimov reading frenzy back in 2007.

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This Week at the Library (21/7)

Posted on July 21, 2010 by smellincoffee

Recent reading:

A Walk Across America, Peter Jenkins. A disillusioned college student in the early 1970s decides to walk across North America to see if there’s anything in his home country worth staying for. The memoir covers the first leg of his journey, from Connecticut to New Orleans, and sees Jenkins rub shoulders with quite a few characters and brave perils both natural and manmade. Enjoyable for me, but I identified with the author as a restless university student, and live in the southern portion of the US where Jenkins spent much of his early walk.

The Andromeda Strain, by Michael Crichton, is a 1960s science fiction story wherein the US military attempts to contain an extraterrestrial virus that they caught for use in biowarfare. The story opens in a desert town occupied only by corpses, a wandering old man, and a crying child, but soon shifts to a military laboratory. Crichton loves details, and incorporates fictional research papers and computer readouts into his text,  something I don’t see often .

Stargazer: Three is the third in Michael Jan Friedman’s Stargazer series, one which gives two of his officers background  and sees young Picard and his crew attempt to return a misplaced lieutenant from a mirror universe to her proper time, while avoiding a flotilla of hostile starships. While fairly unremarkable, the book has a few moments.

Travels with Charley is John Steinbeck’s account of touring the United States in an RV during the sixties with his poodle Charley.  Steinbeck introduces the memoir by fighting a hurricane and musing that American authors should be familiar with the character of the country: his own familiarity is decades-out of date. He sets forth on that note. While he seems to enjoy the trip despite grumbling disappointment with the increasing artificial sameness of American culture, it ends on a low point.

Deep Space Nine: Betrayal, set in the television show’s opening seasons, has Commander Sisko, Major Kira, and Constable Odo running circles, attempting to conduct a trade conference in the midst of a terrorist campaign attacking the station, while pugnacious Cardassians posture nearby. The book appears to be a prelude to the season season. Fair A-story, while the B-story concerning a young Cardassian deserter hiding on the station stole most of my attention.

The Life of Elizabeth I by Alison Weir is my first serious read from this author. Weir’s biography of the Virgin Queen centers on court life, resulting scandals, and foreign affairs. Enjoyable, justified the reccommendation I received.

Walking Towards Walden is a quasi-travelogue detailing the journey the author and two of his friends took to walk to Concord via the wilderness, avoiding roads during a day-long journey. The book is fantastically rich, as along the way the authors muse on mythology, philosophy, and history, connecting themes to their own struggle.

Hornblower and the Crisis, CS Forester’s last work in the Hornblower series. The novel is incomplete, but promising and seems like it would have been excellent. The novel includes Forester’s notes on how he intended to develop the book further, along with two short stories set at the beginning and end of Hornblower’s career in the Royal Navy.

Pick of the Week: A Walk Across America and Walking Towards Walden.

Upcoming Reads:

  • I’m making steady progress with Citizens: A Chronicle of the French Revolution. Though its size is formidable, the narrative itself flows once I commit. I may be able to finish it this week.
  • La Belle France is a general history of France. I checked it out last week when I intended to have a “France”-themed week in honor of Bastille Day. The size of Citizens forced me to modify my plans somewhat, but this history looked like a proper survey and I still intend on giving it a go.  I’ve read its opening chapter and am hooked.
  • Don’t Know Much about Mythology or The End of the Beginning, the latter of which is an alt-history by Turtledove beginning with the successful invasion of Hawaii on the part of Imperial Japan.
  • I’ll probably also read a Star Trek book. I’m not  sure which just yet, but the most likely contenders are Christopher L. Bennett’s The Buried Age featuring a post-Stargazer Picard and Michael Jan Friedman’s Saratoga,  an account of Benjamin Sisko’s reunion with his shipmates from the titular ship, which was lost at the Battle of Wolf 359 along with Sisko’s wife Jennifer.  Bennett wowed me with Greater than the Sum, and Friedman is an old favorite.

Future Potentials:

  • My home library has finally received a copy of the third book in the Darth Bane trilogy, Dynasty of Evil. I’d intended to read it last week, but forgot to check it out. Someone’s snatched it up in the meantime. I’ve shaken my fist in mock anger and will bide my time.
  • Alison Weir’s Captive Queen, a biographical novel of Eleanor of Aquitaine checked out three days after the library received it and two days before I visited the library to check it out. I am on a roll. 
  • The Lost World, Michael Crichton. I’ve never watched the second movie in the Jurassic Park series, so Lost World should be a fresh new story. It was missing when I visited the library today, intent on checking it out.
  • The Imperial Cruise: A Secret History of Empire and War is said to focus on the role Theodore Roosevelt’s naval posturing had on American-Japanese relations. I’ll look at it when my hands are not quite so full of France. 
  • Crucible: McCoy sees a version of Doctor McCoy stuck in Earth’s 20th century where he must live out the rest of his life. The idea of a 24th century doctor, with more enlightened values, experiencing the horrors of the 20th century is intriguing, or was enough to get me to purchase a copy. I’m curious as to whether the author will try to work in the Eugenics Wars.  While in TOS-canon they were related to World War 3, a pair of books released in the past decade or so retconned them to make sense in light of late 20th century history. This book is part of a trilogy, but I went after this one for the “24th century humanist in the 1960s south” story.
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Hornblower and the Crisis

Posted on July 20, 2010 by smellincoffee

Hornblower and the Crisis
© 1967 CS Forester
174 pages

Hornblower and the Crisis is the last of CS Forester’s Hornblower books, as Forester died in the midst of writing it. This book collects the first 130 pages of the intended novel, adds a portion from Forester’s notes establishing how he intended to develop the book further and end it, and then tacks on two short stories. The first, “Hornblower’s Temptation”, is set during Hornblower’s lieutenancy aboard the HMS Renoun, where he makes a potentially lucrative discovery when overseeing the execution of an Irish deserter-turned-insurrectionist. “The Last Encounter” takes place in 1848, where an elderly Hornblower receives a late-night visitor — a man claiming to be the Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte.

The death of Forester in the middle of the Crisis is truly a loss for his readers, for the book was shaping up to be one of the better additions to the series. Newly-minted Captain Hornblower is returning to England from his blockade duties as a passenger aboard the Princess, a small utility vessel, when the book begins. His former ship, the Hotspur, is still at sea under a new captain, but Hornblower has been ordered to return to Liverpool for new orders.  After a French brig harasses the lowly Princess, Hornblower urges his fellow passengers — also royal officers — to ambush Boney’s boat. Although they are too few men to take the ship as a prize of war in total, Hornblower fights his way to the brig’s command office and steals the French captain’s orders. They are fixed with the seal of Emperor Bonaparte, and contain orders from the Corsican himself.  When Hornblower dutifully takes them to the Admiralty, they and he contrive a plan of espionage that will draw the French navy into a decisive battle — the monumental battle of Trafalgar.

I tend to enjoy Forester’s books more when they center on diplomatic intrigue, shore adventures, and espionage, so the plot of this naturally drew me in. Although the notes included are short, they do more than relate the rest of the plot.  The two short stories are both far shorter than those in Mr. Midshipman Hornblower, and each was a treat. “The Temptation” shows Hornblower’s humane side, one we don’t often get to see in a series dominated by war, and “The Last Encounter” is both amusing and almost serves as an afternote to the Hornblower series:  1848 is a year beset by revolution, where rail lines and naval steam engines have brought modernity, supplanting Hornblower’s old, familiar world.

Although I read this when I did for its setting (French Revolution and Napoleon), it more than made up for Hornblower and the Hotspur.  While the novel’s opening chapters and the short stories are enjoyable in their own rights, I suspect newcomers to the series would enjoy a more complete work. Still, for Hornblower readers this is certainly worthy.

This is not my last Hornblower read: I still have Admiral Hornblower and the West Indies to read, and there’s one Hornblower-related book I intend to read following that. It’s ah….going to be a bit different.

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Teaser Tuesday (20/7)

Posted on July 20, 2010 by smellincoffee

Tues·day   (tūz’dē, -dā’, tyūz’-)
n. (Abbr. Tues. or Tue. or Tu or T)
The third day of the week. Appropriate for submitting teasers, esp. for books.

[Middle English Tuesdai, from Old English Tīwesdæg, Tiu’s day : Tīwes, genitive of Tīw, Tiu; see Tiu + dæg, day (translation of Latin diēs Mārtis, Mars’ day).]

By tradition, the dark forest is dangerous for innocent pilgrims such as ourselves; we enter at risk. In the myths of Western civilization, the forest represents a place beyond the bounds of the known world, a place where pilgrims and hunters get lost, where you may encounter wild beasts, evil dwarfs, witches, gnomes, and snarling trolls. Magical transformations take place here, bears become princes, fairy courts hold torchlit processions by night, wayward children are captured by witches and become toads, damsels disappear for a hundred years until they are restored to life by the kiss of an adventurous knight.

p. 15, Walking Towards Walden. John Hanson Mitchell.

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Walking towards Walden

Posted on July 19, 2010 by smellincoffee

Walking towards Walden: A Pilgrimage in Search of Place
© 1995 John Hanson Mitchell
301 pages

Just before he set out on his journey to the netherworld, the great pilgrim Dante Alighieri had to pass through a lion-haunted forest where the straight way was lost. Here in twentieth-century America, there is a gloomy forest of hemlocks just below the summit of Prospect Hill in Westford, Massachusetts. As we descend this fertile slope, the great pilgrim Barkley Mason begins quoting from the Inferno. He touches his breast and, with a grand sweep, spreads his right arm toward the dark wood below us. “Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita mi ritrovai nella selva oscura –‘” he declaims.

Kata is used to Barkley’s posturing; she interrupts to ask me something about a mutual friend, and in this manner, we three enter the dark forest and enter our journey. (p.11)

While browsing the travel section of my library, I spied Walking Towards Walden, one man’s deeply textured account of his pilgrimage trip to Walden Pond, where Henry David Thoreau once lived and wrote.  Mitchell, accompanied by two close friends, determines to sojourn to Walden through the wilderness: shunning roads and trails, the talkative trio intend to see a glimpse of Massachusets’ 17th century wilderness. As this trio of intellectuals and romantics cut their way through brambles, wade across swamps, and wander the courses of streams looking for a crossing, Mitchell muses.

A Walk to Walden tells many stories. From the outset, A Walk is steeped in mythology, both classical and native American: Mitchell likens their quest to find Walden to Campell’s “hero’s journey”, imaginatively interpreting the perils along the way as the hero’s challenges a la Don Quixote. As they walk, Mitchell explores inner worlds, pondering the role of nature in mythology and poetry. The trio’s pilgrimage to Walden is also historical, for their path intersects with that marched by the Massachusetts militiamen on their way to face British regulars at Lexington and Concord. As the journey develops, Mitchell tells their story, the story of explorers like Ponce de Leon who traveled through the “New World” looking for the fountain of youth,  and the story of the men and women who were displaced and ruined when Europeans began to colonize the Concord area.  At the same time, he also remembers other trips he has taken with his friends — to the Florida Everglades and Hollywood, with touching and humorous anecdotes.

As the narrative matures, Mitchell compares their journey less to a pilgrimage and more to a quest to find a sense of place, a sense of belonging. He uses a Hopi word, tuwanasaapi, to describe a place where the soul of an individual is “centered”:  where they are truly home. James Howard Kunstler decried the lack of “place” in the United States, criticizing the boundless expanses of subdivided homes and commercial strips. Mitchell and his friends are likewise bothered by this lack of community and place in modern America:  traveling to Walden allows them to connect to Thoreau’s own decision to live deliberately, to find

From the very moment I started reading the book, I wanted to see Concord. Mitchell’s affection for the town and the sense of place and community he derives from it are obvious. The day’s journey there from Prospect Hill is lush, rich with detail and stories, abounding in tales of interesting people. Mitchell links all of his various trails of thought together, which would have been distracting were the stories themselves not so thoughtful and enjoyable.  Most curiously, the trio never seem to reach Walden Pond proper: the book ends with their eating a period meal at the Colonial Inn, the only hint that they might have gone to the pond and Thoreau’s cabin being “So we saunter to the Holy Land…”. (Mitchell periodically paid homage to Thoreau by referencing his “sauntering” walks around Concord.) Walking is one of the most enjoyable books I’ve yet read, and I heartily recommend it — especially to those partial to Thoreau.

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The Life of Elizabeth I

Posted on July 18, 2010 by smellincoffee

The Life of Elizabeth I
© 1998, 2003 Alison Weir
542 pages

“She certainly is a great queen […]. Just look how well she governs! She is only a woman, only mistress of half an island, and yet she makes herself feared by Spain, by France, by the Empire, by all! ” – Pope Sixtus V, p. 399

When I received a bookstore gift card from my place of work as an end-of-the-school-term gift, I put it to use and bought The Life of Elizabeth I.  Weir’s biography of Elizabeth was recommended by Elizabeth’s Facebook “fans”, and Weir’s biographical novel of Elizabeth has been one of the year’s most enjoyable reads. I’ve been meaning to read it, but have been otherwise occupied. Six hours spent accompanying someone to the emergency room and an afternoon without electricity in the wake of a severe thunderstorm gave me ample opportunity to visit Weir’s treatment.

Weir chooses to focus on Elizabeth in her role as queen in this novel, beginning with her coronation and ending with her death: Elizabeth’s early years were covered in The Children of Henry VIII. She places general emphasis on foreign affairs and life at court, which are tangentially related: more than a few members of her court are involved in urging her to marry one European prince or another, and in an age where nations’ destinies were decided by members of interrelated royal families, marriage and politics were conjoined. The Spanish and French empires are Elizabeth’s most powerful adversaries, and she spends much of her life delicately arranging the protection of one while avoiding the wrath of the other. This is not always possible: her reign reaches its greatest when Spain’s “Grand Armada”, intending on delivering an invasion fleet, is destroyed. Scandals among Elizabeth’s court constitute most of the text dedicated to domestic affairs, with religious strife occupying the rest. Elizabeth has inherited her father’s role as governor of the English church, now formally divided from the Catholic church, but not moving too much in the direction of the Protestants. Religion and politics are closely linked in this age:  her cousin Mary Stuart, a rival to the throne, relies on Catholic resentment  to continually scheme to overthrown the Queen,

Weir’s treatment is one grand chronologically-arranged narrative, divided into sections but ever moving forward. Thus we gain a picture of Elizabeth maturing from giddy youth to graceful age, supported by an ever-changing court.  Elizabeth’s marriage prospects dominate the opening of the book: as she ages and loses childbearing potential, her rivals and foes choose to attempt to bend England to their will through force: religious insurrections become a constant threat, particularly from Catholic quarters. Although Elizabeth is generally well-liked, both Puritans and Catholics give her cause to grief.  Weir occasionally breaks from the constant stream of stories to offer general assessments of Elizabeth as a person: these segments interested me most. I am particularly interested in Elizabeth as a free-spirited intellectual who loved dancing and who resorted to translating classical orders into English to maintain control of her temper.

The recommendation from Elizabeth’s fans was warranted. The narrative is easily digestible and Weir offers plenty of background for fully understanding some of the episodes in her life. I look forward to reading more from this author.

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DS9 #6: Betrayal

Posted on July 16, 2010 by smellincoffee

Star Trek Deep Space Nine: Betrayal
© 1994  Lois Tilton
280 pages

I recently acquired a box of thirty-odd Star Trek: Deep Space Nine paperbacks, and after excitedly pawing through them, Betrayal appeared of immediate interest for its cover, which depicted Marc Alaimo as Gul Macet. Alaimo later played Gul Dukat, one of Trek’s more developed villains.  Number six of the numbered DS9 novels, Betrayal, places the entire station in jeopardy. While ambassadors from various Federation worlds gather on DS9 for a conference that may open up economic opportunities for both Bajor and worlds throughout the Alpha Quadrant, the station becomes the target of multiple terrorists attacks that imperil the post and its crew as well as scuttling Bajor’s hopes for a bright future in the Federation family. Meanwhile, a belligerent and comically-villainous Cardassian gul who demands that Sisko formally cede the station and the newly-discovered Wormhole to the Cardassian Union causes a stir when his troops begin shaking down the merchants of the promenade while looking for a deserter.

As the book takes place early in the DS9 canon, it contains a few anachronistic quirks in violating canon-yet-to-be-written. Quark and Garak are interpreted differently from the show’s eventual treatment of them, for instance. Kira, Sisko, and the aforementioned Cardassian deserter are the primary voices in this tale, which proved interesting. While the primary plot tended toward the predictable, it did lead into DS9’s second season and overall characterization pursues paths somewhat ignored by the television show until much later. I enjoyed the book most for the deserter’s story. I like Cardassians, and his depiction was a welcome relief from the usual “Cardassians = Nazis in Space” treatment.

Nice light reading for a DS9 fan at any rate.

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