Twisted Kingdom

Since I am not really in a reviewing mood lately, I thought that I would share a list of sci-fi books that looked interesting. Angela did them for her Thursday Thirteen, to see the list click here.

Some of them I have heard before and was planning to buy anyways, but others I am being introduced to for the first time. She also provides links to excerpts to see if they interest you. Hopefully I will get back to reviewing soon, I have a lot of great books to talk about!

I had to turn word verification on, I was browsing some older posts and I noticed that we had a major spamming problem! I have been deleting them as I see them. Is there a way to turn comments off to older posts without turning them off to newer, does anyone know? I get an email notification now, so I can catch it easily, but we didn't have it for a while, so there are probably lots of messes for me to clean up. If you are browsing older posts and see any spam, just comment if you would, and then it will be brought to my attention. Otherwise, I will spam clean when I have the time to.

Completion Date: August, 2007
Publication Year: 1997
Books Two, Three, and Four in Peter David's Star Trek: The New Frontier Series. (Review for Book 1)

Reason for Reading: I really liked House of Cards, so I decided that it was a good idea to see what else this band of crewmates got themselves into. I really wish that they had made this into a television show and left Star Trek: Enterprise alone, but unfortunately this will likely never be a television series. It's too bad, this is a very entertaining cast of characters.

Sector 221-G: For the whole of Federation history, this large area of space has been controlled by the Thallonians, a cruel, militaristic race of which little is knownexcept that they rule the other races in their sector with vicious iron hand.

Now the Thallonian Empire has collapsed and the systems it once ruled are in chaos. Old hatreds are surfacing. Petty tyrants control deadly weapons. World after world is descending into disorder and self-destruction. The Federation must send a starship to help where it can and report what it finds.

That ship is the U.S.S. Excalibur, a newly refit Ambassador-class starship commanded by Captain Mackenzie Calhoun and manned by Starfleet's best and brightest, including some old friends from Star Trek: The Next Generation and some of the most dynamic new characters ever to crew a Federation starship.

Join Captain Calhoun and the crew of the U.S.S. Excalibur as they explore strange new worlds, seek out new life and new civilizations, and boldly go where no one has gone before!

Reading these three books and the one that comes before it almost makes you think that this was supposed to be the series, and then it got popular so they made more. These four books all talk about the same time and show the progression of events all within a short period of time. This is Starfleet's band of misfits, they are all capable of doing their jobs, but their lives have been hard and has made it so they go about things in a way that might not be the regular way.

My only beef with this series is who they chose as the first officier, Commander Shelby. She guest-starred on an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation once and she rather annoys me. I think that is the point, but it does not mean that I was thrilled to see her playing a starring role. It works, though, Captain Calhoun is not your textbook Star Fleet Captain, and his wild ways play off nicely to Shelby's stick-in-the-mud mannerisms, but she still annoys me. She probably always will annoy me. Their fights are pretty funny, though, so maybe she will loosen up a bit during the course of this series.

There are a few characters in these books that I would like to see on television. The chief engineer is quite the interesting character, I can see hints of Scotty in many ways. The chief security officer reminds me a bit of Worf of all the security officers on the shows. Then, there is the vulcan doctor who is quite different than any doctor we have seen before. If like anyone I would say the early episodes with the Doctor on Voyager. Throw in a navigational officer who is thinking so fast he can look asleep and still function and a half vulcan/half romulan comm officer, and we have an interesting time ahead of us.

To sum up these three books, there is a lot of action, the captain finds himself in the middle of his mission with people after him on all sides, and he does not exactly go by the book to correct the situation. All in all, it is an entertaining series that I look foward to reading more from. I own the next four books, so I will likely read them soon, but then I have to find the rest of the books in the series.

Completion Date: August 2007
Pages: 275
Publication Year: 2003
A Book in the Star Trek: Voyager series, sequel to Homecoming

When an unstoppable Borg plague breaks out upon Earth, blame quickly falls on the newly returned crew of the Starship Voyage ™. Did Kathryn Janeway and the others unknowingly carry this insidious infection back with them? Many in Starfleet think so, and Seven of Nine, in particular, falls under a cloud of suspicion.

Now, with a little help from the Starship Enterprise ™, Admiral Janeway must reunite her crew in a desperate, last-ditch attempt to discover the true source of the contagion and save Earth itself from total assimilation into a voracious new Borg Collective.

But time is running out.

Has Voyager come home only to witness humanity's end?

This book continues the duology about Voyager's return to the Alpha Quadrant. Once again, a very short book, but I for the most part like how they decided to tie up Voyager's loose ends. It is too bad that for some reason Voyager is hardly novelized after the show went off the air: there are only two more books that even talk about life after they were lost for seven years.

So, briefly, what happens when they get back is Torres goes on a journey to find herself and repair bridges from her past. It makes references to an episode of Voyager I had never seen before at the time of reading, but I watched a rerun of it last week, so now I understand what happened. If you have not seen the episode, it is called something like The Barge of the Dead, then that is okay. The book explains the important parts so that you know what is going on. Meanwhile, Tom Paris is home with their newborn baby trying to get used to being a father. Torres thinks that he is home hanging out in his apartment with his friends, but really he is caught up in the middle of what is looking like a Borg plague. Since Voyager has just returned with two Borg aboard, they are blamed for the spread of the disease and their two Borg crewmates are imprisioned.

This book also discusses holographic images rights. The Doctor on Voyager has developed outside of his program to be a working and functioning being who thinks for himself. A human currently residing on earth decides to take advantage of his return to have a holographic rebellion, which the Doctor gets blamed for and taken into custody. Janeway is a new admiral who is not ready to give up the 'big chair' and will do everything for the safety of the crew she has finally managed to return home. All in all, this was a good read. I will read the other duology soon, then I have one trilogy that came out recently to read, and then after that there is no more.