Shiny Shelf has published my review of John @Scalzi’s novella The God Engines. Hit up the link and share your thoughts.

Shiny Shelf has published my review of Star Wars: Death Troopers, the recent horror novel (yes, horror!) that takes place in that galaxy far, far away. Hit up the link and let me know what you think!

My review of the latest Star Trek: Vanguard novel, Precipice, is now up at Shiny Shelf. Go check it out, you know you want to.

My first article for Shiny Shelf is now up, a review of Cherie Priest’s Boneshaker. Enjoy.

What to buy?  Ultimate Wolverine vs. Hulk hardcover?  Star Wars:  Clones Wars Season 1?  Or just the Clone Wars Season 1 Guide?  Final Crisis hardcover?

Decisions, decisions…

Amazing old-school cover to The Stars, Like Dust by Isaac Asimov.

Last Updated: 10/21/2009

If you’ve read this site for a while, you know that I love the Star Trek: Titan series of books, chronicling the adventures of Riker and his crew of the USS Titan as they spearhead a new era of exploration for Starfleet. Star Trek: Titan has been describe by former Senior Editor and creator of the series, Marco Palmieri, as “The Original Series in the Next Generation time frame.” While looking through some stats for my site the other day, I noticed that the highest number of hits from Internet searches this month were from people looking for information on “USS Titan”. So, I thought I’d put together a sort of mini-guide, cobbling together information and try to give someone new to the series a decent introduction. I will be updating this page as time goes on.

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Synthesis is the latest entry in the popular Star Trek: Titan novel series, with well-regarded British writer James Swallow taking the reins this time around. In Synthesis, Titan encounters a race of sentient machines, whose civilization is losing a conflict against a vast and barely comprehensible enemy known as the Null. If the machines fail, the Null could pose a threat to all life in the galaxy, and beyond.

This is why I love the Titan series; Swallow deftly intermixes high-concept science fiction with compelling drama and action. Swallow raises questions about prejudice and machine / AI’s right to life in a way that is fresh. In doing so, he casts a mirror on the diversity of the crew with a twist, while avoiding any heavy-handedness. The world building Swallow treats us to is on par with Christoper L. Bennett’s work, which is to say, fantastic. The Sentry Coalition are an intriguing species, and specifically their member, SecondGen White-Blue. White-Blue, by necessity, is the most fleshed out of the Sentry, and develops the character with a careful hand that made it one of my favorite in the novel. Swallow also does a wonderful job in capturing the crew members’ voices, who come across and authentic and not merely as ciphers.

The criticisms are few. I did not care for the use of Minuet in the novel (the visual, not the character / AI underneath of it). The AI using that “disguise” could have looked like anyone, really, and very little, if anything, would have been lost. In fact, Titan’s AI could have been very interesting character arc over a number of books; it was a bit of a shame to see it truncated here (though, again, necessary). And (certainly out of the author’s control) the cover was what I like to consider a “cheap pop”; to easily draw in the readers who will recognize Minuet’s face, even though it never conveys an actual scene in the novel. I just didn’t care for it.

The Titan series continues to push ahead with its tenet of being “the Original Series for the Next Generation era,” being about Star Trek’s core purpose of exploration. Swallow does the series justice with Synthesis, continuing the high quality that has been a hallmark since the beginning. Highly recommended.

Rating: A

Open Secrets is the fourth volume in the popular Star Trek: Vanguard novel series, taking place concurrent with the original series and chronicling the events concerning a starbase in a remote region of space called the Taurus Reach and an operation to unlock the mysteries of a genome and technological remnants of an ancient and extremely powerful race.  That is Vanguard’s premise at its most basic; it says nothing of the complex politics and military ramifications involving several races, including the Klingons and Tholians.  Popular Trek author Dayton Ward takes the reigns solo on this volume, writing the volume based on a story by himself and his usual writing partner, Kevin Dilmore.  Open Secrets picks up in the aftermath of the previous volume, Reap the Whirlwind. Starbase 47 commander, Commodore Reyes, has leaked top-secret information on Operation:  Vanguard, leading to a court-martial and trial.  The Klingons begin to make bold moves into the Taurus Reach,  and intelligence office T’Prynn faces a psychological battle that will change her life forever.

Open Secrets resolves a few dangling plot threads from the previous books in the series, and as is typical for an ongoing narrative, leaves a few more.  Ward’s writing style is straightforward, with lean prose and solid pacing that, for the most part, briskly takes the reader through a lot of territory.  Open Secrets has a rather large scope, another hallmark for the series; not only covering a number of characters and locales, but over the course of months.  As with his previous entry in the series, Summon the Thunder, you feel like you’ve read through an entire season worth of material by the time you are done with the novel.  It is a credit to Ward as a writer that the novel, for the most part, rides along smoothly.  Only in a couple of parts does the plot drag a bit.  For example, T’Prynn’s internal, dream-like struggle gets repetitive and then is resolved rather abruptly.  This is probably just a nitpick, and is not that bad considering her current character arc reaches its conclusion.

Ward has done another great job in the latest Vanguard entry; he has a love for the era and it shows.  He is able to evoke a variety of drama in this novel: court room, political, military, diplomatic, and does it with ease.  New station commander, Admiral Heihachiro Nogura, is very well fleshed out and is wisely developed as a very-much different type of officer than Reyes.  Open Secrets continues the very high quality for the Vanguard series, and thankfully we only have to a wait a few more months until volume five, Precipice.

Rating: A

Omen is the second in the nine-book Fate of the Jedi series of Star Wars novels.  This entry is authored by Christie Golden, her first outing within the Star Wars sandbox (after having a number of Star Trek and Warcraft novels published, among others).  In Omen, Luke and Ben Skywalker continue to retrace the footsteps of Jacen Solo’s (later the Sith Lord Darth Caedus) five-year journey in learning from various Force-using cultures in an attempt to understand his fall to the dark side. This time their trip takes them to the reclusive Aing-Tii, in a dangerous region of space in which their perceptions will be challenged and Ben will confront some personal demons.  Meanwhile, another Jedi inexplicably goes insane, further straining the tenuous relationship with the Galactic Alliance government. And the culture of a long-missing tribe of Sith is explored from the point of view of a young apprentice coming of age during their re-emergence.

Omen is an entertaining novel with a few problems.  I have to admit, I was skeptical of Golden being involved in the new Fate of the Jedi series.  I read and disliked her first two Star Trek: Voyager relaunch novels, and the word of mouth on the following two novels did not fair better, so I skipped them.  Admittedly, I have not read much of her material (due to my impression from the two novels I did read), but I was going to give her first Star Wars novel a chance.  As such, I was impressed; Golden’s first outing is full of solid writing and pacing, an interesting character in the form of Sith apprentice Vestara (featured on the cover), and a firm grasp of the main characters.

Golden stumbles a bit in the beginning, in the scene with a younger Jedi and her close friends.  There’s a lot over-emotional filler here, and brought to mind previous criticisms of Golden’s “hyper-emotional” writing.  Thankfully, this doesn’t last long, but if her intention was to establish how close these characters are before Things Go Wrong, it misses the mark.  Golden begins a strong run with the Skywalkers’ journey, displaying the Aing-Tii as an intriguing species with unique uses of the Force.  The scenes between Luke and his son Ben are some of the best in the novel, bringing to light what makes their relationship complicated.  The plot falters somewhat, however, with the “schism” the Aing-Tii are facing.  The storyline is just too under-developed and the resolution too contrite to come off as satisfying.  The Jedi storyline is also something of a disappointment; for the second straight book, we have Jedi going insane and little headway being made in discovering an answer.  I’m not saying it should have been revealed already, but the scenes amount to a lot of chasing and putting innocents in peril.  The entire scene at the “zoo” was the plot at its worst; the cliched “Let’s take the children to see the animals; what could possibly go wrong?”  A lot, clearly.  Add to this a Chief of State who (yawn) wants to hold the Jedi down and a public whose (yawn) sentiment is turning against the Jedi again… never mind the fact that they tend to repeatedly save the galaxy (the Yuuzhan Vong War was not that long ago…).  It strains the credibility of the plot.

The most interesting - and probably divisive- part of the novel is the storyline featuring the lost tribe of Sith.  Golden does a great job of tracing the previous two years of their history, detailing the culture and establishing the Tribe (as they refer to themselves) as an entity.  The problem lies in the books using yet another Sith threat.  The previous series, Legacy of the Force, saw the rise of Jacen Solo as Sith Lord Darth Caedus, as well as his fall.  During the same series, we saw a couple of appearances by the new Sith order, the One Sith (from the Star Wars: Legacy comic book series, which takes place 90+ years after the events of Fate of the Jedi), hidden on their home world of Korriban.  Whereas by the time of Legacy the new Sith number has grown to be in the thousands, during Fate of the Jedi there are only thirty or so of them.  So now we are presented with yet another, different Sith threat, descended from the crew of a ship that crashed 5,000 years ago (whose origins are being chronicled in a series of free eBooks).

This is problematic in the sense that it seems like overkill; the Sith have been very popular in the prequel trilogy of movies and in the Legacy comic.  It is understandable that the novels want to cash in on this and provide their own Sith threat.  The problem here is that they had already developed one in the form of Darth Caedus; killing him off at the end of Legacy of the Force was a mistake, as they could have re-used him down the road to menace our heroes and give the books a Sith threat, since the Legacy comics establish that the new Sith order remains hidden from the Jedi until 85 or so years after the current time frame of the novels.  But with Caedus dead and the One Sith hidden, introducing a third Sith faction is potentially overdoing it.  However, a lot of effort is being made into developing the Tribe and giving them a unique identity, and Golden does an excellent job in giving us an inside look at their culture.  I personally like the Tribe and am waiting to see where the story heads; I have a suspicion that they will wind up joining with the One Sith to fatten their ranks.  Time will tell.

Christie Golden’s Star Wars debut is a fair success.  The Skywalkers interaction is top-notch, and the Sith Tribe is fascinating.  If it weren’t for the lackluster Jedi plot and fizzling out of the Aing-Tii storyline, this novel would score higher.  Also, 240 pages of novel for a hardcover is ridiculous.  In this economy, you cannot expect fans to be happy paying $27 for a hardcover with a thin page count.  Golden’s debut is good, but not worth the full price of admission.  I don’t mind, however, since I found the novel for $10 (with free shipping) on eBay; if you paid anything close to full price, you paid too much.  Page count and price aside, Omen is a decent, yet frustratingly great in places, flawed addition to the Star Wars mythos, and I look forward to her follow-up.

Rating: B-