Looking for Your Next Book

Like a lot of urban fantasy readers, I consider myself a fan of Jim Butcher's Dresden Files series. Anything with Jim Butcher's name on it is going to get my attention in the form of reading the book. This is, though, only the second time I've read a collection edited by Butcher and Kerrie L. Hughes (and the last time I did so was nine years ago!), and I was really looking forward to it. Sadly, it didn't quite live up to my expectations, which is doubly surprising not only because the hands of Butcher and Hughes are over everything, but because there are some big names included here. For my tastes, three stories stood out above the rest.  Two of those were from our two editors, Jim Butcher's "Mister Petty" (a Dresden Files story featuring Goodman Gray ... a monster P.I.) and Kerrie L. Hughes' "The Broom" (which was easily my favorite piece in the book - it's a bit darker, which I really liked).  Probably my second favorite was "A Cle...

 As a fan of the original Star Trek television series, I've been supportive of all the subsequent shows under the Star Trek umbrella. But as my heart is with TOS (The Original Series), my favorite episodes of the other series' are those that connect directly to TOS. Scotty recreating the older, familiar Enterprise bridge in the holodeck of a Star Trek: The Next Generation (TNG) is one, and Star Trek: Deep Space Nine 's (DS9) "Trials and Tribble-ations" episode is another. This short book (only 133 pages) takes a look at how "Trials and Tribble-ations" came about and what it took to make the show looks as authentic as it did. It's been some time since I last watched this particular episode (maybe as long ago as a decade?), but I remember being excited but how great it looked - how incorporating the DS9 crew appeared seamless. It didn't look like simple green-screen technology ... and it wasn't. I had not realized how much work was put into ...

Every once in awhile, while we watched the adventures of Captain James T. Kirk and the crew of the Enterprise , we would get glimpses of other ships, crews, and their captains. But clearly the Federation had an entire fleet of ships and crews who are exploring and expanding Federation presence in the galaxy.  Not everyone is as wild and rogue as Kirk. Regular Star Trek author, David Mack, begins a new series set in the Star Trek original series universe. Two Federation ships are assigned to explore the Taurus Reach area. The scout class ship, U.S.S. Sagittarius , detects unusual energy readings from the planet, Nereus II - where there are no known civilizations with warp drive capabilities. But upon exploration, they discover that the indigenous people, the Tomol, are (in some ways) more advanced than what had previously been detected. However, they are also slightly unusual in that there are no people older than 20 among them. As the members of the research vessel discuss and m...

STAR TREK WEEK While I have, to date, watched every episode of every Star Trek series and read many of the original series novels, and one or two from The Next Generation , Deep Space Nine , and even Enterprise , I'd not read anything from the Voyager series. Probably for good reason. But I had this book on my Kindle (I don't remember where I got it but it was probably on sale at some point). With my usual (bad) luck, this happens to be the third book in a trilogy. There's an imbalance of dark matter in different universes which is causing the universes to merge. The effects, if they do, would threaten both universes and everything that lives in each. It will be up to the crew of Voyager to rescue both universes. Seeking help, Chakotay and Paris visit a planet in the 'other' merging universe, but the locals don't take too kindly to the invaders and their prophecy of devastation. And in their 'own' universe, Captain Janeway and crew are madly searching ...

STAR TREK WEEK It's time for some reminiscing as the last (first) time I read this book was when it first came out in 1981. Anything that was Star Trek (and for me it was especially any new stories rather than toys) was hungrily devoured. This was the first original novel to be published by Pocket Books (though let's be clear ... this was not the first original Star Trek novel. There were 16 original story novels published by Bantam before Pocket got the rights). In the story - Kirk and the crew of the Enterprise are tasked with transporting a once-brilliant, now extremely dangerous criminal physicist Dr. Georges Mordreaux to a rehabilitation center. Mordreaux is accused of promising to send people back in time but instead murders them. Shortly into the voyage, Mordreaux escapes his Enterprise confinement, gets onto the bridge, and in front of the entire bridge crew, murder Captain James T. Kirk. Always one to see possibilities, Spock must travel back in time to prevent the...

STAR TREK WEEK  For those who aren't strong Star Trek fans and/or who haven't given much thought to the various incarnations of the series, when the 'new' movies came out, directed by J.J. Abrams and starring Chris Pine and Zachary Quinto, this has been referred to as the "Kelvin timeline." I'm not going to go into an explanation about this - there are entire websites dedicated to this and it would be easier, if interested, to check out one of those.  But it's important here because author Mike Johnson has taken what I think is a rather brilliant approach to this. Assuming that the Kelvin timeline is an alternate universe or alternate timeline, still with people known as Kirk, Spock, Uhuru, etc and have similar but not identical experiences, we've got 79 episodes-worth of existing stories to explore - to see how they might be different.  And that's what Johnson does here, taking the very general story from the original series' episode ...