#christopher l bennett

[lichqueenlibrarian]

Kay I’m not sure if it’s just me but this sounds a lot like V’ger x Will Decker x Ilia??

[crossingscon]

New Year New Author!

Star Trek DTI: Watching the Clock by Christopher L. Bennett

This romp through the ST ‘verse centers on the DTI agents introduced in DS9, touching on and expanding many plots from the show as it builds its own complex story.  Fans of the show will enjoy the many shoutouts, but anyone with an interest in the twisty complications of time travel should check this book out!

[cauldronofmorning]

Please read Ex Machina by Christopher L Bennett; it’s a sequel to For The World Is Hollow and I Have Touched The Sky, has interesting one-shot characters, the diplomacy/soldier conflict that I always love, some delicious fourth wall leaning with Kirk being treated in media as a reckless womanising bad boy or an ideal hero when neither are what he’s like, Bones/Spock friendship, Spock struggling with emotions and Bones feeling too new on the ship, Uhura has female friendships, Sulu realises he wants to pursue being a Captain, depth for Chekhov not knowing where he wants to fit in, and compassion for Janice Rand.

Oh! And Bones calls the sickbay scene Spock coming out of the closet. Enjoy.

[castlesmadeofsand3]

[philcoulsonismyhero]

Have I mentioned how much I love the Star Trek: Enterprise continuation novels? Because I was making a halfhearted attempt to sort out my books earlier and I managed to find all but one of them (Rise of the Federation: Tower of Babel is apparently somewhere else, probably back home) and I am so tempted to reread them all.

Honestly, I could yell about these books forever. They take everything that was good about Enterprise, ditch the rubbish parts, and add in some truly spectacular continuity-based world-building and also so much queer representation. Malcolm still hasn’t figured out he’s not straight yet, but Phlox is confirmed bi and Travis is strongly indicated to also be bi. Trip’s brother is gay, married, and has a kid, and that’s not even mentioning the characters that are original to the books. To mention just a few, there are queer Klingons, Andorian lesbians, a close look at Deltan sexuality and culture, a big focus on Denobulan polyamory, a Tellarite dude has a crush on Jim Kirk’s great-grandfather, and a transwoman coins the term “phasers”. To reiterate, a transwoman coins the term “phasers”. These books have all the representation that Enterprise should have had as a 21st century Star Trek series. 

Also, holy crap is the science in these books well thought out. Orbital mechanics plays a role in space battles, you get to see the evolution of what will eventually become classic Original Series tech, there are so many wildly non-humanoid alien species... And then there’s the politics and the character development and and and.   They aren’t just good Star Trek books, they’re great sci-fi.

Oh, also, Trip isn’t dead! The entire last episode of Enterprise is retconned as a historically inaccurate holodeck program intended as a cover-up for what actually happened. And the framing device for The Good That Men Do (the book that details all of that) is Jake and Nog from DS9 discovering the true historical records when Starfleet finally declassifies them.

So yes. I love these books! Please consider reading them I’m begging you and if anyone has read them already please please please shoot me a message because they’re amazing and I’d love to yell about them with someone.

[philcoulsonismyhero]

THERE’S A NEW RISE OF THE FEDERATION BOOK AND IT’S BEEN OUT FOR OVER TWO WEEKS AND I HAVEN’T READ IT YET AAAAAHHHHHHH

*clears throat* Ahem. Sorry about that. By way of explanation, the Rise of the Federation novels are some of my Very Favourite Star Trek books, and I’ve been waiting a whole year for the next one. Turns out it came out a few weeks ago, and is called “Live by the Code”, and I’ll probably read it in a single sitting the second it shows up from Amazon. You should probably expect yelling about Malcolm Reed to occur the second I’m done, because I’m extremely invested in that nerd and he plays a major role in this series.

[lawyernovelist]

2014 Mop-Up

Well, it's now June and I've not finished all my 2014 book reviews, so I figured that I'd do these two in one post 2015-style, since I don't have as much to say about them as the others (this leaves Divergent, The Hobbit, and The Host, if you're curious).

Much Obliged, Jeeves by PG Wodehouse - Recommended

Forgotten History by Christopher L Bennett - Meh

Cut for spoilers.

Much Obliged, Jeeves

I do like the Jeeves books. They're a good light read and I've not seen Wodehouse's style anywhere else; it always makes me giggle. This one's the usual mix of hijinx and Bertie almost ending up in jail and/or engaged only for it to come out OK in the end thanks to Jeeves, but I really couldn't summarise it any further than that!

Forgotten History

This is a sequel to Watching the Clock, which I quite liked, but I have to say I wasn't so fond of this one. There was nothing wrong with it, it was just kind of meh. I think the biggest culprit was the fact that because it was all about the history of the DTI there was very little of the characters I liked from Watching the Clock, but because I knew that Watching the Clock was told out of order and Forgotten History had started in 'the present', I kept expecting to go back to them at any moment and see how this was all relevant to a current story. And it did eventually, but for most of the book it felt very much like the story should actually have just been a prequel from the start.

Nonetheless, I did enjoy some of the bits that were in the past, and there was just enough of the characters from the present that it didn't feel entirely misplaced. I actually especially enjoyed seeing Kirk, and seeing Kirk given his due as not being completely disruptive and stupid (I normally have a pretty good opinion of Kirk, but I just watched The Apple and spent the entire episode wanting to slap him, so that's the best I can really say right now).

So it was OK, and I don't regret reading it, but I'd not pick it up again.

[lawyernovelist]

Review of Watching the Clock (Spoilers)

So it's been a while since I reviewed anything... It's not because I haven't been reading, I just have four books now piled up waiting to be reviewed.

Watching the Clock is actually a Star Trek book. I have to admit that I'm not too up on my Star Trek (I've watched ToS, Wrath of Khan and the two new Trek films), but this book is actually really good about that. There are a couple of in-jokes I could get and I knew who the characters they mentioned were (such as Kirk, Janeway, Worf and so on), but the book is not actually about the major Star Trek characters. I gather that Agents Lucsly and Dulmur are canon characters and appeared in the show, but only very briefly and the book doesn't assume any knowledge of Star Trek beyond pop culture, which is really nice.

Overall, I did quite like it. I liked the characters and cared about what happened to them and the Department of Temporal Investigations itself is pretty neat. It actually reminded me of the PPC, though admittedly with less world-jumping. The non-linear storytelling was also very neatly handled - it actually pulled off flashbacks without them being too jarring.

There was technobabble in abundance. In fact, I think there was a bit too much, but fortunately it wasn't overly intrusive. I was able to gloss over all the technobabble and mentally replace it with 'magic'.

There are a couple more things I want to bring up, but I'll cut for length, spoilers and some talk of rape.

First, I'm going to talk a bit about Teresa Garcia, the main female character. She's not the only female character and the others were really neat, but she is the main one. I did like Teresa personally; I really believed her and she actually seemed heroic. I liked her introduction: her first action in the book is that she essentially risked her life to prevent the rest of her crew causing a paradox. They then beat the tar out of her and in her first actual scene she's in a hospital bed. Nonetheless, she is dedicated enough to the idea of defending the timeline that she's prepared to join the DTI, she's smart enough to make it through training and that is actually used: she has an unusual skillset in that she's an archeologist and that comes back. Teresa actually wasn't wasted (she was actually also known by her surname for the whole book once she became an agent, which I really appreciated even though I still think of her by her first name; it puts her at the same respect level as the male agents. It's a little thing, but one that jumped out).

My next point about her will play into my next major point about the book overall. I'll say now, that point has to do with rape. I'll bracket it with bold warnings to make it easy to skip that section, but there is rape in this book. I'll discuss that in a moment.

I loved the relationships between Teresa and other characters. She has friends during her training and I believed their relationships. I genuinely liked seeing those guys interact. There's also the fact that that showed that while Teresa is smart, she's not ludicrously smart. There are others smarter than her but she's the one who pulls through because she's smart enough and she has other skills that she can bring to bear. But we see her interact with multiple people in multiple ways. And that brings me to Ranjea.

I don't know anything about Deltans, so the non-linear storytelling really did the story a favour because a flashback let me see Delta and see Ranjea's background. That meant that a lot of the interaction between him and Teresa made a lot more sense than it would have done otherwise; we actually see something of Deltan culture and what the 'unitive experience' actually is. This meant that the book avoided a problem: a major conflict for Teresa and Ranjea is that she falls madly in lust with him on first meeting (Deltans have very powerful pheremones) and spends quite a lot of time trying to get into bed with him, especially when they are first assigned as partners. He refuses and does his best to help her get over the crush. I think that, mishandled, this could very easily have turned into the virtuous man keeping the wanton woman in check, but because we see the background to it - and that this really is about her safety, not her 'virtue' or anything like that - that vibe isn't there. I also enjoy the fact that she does get over him and they are able to work together as partners and friends. At least, up until the climax of their plotline.

Warning: rape talk starts here

Some background is probably necessary. Teresa and Ranjea get sent to a place called the Axis, where they are faced with a powerfully empathic/telepathic adversary named Lirahn who has demonstrated herself perfectly capable of manipulating people's thoughts and emotions to the point of mind control. During their final confrontation with her, Lihran realises that Teresa and Ranjea are in fact still attracted to each other.

"That's unexpected. The little primitive is more than just a play-thing to you. You cherish her." She chuckled. "For all your platitudes, you crave her. And the way her body reacts to you... oh, this will be much more entertaining."

Lirahn concentrated on Ranjea, and a moment later, his scent became stronger, overpowering, filling Garcia with instant arousal and need. Dropping the phaser, she clutched his body closer, felt his heat, knew he was as aroused as she was. "No..." he gasped, trying but failing to keep his hands from roving over her body. "You mustn't... you don't know what this will do to her..."

This, I thought, was really well handled. It was icky, but more because of empathy with the characters than because it made me feel grubby reading it the way that, say, some of the scenes in The White Dragon did. I think part of this impression is because it is clear that this is sick and wrong. Even though Teresa and Ranjea are mutually engaging in the (tastefully-described) sexual activity; even though they find one another physically attractive; even though they have expressed interest in a relationship; even though they've both said they need to get laid... what's happening here is still sick and wrong.

It's also acknowledged as an attack on both of them, which I appreciated. Ranjea seems to handle it more easily than Teresa, but he has been established as someone who is very good at handling stressful and traumatic experiences.  Teresa has more trouble -

"But what Lirahn did to me... what she did to you... it was an assault. After I... came down and could process it with a clear head... I felt so violated. On your behalf as much as mind, that she turned such a beautiful, giving part of you into a weapon."

He shook his head. "That was her own folly. She hurt me, yes, and she hurt you through me. That places a burden on me too, but the burden is part of her, not me. It doesn't change what my sexuality means to me."

"Well, maybe you can separate the joy of it from the invasion. But I can't." ... "I'm so sorry, Ranjea. You're a dear friend, and a great partner. But I think it'll be a while before I'm comfortable letting you touch me again."

- and although within the book she does go back to accepting comfort from him fairly soon (the narative does state that time has passed, but it's only a couple of pages later in the physical book), I did find her reaction quite believeable: that there was that hesitation while she takes some time to deal with it, even though then she does move on.

Overall, I appreciated the acknowledgement from the narrative that Lirahn's manipulation of Ranjea and Teresa was rapey and wrong; that they were both victims of it; and that Teresa did need time to recover.

End of rape talk

Another plot thread that I think deserves an honourable mention is Shelan. She was quite a major secondary character throughout most of the book and her actions did play a major part in the ending of one of the plotlines (a little more on this anon. I also won't give details in order to avoid completely spoiling it). However, only her actions have this effect - she herself has been surgically removed from existence.

I thought that was, firstly, very clever. Secondly, it was very well done; I liked the reactions of the other agents in the DTI to checking the shielded files and finding that there was someone recorded in there as an agent and a friend of theirs who they no longer remembered and who had, according to all non-shielded records, never existed. The shock and horror was very nicely done, as was the sorrow that Ranjea and Teresa felt - they had been outside time and effectively also shielded when Shelan was killed, so they do remember her and are then stuck trying to tell all the others about this friend that they've lost. I thought that was very neatly done.

Throughout this review, I actually haven't talked very much about Lucsly and Dulmur, the nominal main characters. They were in the other plot thread from Ranjea and Teresa, and that plot actually kind of left me cold. For one thing, I was less involved with Lucsly and Dulmur than Ranjea and Teresa. It wasn't that I didn't care about them - I was rooting for Dulmur during the flashbacks and was genuinely sad when he broke up with his wife - but I didn't find their plot nearly as interesting. I think a big part of that was that I actually found it quite confusing.

In all honesty, looking back, I couldn't tell you what that plot was about and what they were doing there. This is possibly somewhere where the large number of flashbacks hurts the book, unfortunately; I can remember several things that those two did and were involved in, but I don't remember if they were in flashbacks or in the main plot. This is combined with that fact that the ending was really confusing. There are a lot of people running around and some of them are from parallel timelines and some people have died only not really and... I read that section with not the faintest idea what was happening. Which, admittedly, may have been intentional since the characters didn't know either and it was designed to be a really confusing situation. However, I think it rather spoiled that plot for me.

Finally, I must discuss the twin plot structure. It's probably clear from how I've discussed the book so far that Ranjea and Teresa and Lucsly and Dulmur are following two seperate plotlines. And the plotlines are wholly seperate. They don't actually intersect at all and what's happening in one doesn't seem to affect the other, even at the climax. I do think that was something of a failing because they are sharing a single novel, but it kind of felt like someone had woven two novellas together. It would have been a lot more cohesive if those two plots had had any effect on one another.

That's pretty much it for my thoughts on Watching the Clock, though admittedly it's now some time since I read it. I would recommend picking it up; I did enjoy reading it and many of the characters are really cool. It's probably not going to go on my favourites list, but nonetheless a good book.