Author: Galen Charlton

Guest Review: Star Trek: The Next Generation: The Stuff of Dreams by James Swallow

Posted on by Galen Charlton | Author : | book reviews> C Reviews> Guest Review
Star Trek: The Next Generation: The Stuff of Dreams by James SwallowFormat read: ebook provided by NetGalley
Formats available: ebook
Genre: space opera
Series: Star Trek: The Next Generation
Length: 94 pages
Publisher: Pocket Books
Date Released: March 25, 2013
Purchasing Info: Author’s Website, Publisher’s Website, Goodreads, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo

The Enterprise-E arrives in unclaimed space for a rendezvous with the Starfleet science vessel Newton. Jean-Luc Picard and his crew have been ordered to assist the Newton with the final phase of its current mission—a mission that brings Picard face to face with something he never thought he would see again: the phenomenon known as the Nexus. Less than twelve years after it left the Alpha Quadrant, the Nexus ribbon has now returned. Tasked to track and study the phenomenon as it re-entered the galaxy, the specialist science team on the Newton discovered that the orbital path of the Nexus has been radically altered by the actions of the rogue El-Aurian Tolian Soren—taking it deep into the territory of The Holy Order of the Kinshaya, one of the key members of the Typhon Pact. Starfleet Command is unwilling to allow the Kinshaya—and by extension, the Typhon Pact—free access to what is essentially a gateway to anywhere and anywhen, as a single operative could use the Nexus to change the course of galactic history….

Guest Review by Galen

Star Trek GenerationsSometimes the name of the game is keep-away.  The Nexus, which was at the heart of the movie Star Trek: Generations, has wandered close to the territory of a rival to the Federation.  The Nexus is tempting on many levels.  Somebody who figures out how to control it would have possession of a powerful time machine, and that prospect is of course rather concerning.  The Nexus is also tempting as an object of scientific curiosity.  One of the things that Captain Picard is quickly faced with in The Stuff of Dreams is navigating between those two temptations.

The Nexus also offers a very personal temptation: someone who enters it can have a perfect life, or at least a good facsimile thereof.  Or perhaps, just the life they desire.  Therein lies the deeper story.

Escape Rating C+: The Stuff of Dreams is a competent addition to the TNG series, but works best as a palate cleanser between novels.  Readers who are new to the recent TNG book series may find themselves a bit lost.  To best appreciate Swallow’s entry, I recommend first reading the Destiny trilogy by David Mack and at least dipping into one or two of the Typhon Pact stories.

star trek destinyOne of the (guilty?) pleasures of reading media tie-ins is getting the chance to see loose ends tied up.  It can also be nice to see connections being drawn between apparently separate stories in the fictional universe.  However, stories that aim to invoke that apophenia risk overshooting.  The fallout from the events of the Destiny trilogy are going to provide a deep well for TNG reboot authors to dip into for a long time.  However, by touching on that and Generations and the Typhon Pact and time travel (including a throw-away reference to the Department of Temporal Investigations), The Stuff of Dreams crossed the line into being too much of a name-checklist of recent Trek.  In particular, I think that dropping either the Kinshaya or the Newton would have made for a tighter story.

As an exploration of survivor guilt, The Stuff of Dreams has a place on the shelf for folks who have enjoyed the TNG reboot novels, but does not otherwise stand alone or stand out.

***FTC Disclaimer: Most books reviewed on this site have been provided free of charge by the publisher, author or publicist. Some books we have purchased with our own money and will be noted as such. Any links to places to purchase books are provided as a convenience, and do not serve as an endorsement by this blog. All reviews are the true and honest opinion of the blogger reviewing the book. The method of acquiring the book does not have a bearing on the content of the review.

Guest Review: Stung by Bethany Wiggins

Posted on by Galen Charlton | Author : | ARCs> B Reviews> book reviews> Guest Review
[Cover of Stung by Bethany Wiggins]Format read: ARC provided by publisher
Formats available: hardcover
Genre: Young adult science fiction
Length: 304 pages
Publisher: Walker and Company
Date Released: April 2, 2013
Purchasing Info: Author’s Website, Publisher’s Website, Goodreads, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Book Depository

Fiona doesn’t remember going to sleep. But when she opens her eyes, she discovers her entire world has been altered–her house is abandoned and broken, and the entire neighborhood is barren and dead. Even stranger is the tattoo on her right wrist–a black oval with five marks on either side–that she doesn’t remember getting but somehow knows she must cover at any cost. And she’s right. When the honeybee population collapsed, a worldwide pandemic occurred and the government tried to bio-engineer a cure. Only the solution was deadlier than the original problem–the vaccination turned people into ferocious, deadly beasts who were branded as a warning to un-vaccinated survivors. Key people needed to rebuild society are protected from disease and beasts inside a fortress-like wall. But Fiona has awakened branded, alone-and on the wrong side of the wall…

Fiona Tarsis goes to sleep in a world much like our own, just with fewer bees.  When she wakes up, she’s immediately faced with what that world has turned into, and she is taken on a wild ride.

The decline in bee populations is a real problem; losing major pollinator species means fewer plants and crops, which in turn could have a significant ripple effect on human society.  In Stung, however, attempts to solve that problem have backfired spectacularly: people who received a bee-flu vaccination turned into the equivalent of werewolves–with no way to return to normal.  (How does one get from bees disappearing to bee flu?  Let’s just say that it’s not a good idea to short-circuit the scientific peer review process.  It’s also not a good idea to keep digging, once you’ve found yourself in a hole.)

Fiona wakes up knowing only that she must hide her tattoo and that she’s still thirteen.  The latter “fact” is quickly proven false–four years have passed since the culmination of the disaster–and she must survive long enough to figure out what’s going on.  Fortunately, she soon runs into a young militiaman named Bowen, and with his help starts to learn more about herself and her world.

Escape Rating B-:  At the exhibits hall of any American Library Association conference, advance reading copies are generally easy to pick up.  In this case, it was particularly easy: the ARC was literally thrust upon me.

It’s easy to see why the the publicist in the booth was collaring passers-by.  Stung is a fast-paced, engaging read.  The author does a good job dropping Fiona and the reader into an uncertain situation and providing enough information to keep the pages turning while not giving the game away too soon.  In fact, Wiggins has written one of the better amnesiac openings I’ve read in some time.

Fiona is a sympathetic viewpoint character.  Although her upbringing was middle-class and sheltered, she’s not completely helpless in the rough circumstances that face her.  She can shoot quite well (a legacy from her father’s training), she’s smart, and she eventually finds out that the vaccination has given her some advantages in tight spots.

In Bowen she finds a connection to the pre-apocalyptic world and a source of romantic tension.  As it turns out, if you go to sleep at 13 and wake up at 17… you don’t still don’t get to skip puberty.

Unfortunately, for all her general competence, Fiona still needs rescuing at the end.  While Fiona herself is not unhappy with how things turn out–and Bowen serves nicely as a rescuing knight–I finished the book wishing that Fiona had had a little more control by the end.  Also, the main villain had a little too much cardboard in his makeup for my test.

The last page of the book leaves the door open to a sequel; if one is written, I hope that Fiona avoids the trap of becoming little more than a symbol of better days to come.  That said, I do hope that Wiggins continues the tale.

***FTC Disclaimer: Most books reviewed on this site have been provided free of charge by the publisher, author or publicist. Some books we have purchased with our own money and will be noted as such. Any links to places to purchase books are provided as a convenience, and do not serve as an endorsement by this blog. All reviews are the true and honest opinion of the blogger reviewing the book. The method of acquiring the book does not have a bearing on the content of the review.

Guest review: Redshirts

Posted on by Galen Charlton | Author : | B Reviews> book reviews> Guest Posts

[cover of Redshirts by John Scalzi]

Like the “expendable” characters it chronicles, Redshirts by John Scalzi explores some unexpected depths and delivers both a satisfying tale and meta-tale.

The starting point is a question that surely has occupied many a college bull session since the 1960s — why is the life expectancy of security officers on certain television shows so short, especially when in the presence of senior officers?  After a vignette describing the typical (and brief) career trajectory of an ensign assigned to the Universal Union’s flagship Intrepid that ends with a satisfying crunch for a landworm (albeit rather less satisfying for the hapless redshirt), the book follows Ensign Dahl and his friends.  Newly assigned to the Intrepid, Dahl finds out very quickly that the longstanding military adage of “don’t volunteer for nuttin'” — particularly away missions — is key for a long, healthy career.  Of course, he can’t avoid away missions forever, and when he ends up assigned to one, the fun really begins.  Before the end, Dahl must figure out what’s really going on and take control of his destiny.  The alternative is to become the star of a poignant little moment where the captain mourns his death — then sends a request to the UU Command for yet another bright young ensign.

Escape Rating from Galen B+:  Although there’s plenty of fun to be had following Dahl as he solves the mystery in a “Lower Decks” setting, to say nothing of playing spot-the-sf-trope (and don’t try to turn that into a drinking game — that way lies cirrhosis), the initial premise wouldn’t sustain more than a short story.  What makes Redshirts interesting is that it becomes a tale about story-telling.  In fact, it reminds me of Neil Gaiman’s Sandman epic, particularly “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” in Dream Country.  The characters in Redshirts find that their destiny is literally a story — and the question becomes who gets to tell the story.

Escape Rating from Marlene B+: Redshirts was definitely worth the wait. It was also one of the crazier things I’ve read. It’s much more meta than it is story, but it’s fun for all that. The willing suspension of disbelief that science fiction normally requires gets bent completely out of shape to serve the plot device, but it’s worth it to poke fun at the tropes we all know and love.

Guest Review: Railsea

Posted on by Galen Charlton | Author : | A Reviews> book reviews

In Railsea by China Miéville, the orphan Sham ap Soorap lives in a tangle, travelling the railsea as doctor’s assistant on the moler Medes.  It’s not a job he’s particularly good at, and it doesn’t help he’s not quite sure what he wants to do with himself.

The railsea on which the train Medes travels is a dangerous place — step off the rails, which cover the dry, soft earth-ocean in a Borgesian labyrinth, and you’ll find that the monsters of the deep are rather too close to the surface either for comfort or surviving the next five minutes.  However, it has its rewards for those who travel the rails, switching their way from line to line in pursuit of salvage, moldywarpes, or philosophies.  You might even find your place in life — or so Sham hopes.

Of course, sometimes you also find something completely unexpected.  One day Sham ends up on a crew sent out by the captain to investigate a wrecked train, and comes across some pictures.  In short order, Sham finds himself in the middle of a pursuit by pirates, naval trains, and subterrains for what lies behind those pictures — a truth that will change the world.

Escape Rating A: As with the rest of Miéville’s oeuvre, Railsea works on many levels.  It’s a rollicking adventure tale worthy of Robert Louis Stevenson, a coming-of-age story, and a treat for those who like wordplay.  For example, at one point the Medes finds itself trapped between a siller and the Kribbis Hole (read it aloud to fully appreciate).  I’m at best a reluctant user of audiobooks — I tend to listen to them only if I’m faced with a very long drive in areas of the country with spotty NPR coverage — but after reading Railsea, I think I’ll be making an exception and also getting the audiobook.

The book is like the railsea itself, a dense knot of intersecting story lines, changes in points of view, and allusions.  The entangling lines of the physical setting matches the complexity of the human setting with its array of diverse island city-states, pirates, salvors, and nomadic Bajjer traveling the lonely sea, to say nothing of the detritus of history and alien influence that litters the world and hints at many untold tales.  The book makes it clear that its pages only scratch the surface of a fascinating milieu.

From this knot emerges a meditation on constraint and searching for freedom.  The railsea cannot be escaped, seemingly — as I mentioned, stray off the narrow (though not very straight) tracks and you’ll quickly find yourself devoured by the denizens of the soft earth.  The high sky is the domain of alien beings too strange and obscure to contemplate.  Travel in one direction, and you’ll eventually find the rails looping back on themselves.  Pursue your obsession, as Ahab did with Moby-Dick, and you’ll find yourself in the midst of dozens of captains, each with their own “philosophy” that few of them manage to hunt down.

There’s a lot to be said for staying in the thicket — there are lots of interesting things to find there, as any reader of Miéville has come to expect.  Once you reach the end, however, you’ll find a rather satisfying breath of fresh air.

Guest Post: Schrödinger’s Ebook Box

Posted on by Galen Charlton | Author : | About> iPad> OverDrive

For Marlene’s birthday I got her a new iPad.  Since her work involves reading and reviewing ebooks, and since the iPad has become her primary ebook reader, transferring the books from her old iPad to the new one was critical.  Since she uses a number of ebook apps, this gave us an opportunity to answer the (not-so) age-old question: when you open the new box, are the ebooks still alive and meowing?

We set up the new iPad using one of the recommended approaches:

  1. Sync the old iPad with iTunes.
  2. Make a backup of the old iPad using iTunes.
  3. Hook up the new iPad to the computer and choose to restore from the backup.
  4. After the restoration, wait for iTunes to finish syncing apps and content to the new iPad.

How did the the various apps do?

  • iBooks — success.  All of the titles came over.
  • Amazon Kindle for iPad — success.  The list of titles came over.  It was necessary to re-download them, but that came as no surprise.
  • Barnes and Noble Nook — success.  The list of titles came over; as with the Kindle app, it was necessary to re-download the books.
  • Bluefire Reader — success.  Everything came over, although it was necessary to re-enter the Adobe DRM credentials.
  • Google Play Books — success.  Same story as the Kindle and Nook apps.
  • Kobo for iPad — success.  At least, apparently so.  The default titles came over, but this app is one that Marlene looked at but never actively used.

However, there was one failure: the OverDrive app for iPad.  When we opened it on the new iPad, the bookshelf was empty!

Of course, the primary purpose of this app is to display ebooks and audiobooks from OverDrive’s library service, but it will happily store and open EPUB files, and you don’t even need the OverDrive Media Console application on your PC.  You can just download an EPUB from Safari on the iPad and open it in OverDrive.  Because of apparent capacity issues with Bluefire reader, there was a period of Marlene had started using the OverDrive app to handle some of the overflow; in particular, she used it for non-DRM EPUBs.

But therein lies the rub… as near as I can tell, the OverDrive app turns out to be the Hotel California of iOS EPUB readers.  Since the restore and iTunes sync obviously hadn’t brought the ebooks over, I started looking for ways to manually transfer them.  The first place I looked was in the File Sharing feature in iTunes:

If OverDrive supported app file sharing, I could have used iTunes to copy the ebooks from the old iPad to the new one.  Unfortunately… it doesn’t.

My next step was scanning through the OverDrive app to see if it offered a way to download or email the files.  I came up with nothing.

Finally, I turned to my favorite reference librarian Google… and came up with a lot of folks complaining about how iOS5 and the recent update of the app apparently don’t play well together for audiobooks, but nothing relevant to my efforts.  So, if you’ve made this far into the post and have ideas about how to transfer the books… I’m all ears.

Ultimately, if we don’t find a way to make the transfer, the effective loss will be small, as Marlene has current files for all of the titles in the OverDrive app with the exception of three titles she had downloaded via iOS Safari from NetGalley that have since been removed from the active download list.  One irony is that those three ebooks are in open EPUB format; if only we could get to the files, any EPUB reader app could display them.

This is all a perfect storm of circumstances that could drive somebody who is unlike me (by expecting that software will actually work all the time) back into the comfortable but heavy arms of physical books:

  • Ebook DRM can punish the reader.  Marlene and I are perfectly willing to pay for ebooks (though of course, most of the time she doesn’t have to because of the number of egalleys and ARCs she reviews), but in the case of the OverDrive app, were I to make a charitable guess, DRM inspired a design compromise for the OverDrive app that lead to app file sharing not being enabled, even for non-DRM ebooks.
  • Apple’s iOS backup and syncing model has pitfalls for the unwary.  In particular, backing up to iTunes does not back up everything, and syncing with iTunes does not necessary cover content that wasn’t purchased via iTunes.  Want a real full backup of your iOS device?  It seems like you can get one only if you jailbreak it.  By the way, I really hope to be proven wrong on this.
  • It’s a truism that preserving ebooks require the reader to work harder.  You can leave a physical book sitting around and expect it to stay put (and even a very industrious cat isn’t going to push a book very far); one has to actually think in order to keep one’s ebooks available as time, hardware upgrades, and fashions in digital format pass.  But it’s even harder if one has to work to get one’s hands on the ebook file.
  • Using apps for anything other than their exact intended purpose can have unexpected pitfalls.  As an EPUB reader, the OverDrive app is arguably decent, but at the moment I can no longer recommend it for any purpose other than using OverDrive’s service.  I hope future updates of the app will make it easier to transfer titles to new iOS devices and to back up any non-library ebooks that a user chooses to read in OverDrive.

In conclusion (and to further inflict quantum mechanics metaphors on the reader), despite all of the advantages of ebooks, ebook users must still keep the Ebook Uncertainty Principle in mind: without care (and ideally access to discrete, non-DRM ebook files that you can back up), the long-term availability of ebooks that you purchase is at best a little uncertain.

Guest Review: The Lost Photographs of Captain Scott

Posted on by Galen Charlton | Author : | B Reviews> book reviews

The Lost Photographs of Captain Scott by David M. Wilson, while based on the recent rediscovery of photographs taken during Robert Scott’s ill-fated Antarctic expedition of 1910-1913, is really a meditation on reputation and remembrance.

“I am just going outside and may be some time”.  These words, uttered by expedition member Lawrence Oates before he sacrificed himself to save his companions on the trek back from the pole, have always chilled me.  We know of this only because Scott wrote about the incident in his diary.  Of course, Oates’ sacrifice came to naught; Scott and his companions died just eleven miles short of the depot that could have saved their lives.  From one point of view, this is all of piece: Scott failed to reach the pole before Amundsen; unlike Shackleton, he failed to keep his companions alive; and failed to keep himself alive.  Racing to the South Pole may be the ultimate boy’s own adventure, but Scott bungled it.

Or did he?  For that matter, what was he racing towards?  Wilson argues that there was no race, at least not one that Scott cared about.  The polar expeditions of the 19th and early 20th centuries were undertaken for a variety of motives, with a tension between exploration qua adventure and exploration for scientific purposes.  Scott conceived of his expedition as a scientific one; while it may have been necessary for fundraising and publicity to promote a goal of reaching the pole first and planting the King’s flag on it, Scott was more interested in the geographic and scientific discoveries that the trip could reveal.

To that end, Scott hired Herbert Ponting as expedition photographer and gave him a free hand to equip the expedition with all of the photographic equipment necessary for scientific purposes.  Ponting was perhaps one of Scott’s best hires; not only did he innovate techniques for using very awkward photographic equipment under harsh conditions to produce gorgeous results, he trained Scott and other expedition members to be passable polar photographers as well.  However, as Ponting was not up to the rigors of the run to the Pole, in 1912 he returned home to catalog the photographs and await Scott’s return to mount an exhibition.

By the time Ponting reached England, Scott was already dead.  Ponting’s own plans came to naught.  The absence of Scott, wrangling over the rights to the photographs, and the advent of World War I served to bury Ponting’s photographs as well as the ones taken by Scott himself.  Besides, why would the martyr’s photographs be of more interest than the martyr himself?  By the latter part of the 20th century, Scott’s reputation had fallen under attack.  Why would a bungler’s pics be of any interest?  Moreover, where was a competent archivist to be found?  Nowhere.

Reality Rating B+:  It, perhaps, was not until now, with recent efforts to rehabilitate or at least re-vision Scott’s reputation that there was fertile ground for the rediscovery of these photographs.  Wilson tells a tale that is bittersweet on many levels and places Scott and his final expedition in the center of some important dichotomies.  The book is also visually stunning.

Caveat: My review copy of this book was a PDF from NetGalley.  As it turned out, this is not a book that works well on current ebook readers.  Attempting to read it on my iPad was a rather frustrating experience, and until Apple comes out with the iCoffeeTable or unless you have a very large monitor, if you buy this book … get it in print.