"A Natural History of Dragons"

A Natural History of Dragons: A Memoir by Lady Trent (Marie Brennan)

This book stumped both Hams to come up with a clever and witty opening, so I'll just recommend it from the both of us.

Oh, you wanted to know what it's about? FINE. This one you can judge from the cover; it's a natural history of dragons, written as part memoir, part natural history. Dragons are presented as being very real animals in a fictitious world that bears a strong resemblance to Victorian-era Earth with the names switched around. Here there are no talking dragons or majestic rideable dragons; these dragons are presented in a realistic fashion, and you'll probably find yourself both fearing them as they attack the main characters and fearing for them as in turn they're hunted by poachers and have their habitats invaded by smugglers.
This book is the first in a series, covering the main character's first interest in dragons up though the end of her first adventure (complete with sequel hook). Writing her memoir - the book in your hands - allows the author to drop in asides that both flesh out the setting and the main character herself, who is now a crotchety old woman who doesn't give a fig. Given the faux-Victorian setting, there is some anachronisms about women having a place in the home; beyond this I'm not sharing any more plot details (it's only $12 on Amazon or free at your local library).

Grade: B+

Cat Person

Cat Person
by Seo Kim

I like to wander bookstores, looking for that title or cover that speaks to me from the shelf.  Some of my favorite books were books I didn't know I wanted to read.  Cat Person was one of those siren books, catching my eye on the overstuffed graphic novel shelf.

Seo Kim is a storyboarder for Adventure Time, one of my all-time favorite shows.  Yes, it's really up there with Deep Space Nine and Xena: Warrior Princess.  You can spot the similarities between some of her art and that of the Adventure Time style.

Okay, so what is the book?  It's a collection of comics she drew, mostly about herself.  She eats too much (like me!), loves her cat (like me!), and is kind of lazy (like me!).  I found a kindred spirit in Seo Kim.  I'd last felt this kinship with Julia Wertz (formerly of the awesomely named Fart Party comic but now she's just Julia) as we're both short weirdos with lupus but...I was always uncomfortable with her drinking, even before she received help. Gosh, this review is getting dark! Sorry!  Back to Cat Person--it's a short read and I did lolz for real.  Pick it up if you see it.

Grade: B

"The Good that Men Do"

Star Trek Enterprise: The Good that Men Do (Andy Mangels & Michael A Martin)

(Guest post by N. Web)

As I'll probably explain in my upcoming review of Star Trek: Destiny, one of

my main problems with Star Trek literature is its inherent questionable canon

status, to the point where the series can tend to look like elevated

fanfiction. And where I felt that Star Trek: Destiny was a great (statuesque)

example of proving that the literary Star Trek universe is worth looking into,

I was sadly kind of disappointed with this story, even though I had good

expectations for it. Granted, those expectations were along the lines of

"Well, they couldn't have done a worse job than 'These Are the Voyages...'"

(the series finale of Star Trek: Enterprise) did, but that's not a high bar to

clear if we're being real here.

A brief summary of background: Star Trek: Enterprise was the last Star Trek series on television, and it's four-year run was the only since the original series to end in cancellation. The series is well-known rather derisively amongst fans of the series as kind of a bad one, and largely one that went unwatched by much of the fandom. I personally felt the same way for much of the series' original run on UPN (or was it the CW by that point? Does anyone care?) However, by seasons 3 and 4 of the series, the tone shifted from one of "silly situation of the week" drama along the lines of Voyager to one more of "long-form interconnected story" that Deep Space Nine rather perfected during its run. By the time Enterprise hit Season 4, it had a new showrunner, had ditched the "Temporal Cold War" storyline that never made any sense to begin with (the previous showrunners have stated that the sinister Future Guy was supposed to have been Captain Archer's future self, if that makes any damn sense); and it finally felt like the series was running on all cylinders, leading into what surely would have been an awesome multi-season conflict with the Romulans preceding the founding of the United Federation of Planets.

Except the show was confirmed to not be renewed just before the season ended, giving them enough time to hastily put together a finale which has proven to be the last hour of Star Trek on television in what is going on ten years now. They brought back Rick Berman and Brannon Braga for the finale, writing a ridiculous framing device wherein Commander Riker, during his The Next Generation days (I'll save a comment about how much he should not have aged since then), is visiting the holodeck to witness Enterprise's last mission before the founding of the United Federation of Planets (which itself is a time-jump to 5 years after the previous episode of Enterprise.) The disservice this does to the cast and story of Enterprise notwithstanding, this episode is also notable because in a ridiculous contrivance, Enterprise's chief engineer and one of the three primary characters on the show, Charles "Trip" Tucker is killed protecting series recurring character Andorian Commander Shran's daughter from pirate kidnappers. It makes no sense and seems to only serve to further dilute fans' final memories of the franchise with ridiculous forced drama, reportedly the character was killed off "to get people talking." Suffice to say, the episode is not well-remembered by fans.

Telling statements from Memory Alpha:

"This is the only series finale in the Star Trek franchise where the actual

ensemble crew of the series do not appear, but rather, their holographic

copies."

"The only exterior shot of the NX-01 Enterprise in this episode appears in the

closing montage."

"Rick Berman described this episode as a "valentine to the fans"."

"At a 2009 Star Trek convention, Jonathan Frakes simply said this episode

"stinks.""

"In 2013, eight years after the airing of this episode, Brannon Braga apologized to the entire cast of Enterprise for it and said he thought Rick Berman and himself made a "narcissistic move" in trying to make the episode a "valentine" to Star Trek. He also called it "a crappy episode.""

So, without Star Trek on TV, it's up to fans to fix it. The Good that Men Do serves largely as a fix-fic. Hilariously enough, the holodeck framing device which did a disservice to the cast of Enterprise is ultimately an easy way to ret-con Trip's death, because the program Riker was using was a lie, based on a false account of history! Weirdly, this revelation is presented to us by the framing device of old Jake Sisko and old Nog, discovering these recently unclassified files about Trip Tucker's "death." In reality, Trip faked his death so he could go undercover in the Romulan Star Empire and help the proto-Federation's efforts against Romulus.

What seems strange is that what is to me a delightful appropriation of a bad

episode to righteously upend a wrong done to the fan community ends up being

kind of unsatisfying. I read reviews of this book on Amazon before purchasing

it and all were largely positive, but one negative review stood out to me in

that it was criticizing the book because people were constantly crying. I

wasn't as upset for Archer wanting to hug T'Pol and Trip constantly as this

reviewer was, but man, I have to say, Trip, Archer, and T'Pol spend quite a

bit of time throughout this book misty-eyed. T'Pol, a damned Vulcan,

literally breaks down in tears on two separate occasions. The Denobulan

doctor Phlox, in on the conspiracy, almost cries thinking about not-dead Trip

Tucker. I know there's a lot of emotion and drama involved in faking one's

death, but c'mon.

What I liked:

During his fake death, Trip remarks at how ridiculous and unbelievable the

circumstances surrounding it are. Take that, canon!

Who's a good boy? It's Porthos! He's a good boy!

Things that bothered me, in order of annoyance:

At one point Trip is paired with another undercover human operative, who espouses the really deep observation that the universe is just so vast and amazing, that it makes you wonder if God did it. No, not just any God, the Christian one, apparently. Trip is written as conceding the very deep point that it really makes you think, don't it.

While undercover as a Romulan, Trip recognizes that another, potentially hostile Romulan is actually the same person as a Vulcan captain he met months before. Nothing comes of this. We never find out if he was a Vulcan operative undercover in the Romulan Empire or vice-versa. It just hangs out there.

Characterization. Yikes. T'Pol is all over the place, and Shran is stuck in default ANGRY until the final chapters of the book when he realizes what an idiot he's been. This mistake costs him nothing other than some internal guilt, and then he is subsequently rewarded. The most complex character is a Romulan nobody cares about.

Why doesn't Trip tell T'Pol about his fake death plans immediately? He eventually does anyway, I feel like this is just more unnecessary drama insertion, but what do I know?

Although this isn't much different than the television show, I would have hoped that Sato, Reed, and Mayweather would have gotten more time focused on them. Mayweather in particular was quite invisible. Again, just like the TV show.

Again, not to overly criticize Star Trek literature as "elevated fanfiction", but I was quite often reminded of fanfiction that loves to pepper in foreign words that the author knows just to prove their cred. Right, senpai? I can sort of understand doing this for Klingon words everybody knows (I don't expect "Q'apla" to be translated), but every tenth word out of a Romulan character was italicized, and even the Andorians were occasionally complaining about how others didn't have any ZHAVEY, which I assumed was "honor." This is even more ridiculous when Romulans were constantly counting down things, which it was obvious they were numbers, and yet during at least the third countdown in the Romulan language (nerd voice: That's RIHANNSU!) Trip is translating in his head to English for the viewers at home.

Along these same lines, the questionable fanon of the Andorians having four genders and declining population growth is brought up. Further, this book takes the bold step of declaring the Aenar extinct in the 2400s. I'm less annoyed with the fanon gender theory (even though this was not represented in the considerable time spent on the Andorians in the Enterprise TV series) than I am about suddenly declaring the Aenar extinct. (especially when they exist in Star Trek Online.)

Service interruption

I foolishly picked two huge books to read at once - the three novel Imperial Guard omnibus Honour Imperialis and the face-crushingly big The Last Lion box set, a massive biography of Sir Winston Churchill (also a Mii living in my Tomodachi Life game!). I may be able to sneak in a review for some of the cartoon books on my shelf, but neither one of these big books is going to be finished any time soon - and until they are, reviews are going to be sparse at best. Until then, please enjoy this sleepy polar bear image I stole from somewhere.

"Snow Crash"

Snow Crash (Neal Stephenson)

I really hated this book; it has the William Kennedy style of writing where it sounds like an annoying person at a party you can't escape yammering nonsensically at you, with Stephenson's twist being that it sounds like you've been cornered by a 10 year old boy who can't shut up. Here's a quote from the first ten pages, talking about the hero's car, which goes, like, a billion miles an hour:

The Deliverator's car unloads that power through gaping, gleaming, polished sphincters. When the Deliverator puts the hammer down, shit happens. You want to talk contact patches? Your car's tires have tiny contact patches, talk to the asphalt in four places the size of your tongue. The Deliverator's car has big sticky tires with contact patches the size of a fat lady's thighs. The Deliverator is in touch with the road, starts like a bad day, stops on a pesta.

I made it through maybe 15 pages of this crap before it was hurled into the donation pile with great malice. I don't know that I have much to add beyond that horrible quote. I guess I would say - do not buy this book; do not check out this book; do not recommend this book; do not read this book.

Grade: F-