Books

I read…a lot. Here’s where I ramble about books and printed media.

📚 Line of Fire by Peter David

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4/2023 – ⭐️⭐️⭐️

A short, YA story following Worf at Starfleet Academy. It feels like the first three books (of which this is the middle book) were written as a full-length (~300 page) book and then split into thirds; it references events from its predecessor, and ends with a “To be continued…”. This is the first of this series of Trek books I’d come across, and while not being a full story, it’s fine for what it is.

Really, the weirdest part is that the primary Starfleet Academy instructor is a Professor Trump. Rather unfortunate choice of character name, that one.

Michael holding LIne of Fire

📚 The Children of Kings by David Stern

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3/2023 – ⭐️⭐️⭐️

A pre-TOS adventure with Captain Pike just a few months into his captaincy of the Enterprise with Spock and Number One under his command. A Klingon/Orion/Starfleet dustup gets a little confusing trying to keep track of the players and motivations, with a somewhat out-of-left-field twist at the end that seemed a little too convenient for my tastes.

One amusing bit: The author’s endnote indicates that he thought of this as something of a prequel to the 2009 Star Trek rebook (so still in the Prime universe), though he still pictured Jeffrey Hunter as Pike rather than Bruce Greenwood; meanwhile, having recently enjoyed the first season of Strange New Worlds, I found myself more often picturing Anson Mount as Pike. The more actors we have inhabiting key roles, the more the mental visualizations start to shift as you read, I guess.

Michael holding The Children of Kings

📚 Being Seen: One Deafblind Woman’s Fight to End Ableism by Elsa Sjunneson

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2/2023 – ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

You should read this. Memoir, societal and media criticism, and a lot of often-footnoted humor in this examination of persistent and pervasive ableism. I ordered this after seeing the author give the keynote address at Accessing Higher Ground, an academic conference on accessible technology in higher education, which was an excellent keynote and introduced me to the phrase “disability is a multiverse”. Though I’ve been making an effort at broadening my awareness of the ableism around me, as someone who isn’t (currently) disabled, I know that there’s a lot I miss, and there was a lot in this book that I hadn’t thought of. However obvious it is in retrospect, unless you live within these circumstances, they’re often all too easy to not be aware of, and it’s very worthwhile to be exposed to situations outside of our experience.

Michael holding Being Seen

📚 Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson

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1/2023 – ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Fun to re-read this for the first time in at least two decades, especially so soon after reading Gibson’s Neuromancer. It had been long enough that all I really remembered clearly was the Metaverse and the opening pizza delivery sequence; other pieces I halfway recalled as I read, but much was brand-new all over again. Just as with Neuromancer, it’s fascinating to see how these books have influenced modern technology and tech culture. And I always love diving into one of Stephenson’s books. His tendency to cram everything including the proverbial kitchen sink into his books in overly intricate detail mixed with a healthy dose of snark doesn’t work for everyone, but it sure does for me.

Michael holding Snow Crash

2022 Reading Round-Up 📚

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Every year, I set myself a goal of reading at least 52 books over the course of the year — an average of one a week. This year I made it to 68. Here’s a quick (?) overview…

2022 Reading Goal of 52 books met! 131%, 68 books. Fantastic! You've exceeded your reading goal by 16 books.

Continuing a trend from the last few years, this year was almost entirely dedicated to escapist fluff. Surprised? I’m not.

Non-fiction: A few this year, though for the most part, they were very much in line with my usual science fiction choices. The two best were Frederik Pohl’s memoir The Way the Future Was, encompassing the early decades of SF fandom, and Randall Munroe’s delightful What If? 2, where he once again takes answering silly scientific questions to absolutely ridiculous extremes. Also in this category was a series of books looking at the design work for various Star Trek ships across several series.

Non-genre-fiction (where “genre” is shorthand — though, not very short, if you include this parenthetical — for science-fiction, fantasy, and horror): Only one this year, but that one — Fredrik Backman’s A Man Called Ove — was excellent.

Quality genre fiction: About the same as last year; primarily the Philip K. Dick nominees and my Hugo project, with a few others added here and there.

As usual, I read all of the books nominated for this year’s Philip K. Dick awards, and once again, I failed to pick the winner. My personal favorite of this year’s slate was Tade Thompson’s Far From the Light of Heaven. This is the second time Tade has been nominated for a PKD award, and the fourth novel of his that I’ve read (after The Wormwood Trilogy, the last book of which was a 2020 PKD nominee), and I very much enjoy his work.

I added eight books to my Hugo reading project, bringing me up to 54% of the way through. My two favorites from this year’s set were Vonda N. McIntyre’s Dreamsnake and William Gibson’s Neruomancer.

Fluff genre fiction: Unsurprisingly, this once again ended up being the strong majority of this year’s reading. Almost entirely Star Trek novels, with a few detours here and there. And given everything that was going on in 2020 2021 2022, it was very nice to have a bookshelf full of options that wouldn’t take a whole lot of brain power for me to disappear into.

Finally Storygraph’s stats on my year’s reading tell me:

A graph of my reading over the year tracking number of books and number of pages. January, November, and December are the busiest months; April, August, and October are the slowest.
On to 2023!

📚 Sacrifices of War by Kevin Ryan

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68/2022 – ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Wraps up all the threads quite nicely, in a way that I didn’t expect when I started the first book – by revisiting Errand of Mercy. While the episode always mentioned that the Federation and the Klingon Empire were at the brink of war, the combination of TOS’s weekly adventure format and ‘60s TV styles always meant that it never really felt that dire. By exploring the buildup of tensions between the powers over six books and several bloody encounters in space, on the ground, and on space stations, the events of the episode, and even Kirk and Kor’s frustration at being prevented from going to war, gain much more weight and solidity.

Michael holding Sacrifices of War

📚 Demands of Honor by Kevin Ryan

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67/2022 – ⭐️⭐️⭐️

As we approach the end of this hexology, it’s worth noting that it’s doing a really neat job of exploring the state of affairs with and within the Klingon empire from both Starfleet and Klingon viewpoints. While these are some of the more violent Trek novels I’ve read, it works well to give weight to the interactions hear referenced and see onscreen in TOS episodes.

Michael holding Demands of Honor

📚 River of Blood by Kevin Ryan

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65/2022 – ⭐️⭐️⭐️

A strong conclusion to the trilogy, culminating in an all-out battle between invading Klingons and Starfleet defenders on a starbase that takes up the majority of the book. Something of the literary equivalent of the final act CGI battle of any given Marvel movie. The threads wrap up satisfyingly well, with a few nicely placed ties to future events and characters. Though I rated each standalone book at three stars, taken together, the trilogy as a whole is definitely above average for Trek novels. (Though all books do suffer from occasional typos missed in the editing passes; in this one, the starbase’s first mention is given the designation Starbase 43, but in the next paragraph it becomes Starbase 42 and remains there for the rest of the book.) Also, keep an eye out on the character names — many throughout the series are named for notable people in Trek’s real-world past.

Michael holding River of Blood

📚 Killing Blow by Kevin Ryan

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64/2022 – ⭐️⭐️⭐️

As with many mid-points of trilogies, not quite as strong as the first, though still better than average. Some flashback scenes are written in with the main narrative and occasionally mildly confusing when scenes switch between present and past battles, and there are a few unfortunate typos swapping similarly named characters. Once those are accounted for, though, a decent enough middle chapter.

Michael holding Killing Blow.