Archive for the ‘Reviews of books’ Category
VOY String Theory: Evolution
{4.5/5} “While most of these hotshots around here act all blasé about rearranging planetary systems and making stars go nova, the truth is, simple games of chance entertain them endlessly. I’ve seen Q at the slots for days, shoveling in their chips and pulling the handle to see if the primordial DNA combinations the box […]
VOY String Theory: Fusion
{4.5/5} “Chakotay was not at all surprised to see that in the space of a breath, the jovial woman who had just lingered lovingly over a child’s drawing was gone and in her place stood the most determined leader to ever right point on a Federation vessel. Sometimes he thought they had survived this long […]
Every Heart a Doorway
{4.5/5} “Most of us are here because we want to be able to open our doors at will, at least at first. Sometimes the desire goes away. Sometimes the door comes back. Sometimes we just have to learn to deal with being exiles in our home countries.” Every Heart a Doorway by Seanan McGuire, published […]
VOY String Theory: Cohesion
{4.5/5} “‘You would retain your individuality, Lieutenant, not become a member of the collective. You couldn’t because there is no collective here.’ Seven of Nine stopped then and considered, realizing she was not being completely accurate. ‘Actually, that is not true: we would be the collective — a collective of two.’” Star Trek: Voyager — […]
Silver in the Wood
{4.5/5} “At once slow deep green rolled over him. He took a breath, and another, smelling old rotting leaves and healthy growth and autumn light. He felt almost as though he could have planted his feet and become a tree himself, a strong oak reaching up to the sky, brother of the old oak who […]
Lent
{5/5} “On Maundy Thursday he washed the feet of all his brothers and all the poor who crowded into the pilgrim hall for bread. He has been out and about through the four quarters of Florence, learning the narrows mazes of the streets, giving comfort to the sick and dying with his own hands, whoever […]
Mars
{4.5/5} “Mars would be the crowning achievement of a new era of international cooperation. After a century of war and terrorism and mass murder, a cosmic irony turned the blood-red planet named after the god of war into the new century’s blessed symbol of peaceful cooperation.” Mars by Ben Bova, published in 1992 Once the […]
River of Stars
{5/5} “They didn’t execute out-of-favour civil servants in the Twelfth Dynasty of Kitai under the Emperor Wenzong. That, he thought wryly, would have been barbaric, and theirs was an emperor of exquisite cultivation. They just sent members of the disgraced faction away, sometimes so far that their ghosts couldn’t even return to threaten anyone.” River […]
Star Trek: The Antares Maelstrom
{4.5/5} “Grandle jumped off the counter into the fracas, landing between two furious shoppers who were doing their best to batter each other senseless. She shoved them apart, trying to keep them at arm’s length from each other. Her fierce expression would have done an ancient Greek Fury proud. ‘Get a hold of yourselves! What […]
VOY Dark Matters: Shadow of Heaven
{4.5/5} “It had been strange to be without a weapon on this planet and downright unsettling to be without a combadge. A dozen times a day he’d find himself tapping his chest, trying futilely to communicate with someone. It had gotten so that the children teased him, lifting their right hands and touching their left […]