When I started this blog, I told myself that I would never review a Star Trek book.

But sometimes, when you know that you're stuck on a plane or in the car while travelling, your resolve can weaken, and you pick up a Star Trek novel as a mindless way to fill a few hours.

Star Trek: Enterprise: Kobayashi Maruwasn't that bad - as long you're willing to accept the whole twisted continuity of the Enterprise universe.

If I get bored enough or can't find anything better to read, I just might publish that review...

Cauldron - Jack McDevitt

Cauldron

Author: Jack McDevitt

Genre: sci-fi, hard sci-fi

Back Cover:
By 2255, the age of starflight is over.  The Academy of Science and Technology is long closed, and the only efforts at space exploration are carried on by privately funded foundations.  However, physicist Jon Silvestri insists that an abandoned prototype for a much more efficient star drive is workable.  Priscilla Hutchins, now a fund-raiser for the Prometheus Foundation, persuades the group to back his research.  Soon the Cauldron - the core of the galaxy - is only months away.  At long, the mystery of the deadly omega clouds that have devastated the galaxy for centuries can be penetrated.  And a handful of brave men and women, Priscilla Hutchins among them, will journey into the very heart of the Cauldron...

Orion's Review:

Sometimes sci-fi is bad because it's too exotic, too science-fantasy-ish, too imaginative, or just too different, and the reader can't suspend his disbelief and go along with the story.  McDevitt, however, goes too far in the opposite direction.  McDevitt's character are VERY human, and unfortunately, the average human really isn't all that interesting.   One of the lead characters, Matt, is a retired star pilot who's moved on to - real estates sales...  OK, in the setting of the book, that lifestyle choice may make sense for Matt, but it doesn't make the reader want to learn more about him. Later in the book, Matt is having lunch with another minor character, and McDevitt actually narrates the details of ordering and eating.  In case you were wondering, Matt had fried chicken.  Not gagh with a solylent green appetizer and a class of Romulan ale, but fried chicken.  And his guest had a chef salad and turkey sandwich.

McDevitt's mundane character descriptions might be forgivable.  But what is not forgivable is the wasted potential of the universe he has created for Cauldron (and all of his earlier books).    There are hints of vast spaces, ancient mysteries and new discoveries to be made.  But...  what really happens is that a jaded humanity has largely turned it's back on space exploration (mainly because they haven't found anything really interesting or profitable),  characters die in pointless dull tragedies on alien worlds (one character breaks his neck after falling down a flight of stairs while being chased by a big snake), and the ancient mysteries seem to be the creation of idiot savants.  Stop reading here if you want to avoid a big spoiler...

-- spoiler filler---

OK,  so the spoiler is the payoff of the story line of the origin of the Omega Clouds, which have figured prominently in several of McDevitt's books.  The Omega Clouds kill civilizations - well, really they destroy anything with right-angles - like for instance, buildings...  The creator of the Omega clouds turns out to be a cloud-like entity trapped in the galactic core.  It has mastery of nano-technology that is uses to create the clouds and is more or less immortal.  But the best idea it can come up with to free itself is sending out killer clouds to get someone's attention and then to try to steal their starship.  THAT idea sucked when used in Star Trek in both the animated episode "Beyond the Farthest Star" and Star Trek V: The Final Frontier.  And probably many other places too, but when you can make an "as bad as Star Trek"  comparison, it's hard to resist.

It's hard to decide between rating this book as a C+ or B-.  On the negative side, the big payoff is silly, the characters are dull, and the setting is depressing.  On the positive side, at least there IS a payoff, and, while the setting is depressing, it is believably depressing and self-consistent as an extrapolation of our own rather shallow present-day world.  So, as a comprise, Cauldron get a B-- (that's a double minus, not a typo!)

Review Grade: B--

Chronicles of the Black Company - Glen Cook

Chronicles of the Black Company

Author: Glen Cook

Genre: fantasy, military

Back-cover blurb:

Darkness wars with darkness as the hard-bitten men of the Black Company take their pay and do what they must. They bury their doubts with their dead.
Then comes the prophecy: The White Rose has been reborn, somewhere, to embody good once more...

Orion's Review:

For what is probably the best "military-fantasy" epic of all time - certainly at least one that kick-started the genre, that back-cover blurb is pretty weak.  So perhaps a few more words on in order...

Chronicles of the Black Company collects three of Glen Cook's first Black Company tales, which are sometimes referred to as "The Books of the North"  These books have been around for quite a while and have finally been collected together in this handy omnibus edition.  Orion's purpos in reviewing them now is mainly a hint at what someone could buy him for Christmas...

But, back to the review.  The arc of these books is the entrance of the mercenary Black Company into the service of The Lady, the resurrected and dreaded ruler of a vast and ancient empire; the betrayal of the Company by scheming plotters to the Lady's throne; the Company's defection and championing of The White Rose; and the eventual overthrow (sort of..) of The Lady.

The strength of these Black Company tales - and perhaps the weakness of some of Cook's later books through it's absence - is the narration supplied by Croaker, the curmudgeonly company Surgeon, Annalist, and eventually Captain (although that tale belong to the Books of the South...).

Croaker's narrative establishes the Company as a family - a family of cynical, black-hearted, violent bastards perhaps, but nevertheless, a family.  The wizards Goblin and One-Eye constantly spar like little boys, the common soldier-grunts drink, carouse and gamble, and the officers reveal hints of dark and tragic pasts.  The loyalty of these brothers to each other has sustained the Company through hundreds of years of wandering across the world in the service of various princes and rulers, all of whom inevitably begin to fear the Company and try to double-cross it, to their misfortune.  Croaker is a bit of an old crank and prone to romanticizing, but he is honest with himself (and thus the reader) about the Company, makes the characters believable and appealing, even though you would never want to meet them face-to-face.

These Chronicles feature a fair amount of fantasy under-pinnings - wizards, shape-shifters, and ancient undying evils, but none too large to overshadow the role of the plain, but crafty foot-soldiers of the Black Company.  The Company's world - although not ours - is a fairly recognizable setting where the characters act on very human motivations.

Croaker and the rest of the Black Company are anti-heroes, not heroes.  Of course you find yourself liking them and hoping for their success, but they're really not nice people.  They kill for their pay, they do it very well, and the phrase "rules of war" does not apply in this world.  It is true that the Black Company ends up as the protector of the White Rose, who represents the world's only hope of overthrowing the Lady's tyranny.  But undertaking this role is really a matter of survival after being betrayed, rather than a moral choice.

Cook's strength is characterization and setting.  Croaker is a strong, but cynical character with a somewhat skewed moral compass - as, in fact, are the leads in just about all of Cook's books.  Paradoxically, although Croaker's narration is the focus of the book, this style sometimes leads Cook to skip quickly over the details of what actually is going on, but that's a small stylistic quibble.

FYI, for a different look at the world of the mercenary, try the 1st volume of Cook's sci-fi Starfishers trilogy, Shadowline.

Review grade: A+

Mainspring - Jay Lake

Mainspring

Author: Jay Lake

Genre: sci-fi, steampunk, fantasy

Back-cover blurb:

“Her Imperial Majesty Queen Victoria still rules New England and her America Possessions; the Royal Navy rules the skies with its mighty Airships; and Earth still turns on God’s great brass gears of Heaven as it makes its orderly passage around the Lamp of the Sun from Midnight to Midnight and Year to Year

In the town of New Haven, a Clockmaker’s young apprentice is visited at midnight by a brass Angel, and told that he, and he alone, can find the Key Perilous to rewind the Mainspring of the Earth. If he does not, the planet will wind down, and life will cease”.

Orion's review:

Jay Lake’s new novel, Mainspring, “revolves” around the notion that that the universe really is a manufactured clockwork in which the Earth revolves around the lamp of the sun on giant gears just like a medieval clockmaker’s orrey. It also, seemingly incidentally, features a Victorian setting where the Northern hemisphere is still ruled by England. The concept is interesting, if slightly odd, but Lake really does nothing with it. The complexities of the clockwork world are only vaguely explored, especially the barely-hinted-at mysteries of the Southern hemisphere and the great Wall (where the Earth meshes against it’s gears) that divide North and South. Mainspring also blurs the lines between the retro-tech of steampunk, and religious/supernatural elements, which leaves the reader puzzling over how this Universe is supposed to work. As for the Victorian setting, maybe this is just a requirement for steampunk, but the politics of how America did NOT become independent are never explored, nor are any of the other geo-political implications of Rule Britannia other than the occasional mention of China, which seems to be a rival super-power.

But the real failing is that the main character, the clockmaker’s apprentice Hethor, isn’t really very heroic. While he may have a stubborn perseverance, his trek across the world from New Haven to the South Pole is more guided by Deus ex Machinas and random (and dubious) coincidences than any heroic actions of his own. Plus, “Hethor” is a really dull name for a hero…

This edition of Mainspring closes with a sample from Lake’s next novel, Escapement, which continues the story of the Mainspring universe. Maybe the workings of this universe will be better explained therein.

Review grade: C-