Raymond Benson delivers his last original James Bond novel. His last 007 book was the adaptation of Die Another Day. So that means he has to wrap up the villain, Goro Yoshida, that he set up in the previous book, Never Dream of Dying. At the PM’s request, James has been assigned to look out…
Category: The Book Shelf
The Ministry of Time (2024) – Kaliane Bradley
Simon & Schuster delivers a charming new novel by Kaliane Bradley today, one that is wonderfully funny, heartbreakingly romantic, and all wrapped up in time travel. Set in England, a young British-Cambodian civil servant is promoted and recruited into a top-secret project and is shocked to discover that time travel is real. A number of…
The Return of Ellie Black (2024) – Emiko Jean
To call The Return of Ellie Black a jaw-dropping page-turner doesn’t do the book, the story, or the author, Emiko Jean, justice. It was nothing short of a compulsive read, one that I stayed up late to finish, something that doesn’t happen often for me. I had to know how the story played out, I…
Star Trek: Assignment: Eternity (1998) – Greg Cox
Greg Cox delivers a fun and exciting novel that really ties itself into the continuity not only of The Original Series but its films, while also acknowledging the events that would later occur in The Next Generation. It also brings back Gary Seven and Roberta Lincoln from the episode Assignment: Earth. In 1969, Gary and…
Zero Cool (1969) – Micheal Crichton
Zero Cool is a a rapid-fire thriller from Micheal Crichton written under his pen-name of John Lange while he was in med-school. A riff on the ordinary man caught up in extraordinary circumstances that seems to have shades of North by Northwest to it, the tale follows Dr. Pete Ross, a radiologist on his first…
Star Trek: The Next Generation – Power Hungry (1989) – Howard Weinstein
Howard Weinstein delivers his first Next Gen novel with Power Hungry. Set squarely in the second season of the series, Weinstein shows that he has a pretty solid handle on the characters, and explores an environmental theme that sounds very familiar to the way we are treating our own planet. The Enterprise is on a…
My Heart is a Chainsaw (2021) – Stephen Graham Jones
I won’t lie, it took me a while to completely get into the story, much like the main character I was attempting to use my knowledge of slashers to figure out what was going on, while also trying to rationalize that the story was set in the ‘real world.’ But when things really started to…
The Shadow of the Wind (2001) – Carlos Ruiz Zafon
A friend of mine recommended this book to me, and I found myself completely swept away in the tale that is a love letter to books and Barcelona (it even comes with a walking tour at the end of the book which will allow those in the city to visit all the sites mentioned in…
Never Dream of Dying (2001) – Raymond Benson
James Bond returns in Raymond Benson’s Never Dream of Dying, and this time around things get emotional for Ian Fleming’s 007 as he goes after Le Gerant, the leader of the notorious Union organization that has been causing him so much trouble over the past few novels. With his adventures taking him across the continent…
Star Trek: Heart of the Sun (1997) – Pamela Sargent, and George Zebrowski
Set during Kirk’s original five year mission as portrayed in The Original Series, Heart of the Sun is an interesting exploration of isolationism and its effect, combining two story threads that end up having more in common than you initially realize. The Enterprise has arrived in a remote system, helping restore a planetary database that…
The Mind Reels 