Some twenty years ago, my sister gifted me with six of Ian Fleming’s original James Bond adventures. First printings from the Macmillan Company, these wonderful little hardcovers were in great condition but sans books jackets. I hadn’t read any of the Fleming Bonds since my early teens, when I was in the midst of discovering…
Category: The Book Shelf
Star Trek: The Kobayashi Maru (1989) – Julia Ecklar
With a framing story set after the events of The Motion Picture, but with the uniforms introduced in The Wrath of Khan, so sometime during the second big mission, The Kobayashi Maru is more a collection of short stories as each member in a damaged shuttle tells a tale of their encounter with the famous…
Star Trek: The Cry of the Onlies (1989) – Judy Klass
These are the voyages of the starship Enterprise… I dug into another Trek novel this week, and for the most part I enjoyed it, or at least the way it tied into The Original Series. Set during the original five year mission, this novel serves as a bit of a sequel to the episodes Miri,…
The Light Fantastic (1986) – Terry Pratchett
I ventured back to Discworld this week, as I dove into the second tale written by Terry Pratchett. This one picks up moments after the ending of the book and sees our somewhat hero, the questionable wizard, Rincewind, plunging over the edge of the world, which in case you weren’t aware, is a disc on…
Star Trek: The Lost Years (1989) – J.M. Dillard
So what happened to James T. Kirk, Spock, McCoy and the rest after the close of their five year mission and before the events depicted in The Motion Picture? This week, I start to find out with the next instalment in the Pocket Books series. I think I have read this one before, as I…
The Chronicles of the Imaginarium Geographica: Book Two – The Search For The Red Dragon (2008) – James A. Owen
It’s 1926. Nine years after the first adventure, and we rejoin John, Jack and Charles as the return to the Archipelago with an adventure that is steeped, once again in imagination and literary references, this time running the gambit from the Golden Fleece to Barrie’s Peter Pan to Dante’s Inferno. Because of events in the…
Star Trek V: The Final Frontier (1989) – J.M. Dillard
The next novel that I picked up on the Star Trek list, was the adaptation of the fifth film, The Final Frontier. The film was much maligned and slighted, and some of it for good cause, though one could argue that there is a Trek story in there, and it does have some of the…
Ninth House (2019) – Leigh Bardugo
Galaxy Stern isn’t like other people. She can see ghosts, and Yale has recruited her for the fabled Ninth House, Lethe. They watch over the other Eight Houses on campus, houses which delve into areas of magic that aren’t taught in regular classes. Galaxy, Alex for short, was recruited by the Dean, and is paired…
Star Trek: Double, Double (1989) – Michael Jan Friedman
Space, the final frontier… My ongoing voyages with the starship Enterprise continue this week with the next non-canon novel in the Pocket Books series. Set during the original five year mission, this novel is set a few months after the events of The Original Series episode “What Little Girls Are Made Of?” Captain James T….
Chasm City (2001) – Alastair Reynolds
Alastair Reynolds next science fiction novel, Chasm City, takes place in the same universe as Revelation Space but is not a sequel, instead we are given a future noir tale of revenge, and the human ability to commit good and horrible acts, redemption, and discovery. We visit a couple of planets that were mentioned in…
The Mind Reels 