Category: The Book Shelf

Ur (2009) – Stephen King

Stephen King leaped aboard the digital reader revolution back in 2009 when he wrote this tale that was available only online as a download for said readers. The story follows an English teacher, Wesley, at a mediocre college. His relationship with Ellen, one of the college’s coaches is on the rocks, caused by a lack…

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The Talisman (1984) – Stephen King and Peter Straub

There are very few Stephen King novels I haven’t read, and even as I revisit the occasional one, I realised that I had never finished The Talisman. A copy of this book was a Christmas gift to my Mom the year it came out. She read it first, and I was next in line to…

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Star Trek: Dwellers in the Crucible (1985) – Margaret Wander Bonanno

Before Star Trek V: The Final Frontier came along four years later with the concept of the Planet of Galactic Peace, Margaret Wander Bonanno presented a similar idea in her non-canon Star Trek novel, Dwellers in the Crucible, which finds its way onto the Book Shelf this week. Set before the events of Star Trek…

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Star Trek: Killing Time (1985) – Della Van Hise

Hey look, it’s another non-canon Trek novel that features villains altering the timeline to change history, and allowing the author to play with established characters in their own way, with heavy slash tendencies (in this case, a Kirk/Spock romance… again). If you can get your hands on an ultra-rare first edition, there is actually more…

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Star Trek: Ishmael (1985) – Barbara Hambly

My journey with the non-canon Star Trek Pocket Books continues. And this novel from 1985 demonstrates what was happening in Trek pages before Paramount took a stronger stance on what the novels could be about. Previous to this we’ve encountered Trek novels with slash overtones between James T. Kirk and his science officer, the Vulcan…

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The Book of the Dead (2007) – Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child

Pendergast is back! Picking up where the previous novel Dance of Death ended, Preston and Child plunge us back into the world of Aloysius, D’Agosta, Smithback, Kelly, Hayward, Constance and Pendergast’s villainous and genius brother, Diogenes. This novel serves as a climax of the previous two books, wrapping up the storyline of the two brothers,…

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Fragile Things (2006) – Neil Gaiman

I love curling up with a Neil Gaiman book, be it a novel or a collection of short stories, for me he is literary comfort food – engaging, a joy to lose myself in, and a spark for my own imagination. His collection of short stories and poems gathered in this volume, some of which…

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Star Trek: Shadow Lord (1985) – Laurence Yep

I dove into another non-canon Star Trek adventure from Pocket Books, and this one, I have to say, is a swing and a miss. It’s almost like it wants to be a bit of a fantasy tale in the vein of Dumas’ Musketeers, but it is actually just a big misstep, which doesn’t really fit…

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