A Call to Duty by David Weber & Timothy Zahn

Growing up, Travis Uriah Long yearned for order and discipline in his life . . . the two things his neglectful mother couldn't or wouldn't provide. So when Travis enlisted in the Royal Manticoran Navy, he thought he'd finally found the structure he'd always wanted so desperately.

But life in the RMN isn't exactly what he expected. Boot camp is rough and frustrating; his first ship assignment lax and disorderly; and with the Star Kingdom of Manticore still recovering from a devastating plague, the Navy is possibly on the edge of extinction.

The Star Kingdom is a minor nation among the worlds of the Diaspora, its closest neighbors weeks or months away, with little in the way of resources. With only modest interstellar trade, no foreign contacts to speak of, a plague-ravaged economy to rebuild, and no enemies looming at the hyper limit, there are factions in Parliament who want nothing more than to scrap the Navy and shift its resources and manpower elsewhere.

But those factions are mistaken. The universe is not a safe place.

Travis Long is about to find that out.

There are a few writers who I will read without fail when they release a new book and David Weber is one of them. A Call to Duty, co-written with the legendary Timothy Zahn, was a nice departure, taking his Honorverse universe back in time slightly to the early years of Manticore and showing a Royal Navy dealing with very different problems – a lack of enemies means that internal pressures are about to see the RMN fold completely, left with only a small number of ships to protect its borders. 

As usual, A Call to Duty has a large cast of characters, but the main storyline centers around Travis Long, a young enlisted whose out of the box thinking brings him both opportunities and major problems. Your reaction to A Call to Duty is likely to depend entirely on how you feel about the rest of Weber’s work – the book has the same long descriptions of hardware, political intrigue, space battles and lack of aliens. I for one love the universe Weber has created and Long is a worthy successor (predecessor ?) of Honor Harrington. The ending has all of the trademark action and tension as one expects from David Weber and sets things up nicely for the sequel whenever that may be.

I gave A Call to Duty 4 stars. 

Star Trek Deep Space Nine: The Missing by Una McCormack

An original novel set in the universe of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine—a direct sequel to the New York Times bestselling story arc, The Fall!

Deep Space 9 is once again becoming an important way station in the Alpha Quadrant for many different people with many different agendas. Uniquely crewed by representatives of different species from both the Khitomer Powers and the Typhon Pact, the Federation science and exploration vessel Athene Donald stops at the station as its final port of call before heading into uncharted territories. The whole project is the brainchild of Dr. Katherine Pulaski, who hopes that science will do what diplomacy alone cannot, and help various powers put aside the tensions of recent years, returning to scientific research and the exploration of space.

On DS9, base commander Ro Laren has her hands full with the sudden arrival of a ragtag flotilla of small ships crewed by a group calling themselves the People of the Open Sky. Ro is not keen on handling this first-contact duty, but becomes increasingly intrigued by the People, who are made up of several hitherto unknown species. Describing themselves as explorers, they are interested in everything about the station. Ro begins to enjoy her assignment, particularly as she takes counsel from the logs of Jean-Luc Picard. Blackmer, however, is more suspicious about these apparently friendly arrivals and monitors their movements around DS9…

Of all the writers currently working in the Star Trek litverse, two of the finest are women. While Kirsten Beyer has been doing amazing things with the Star Trek Voyager storylines, Una McCormack is a little bit more eclectic, with a penchant for Deep Space Nine and the Cardassians. Her work, especially the Cardassia-centric The Never-Ending Sacrifice, have been must reads for most Treklit fans for the past few years and in The Missing she does not disappoint.

Picking up on numerous threads left hanging in the recent Star Trek books, The Missing follows three main storylines: Beverly Crusher settling in aboard Deep Space Nine, Katherine Pulaski aboard a civilian starship encountering a strange alien ship and a murder mystery aboard the new station. Within those storylines, McCormack continues to develop the DS9 characters, especially current commanding officer Ro Laren and security officer Jefferson Blackmer, while spinning out some new directions for such fan favourites as Odo. Characters from Brinkmanship, including the Tzenkethi Corazame and Starfleet Intelligence officer Alex Gardner, also appear and McCormack does a great job of developing them from where she left them in Brinkmanship. She also is able to use these characters to have a discussion on where Starfleet and the Federation as a whole seem to be heading in this Typhon Pact era.

Where McCormack does the best job, though, is definitely in her handling of Crusher and Pulaski. While Crusher's seeming abandonment of Jean-Luc Picard and their son could have been mishandled (see the fan reaction to Sisko's storyline in the early post-Destiny novels), McCormack instead makes it easy to understand and empathise with her decision. She also rehabilitates Pulaski, a character many TNG fans learned to dislike if not despise during her tenure on the show. Here Pulaski maintains her "difficult" personality but McCormack does enough to round out the edges without gutting the character. It really proved to be a fantastic handling of the character, and I hope McCormack gets a chance to return to her in the future.

All in all, the various storylines and characters are handled with style by McCormack, bringing a number of characters seen in recent novels to conclusions and new beginnings. At the same time, she manages to write more of a classic Trek novel, returning to the sort of adventures found in the beginning of the DS9 relaunch and boding well for what would appear to be a more exploratory, scientific direction for the Treklit verse in the coming months. The Missing shows again why McCormack is one of the finest Trek writers working today.

I gave The Missing 4 stars.

Wrat-Up 2014 - Top Ten Science Fiction Books

This has been a good year for new sci-fi for me: of the books below only one is from a writer who I had previously read. Each of them were excellent and unique in their own way, spanning space opera to near future to young adult. 

Again, in no particular order, my SF top ten 2014:

The Martian by Andy Weir

An edge-of-the-seat thriller, told through the eyes of an astronaut struck on Mars, The Martian has already been optioned for the movies, directed by Ridley Scott no less! A real page turner that also manages to embody the very best of humanity in the stars, this was one of my favourite books of the year. It also won the Goodreads Choice Awards for SF, so there's also that!

The Happier Dead by Ivo Stourton

A near-future thriller dealing with immortality, The Happier Dead was a nail-biting thriller, a great mystery and fantastic sci-fi. Ivo Stourton is also a class act, one of the only writers to have reached out to me (a complete unknown) on Goodreads and thank me for my review! Hats off Mr Stourton! (and sorry for not getting back to you about that interview!) :)

The Girl in the Road by Monica Byrne

Far from an easy book, The Girl in the Road is well worth the effort put in. A story told across two tracks that entwine in unsuspected ways, this is Earth based SF where current problems are taken to extremes. Whether it be the search for new energy sources, the effects of climate change or the rise of so-called Third World countries, this puts an intriguing spin on very real issues, just as all good SF should do. A book that has been very much underrated in my opinion.

The Forever Watch by David Ramirez

A well-written debut that juggles some of the most common SF tropes - spaceships, aliens, dystopian worlds - with aplomb and flair. Combining a murder mystery with an ark-ship milieu, Ramirez manages to bring together a dark, interesting and frightening novel that will leave you thinking.

The Burning Dark by Adam Christopher

Sci-fi horror is not an easy thing to pull off, but Adam Christopher does it extremely well in The Burning Dark. Replacing the haunted house with a haunted space station, Christopher weaves together threads of alien possession, radio signals in hyperspace and a nearby star giving off toxic emissions to form a terrifying exploration of the final frontier...

Red Rising by Pierce Brown

A YA epic, Red Rising follows Darrow, a Red working and living on Mars who takes on the mantle of one of the leading Golds in order to get revenge. Part Hunger Game, part Count of Monte Cristo, Red Rising was a fantastic read, full of exciting action scenes and prose that makes the pages spin by. Cannot wait for the sequel early 2015!

Influx by Daniel Suarez

What if the world we know today is actually half a century behind where it should be? This is the question asked (and answered) by Influx, where a scientist who invents reflective gravity discovers that fusion power, A.I. and genetic manipulation were all invented decades ago, but are being controlled and kept from the general population. A sly thriller that ends in a huge set piece, Influx was a blockbuster, popcorn book.

Honour's Knight by Rachel Bach

In her paradox trilogy, Rachel Bach, aka. Rachel Aaron, did for space opera what she had already done for epic fantasy - shake it up, give it a fresh coat of paint and remind us all why it is such great fun. Of the trilogy, I found this, the second, to be the most powerful, a real shake up of the status quo with some amazing set pieces and a great twist ending.

Afterparty by Daryl Gregory

A true mind-bending near future thriller, Afterparty plays with hallucinations, drug printing and religion to create a chase story that never really lets up as it travels across North America. Wonderful, quirky characters and a biting commentary of the world we are fast approaching makes this a great read for fans of Stephenson and Gibson.

A Darkling Sea by James Cambias

Remarkable for its opening which spins the first contact story on its head, A Darkling Sea deals with weird aliens, strange worlds and a number of interesting characters. Cambias is an excellent writer whose prose carries the story along through to a satisfying ending. 

The X-Files - Season 10: Volume 2 by Joe Harris

As Scully and Mulder try to deal with the fallout from the actions of a mysterious group that has been targeting anyone associated with the X-Files and causing their return to the Bureau, reports that a creature from their past has returned sends Mulder heading to Martha's Vineyard and Scully to Quantico.

Follow-ups to television series in the form of comic books have become de rigeur nowadays (especially if said television series has the name of Joss Whedon attached to it).The X-Files - a seminal show of the 90s if ever there was one, tapping into government paranoia and conspiracy fears - is only one of those to receive the comic book continuation treatment. This second volume, following on from the introductory graphic novel that reintroduced the world of the X-Files through a classic alien-conspiracy story, picks up where the show left off, reintroducing the concept of monsters-of-the-week, while also providing us with an update on some beloved characters. 

Volume 2 is a definite love letter to the fans, bringing back one of the greatest monsters ever to appear in the series, Season 2's Flukeman, developing its origin and ending with a classic X-Files fake out. Beyond that, Volume 2 resurrects two key characters: Mr. X, chiefly appearing in flashback, and the Cigarette Smoking Man. While it was nice to see both of these characters again, the stories themselves were weak, with the Cigarette Smoking Man story especially being let down by some extremely confusing art work. 

Overall, Season 10 is a fun read, a love letter to fans, but very far from being a must read. I'll be continuing to read, but I was a rabid X-Files fan. For the occasional viewer - or someone who has never watched the show - this may be one to miss. 

I gave The X-Files - Season 10: Volume II 3 stars.

Waiting on Wednesday: Seveneves by Neal Stephenson

"Waiting On" Wednesday is a weekly event, hosted by Jill over at Breaking the Spine, that spotlights upcoming releases that we're eagerly anticipating.

This week's pre-publication "can't-wait-to-read" selection is:

Seveneves by Neal Stephenson
Expected publication: May 19th 2015

When the moon blows up, the earth’s atmosphere is predicted to go through changes that will eventually lead to a Hard Rain, a meteorite storm that could last for thousands of years, rendering the earth’s surface uninhabitable. In preparation, the nations of the earth send an ark of humans to an International Space Station. But the Station isn’t immune to the galactic catastrophe and many of its people are lost, mostly men. When stability is reached, only seven humans remain, all of them women. 

Jump forward thirty thousand years. Two peoples exist: those who survived on Earth, living rustic, primitive lives; and those who derived from the Seven Eves of the space station, affluent, sophisticated, organized sects looking to colonize the surface of earth. 

Stephenson’s next novel is an epic potboiler, with political and military intrigue, and plenty to say about evolution, genetic engineering, and civilization as we know it.

I have not read as much of Stephenson's work as I would like, so when I saw this - a sci-fi dystopia set in the far future - I immediately added it to my TBR list.