Book Review: Asylum by Una McCormack

Asylum by Una McCormack
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

The Federation is going to have trade negotiations with Chionians scheduled to be on board the Enterprise, however it turns out the Chionians have internal divisions that will make things difficult not only for negotiations but for First Officer Una Chin-Riley. Asylum by Una McCormack is the second book featuring the characters from Star Trek: Strange New Worlds in the novelizations surrounding one of the latest Star Trek television series.

Taking place after the events the second season episode, “Ad Astra per Aspera”—and maybe “Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow” as well—the book follows Lt. Commander “Number One” Una Chin-Riley in present-day and in her senior year at the academy, the Chionian ambassador Linchar, and two Euxhana in flashbacks. The story is basic for the franchise with the Federation having negotiations with what turns out to be the dominate ethnicity of a planet that is suppressing the minority’s cultural heritage and one of the main characters has interacted with said minority in their past, then said minority appears to be doing things to disrupt the talks. Overall, it was well written, adds depth to several of the main characters of the series—Number One, Christopher Pike, and Pelia—while also creating some good secondary characters. However there were some pet peeves I couldn’t get over, the first was Number One as a senior at the Academy making a commitment to help support a refugee family only to back out when it hurts her studies even though she has a full schedule and already doing extracurricular activities when there was no way a senior about to graduate and officially join Starfleet would have made this mistake at this point in their life. The second was inferring that Pike and tangentially Number One inspired Pelia to create the Kobayashi Maru test at the Academy, I mean why? Not everything in the lore needs to be explained as having been created by events in a prequel or by a character in said prequel, sometimes it can be created by a nobody and never revealed as to the reason. While those two things annoyed me, it didn’t take away from my enjoyment of the book so if you’re a fan of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds and want to get into the novelizations this is recommended.

Asylum is a good example of media tie-in novels, Una McCormack nails the present-day voices of the characters, and the overall story reads like a good episode.

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Book Review: Rights of Man by Thomas Paine

Rights of Man by Thomas Paine
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

The French Revolution brought about various reactions across the Channel in Britain, especially after the war in America however the split between English supporters of the American cause in-between supporters and reactionaries against the French Revolution brought about one of the most famous counterrevolution pamphlets of all time and then came the response. Rights of Man by Thomas Paine is a series of essays first to counter Edmund Burke’s Reflections on the Revolution in France and then to propose reforms of the English government.

The first part of the book directly answers Burke’s counter-revolution argument with Paine positing that popular revolution is permissible when a government does not safeguard the natural rights of its people. The defense of the French Revolution is expertly done by Paine then he highlights and counters what he perceives to be the weakness of Burke’s argument of hereditary wisdom by the assertion—with examples—of how wisdom does not translate from one generation to another in a monarchy so how could it do so in a whole class. The second part of Paine’s book, which was published a year later than the first, is where the essays start deviating from the defending the French Revolution which was the premise to reforming the English government. While some of Paine’s thoughts and ideas are good, his delving into tax policy and the like it’ll made me wonder why I’m reading Wealth of Nations again. Admittedly I didn’t read Burke’s Reflections before reading Paine, a major oversight, but given that Paine awaited Burke’s response while dismissing lesser writers’ efforts to counter his initial publication—during the time between Parts 1 and 2—I will assume that Paine accurately portrayed Burke’s thesis. Given this assumption, Part 1 is a well written rebuttal to Burke and good defense of the ideals of the early French Revolution. However, the second half of the book and its essays touching on a wide range of subjects that Paine attempts to connect with his theme in an effort to advocate a reform to English system of government to be more like the American republican and French constitutional monarchy forms that the late 18th Century Revolutions had produced to that point, is where things feel scattered and the thrust of Paine’s arguments slacken. Yet, one can’t deny Paine’s way with words especially in defense of causes he believes in.

Rights of Man by Thomas Paine is a defense of the ideals of the early French Revolution against counter-revolutionary arguments by reactionary aristocratic defenders of the “status quo”, when focused it’s very good reading.

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Book Review: Star Wars Adventures, Volume 3: Endangered by Delilah S. Dawson & Sholly Fisch

Star Wars Adventures, Vol. 3: Endangered by Delilah S. Dawson
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Star Wars Adventures, Volume 3: Endangered combines three issues of the comic that featured main stories focused on Rose Tico from The Last Jedi and the crew of the Ghost from Star Wars Rebels. “Rose Knows” is fine for what it is, and Ros is portrayed better than how Rian Johnson writes her in the film. The titular story of the volume features the crew of the Ghost on a mission to save a rare bird from being taken to the Emperor’s menagerie for a planet that view it necessary for things to grow. Having seen a few episodes of Star Wars Rebels, “Endangered” reads like what I imagine a script for the show would be and the art appears to be accurate as well, a surprise given the all-ages demographic. The are three Tales from Wild Space that features a young Anakin Skywalker in “Podracer’s Rescue, Nien Numb in “Look Before You Leap”, and a young Jawa in “Gonk!”. While all three short stories were at least good, I’ll admit I purchased this for “Gonk!” written and drawn by Otis Frampton who had drawn random Jawa images and unofficial little comic strips for years prior to getting this opportunity to do a short story that would appear under the official Star Wars banner. Overall, it’s a nice little volume of stories set in the galaxy far far away.

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Book Review: Neuromancer by William Gibson

Neuromancer by William Gibson
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

In the future the line between humanity and machine is getting blurred thanks to cybernetic implants that allow people to enter cyberspace for both positive and nefarious activities then there is artificial intelligence that at any moment could go from machine to human. Neuromancer by William Gibson was a science fiction classic from its publication that became the go to example of the cyberpunk subgenre.

I’m not a picky reader and I’m willing to follow any character whether good or bad or doing very nefarious things to others or having deplorable personal habits, and with caveat I can say the main character of Case was frankly boring as hell. In fact, no character was interesting save Molly even though she was seen from Case perspective and frankly I wish she would have been the main character even though she didn’t enter cyberspace. Honestly, I didn’t understand Gibson’s vision of cyberspace until the latter half of the book when Case was in it a lot and it got easier to figure out. So it can be no surprise that I really didn’t get into the book until roughly two-thirds of the way through when things were building up to the climax that in the end was meh. Maybe if I had read this book closer to when it was published it might have been more impactful but given the slow start then the rapid climb in anticipation to an indifferent ending I don’t understand the hype for the book.

Neuromancer made the cyberpunk subgenre and William Gibson a major science fiction author, however to me I don’t understand the hype for the book.

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Book Review: The Creators by Daniel J. Boorstin

The Creators: A History of Heroes of the Imagination by Daniel J. Boorstin
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Aesthetic and intellectual innovations from great art to great architectural to philosophy have been a major part of the shaping of Western culture, but they didn’t appear out of nowhere and we have people thank for them. The Creators by Daniel J. Boorstin is a historic tale of the individuals that innovated in the styles of art, architecture, literature, music, and more from Vedic India to the 20th Century.

Boorstin over the course of almost 750 pages covers the development of various cultural aspects that have grown and evolved over the course of Western civilization. When possible, individuals are highlighted in biographical sketches as well as their contribution to the subject being discussed, though whenever the origins of the beginning of are murky or more communal in nature before individuals began to impact them Boorstin ready provides the information as such. Yet this approach of highlighting the Western tradition over the rest of the world through either ignoring it or simply writing off the rest of the world as disingenuous—his covering the Japanese long use of wood for architecture didn’t factor into the reality of how many earthquakes the nation dealt with and how quickly rebuilding homes were put back up with wood in comparison to stone. Also, some of Boorstin’s information was incorrect and he overlooked individual’s negative aspects in almost making them myths to illuminate. While some might believe Boorstin is being subjective in what he included, given wide range of time and the cultural aspects involved not everything could be included and so some selection is required in which an author’s personal preference will undoubtedly play a big role since they are writing the book. Overall, the volume is informative for someone looking for a general cultural history of the West, but if you want something more authoritative then this wouldn’t be the book.

The Creators is the middle volume of a trilogy by Daniel Boorstin on “Knowledge”, a hefty book that covers the development and evolution of Western cultural history.

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Book Review: Ordeal of the Union, Volume: Fruits of Manifest Destiny, 1847-1852 by Allan Nevins

Ordeal of the Union, Vol 1: Fruits of Manifest Destiny 1847-52 by Allan Nevins
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The aftermath of a unpopular though very successful war suddenly put two sections of the victors against one another in arguments so serious that it could cause civil war, this is the United States after the Mexican-American War. Ordeal of the Union, Volume One: Fruits of Manifest Destiny, 1847-1852 is the first of Allan Nevins’ eight volume series on the lead up to and of the American Civil War with the focus being on the search for a compromise.

This book featured Nevins revealing to the reader various themes that interact with one another politically, economically, socially, and culturally. Nevins political analysis focused on how weak executives (Polk successful in war but unable to control the fallout of victory, Taylor unable to work with others, and Fillmore an accidental President) and a House of Representatives in chaos demanded the Senate to come up with a compromise to prevent the unraveling the country. Nevins looked how each section of the country—North and South—viewed slavery and treated African Americans along with how the two were economically situated in the early 1850s. Throughout the book, it became clear that many Southerners who preached secession were lying to themselves about the prospects of an independent South and given the 1947 publication date, this was definitely not a “Lost Cause” book. Now that I have brought up when this book came out, there is some word usage that today wouldn’t be used obviously and while it doesn’t need a “trigger warning” one needs to be mindful that different eras had different conventions. Overall, Fruits of Manifest Destiny was a fitting title as Nevins revealed the sweet richness of the new territory acquired from Mexico but the bitterness of the sectional divide that it caused while comparing and contrasting the two sections verbally battling on how to politically and economically organize it.

Ordeal of the Union, Volume One vividly portrays the political tumult of the aftermath of the war with Mexico and Allan Nevins describes it wonderfully while also giving the reader an in-depth overviews of each section of the nation at the beginning of the 1850s.

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Book Review: The Murder of Roger Ackroyd by Agatha Christie

The Murder of Roger Ackroyd by Agatha Christie
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The town of King’s Abbot loose two of important members of the community in the space of a day, but only one is a murder though it has a connection to the other death which relates to another earlier death. The Murder of Roger Ackroyd by Agatha Christie is the fourth book of her mystery series featuring Belgian detective Hercule Poirot, whose retirement in King’s Abott is abruptly ended by the murder of his acquaintance Roger Ackroyd.

Christie is rightfully considered one of best writers of the mystery genre and this book that “breaks all the rules” is one of the reasons why. I knew coming into this book that there was a twist, and it wasn’t until 90 pages left in the book that I realized what the twist was, looking back the main clue stood out and I should have realized it earlier since I already knew the conventional detective tropes would be turned on its head. As for the overall story, I enjoyed it, and I loved my first reading of Hercule Poirot (I imagined him speaking as portrayed by David Suchet) making interested in other books featuring him. This is my second Christie book—And Then There Where None—and I’ve enjoyed both very much which means that I’ll be exploring Agatha Christie more in the future.

The Murder of Roger Ackroyd could be said to subvert tropes while also creating a trope, but however you classify it Agatha Christie wrote a great novel with a fascinating set up and interesting character in Hercule Poirot.

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