Star Wars: The Truce at Bakura by Kathy Tyers.
It is in the odd position of being the first SW Expanded Universe book chronologically,
but not the first written. It was also the first one to have the primary conflict not
be Imperials vs. New Republic, but rather introduce strange new aliens that want to
destroy all the worlds and people belonging to both. I said before that I do not like
this plot device in SW; there's plenty of George's bad guys hanging around that could still
be investigated without writers having to invent all new races. I do like that
Leia has to deal with the knowledge that Vader was her father, and Luke with
basically getting electrocuted. The main characters are consistent with what we
know of them from the Original Trilogy, and the possibilities are set for their
future personal & relationship development, both those that were already known
when this book was written, and the rather annoying ones that cropped up later.
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N-Space by Larry Niven. It
is a collection of short stories and essays, covering a wide range of
subjects & styles (hence the name N-space). It is a fun read, but the
essays should be taken with a grain of salt. If treated so, they are
hilarious, but I know some people (ie. those lacking in imagination &
humor) would be easily offended.
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CH Harry Potter and the Philospher's Stone by J.K. Rowling. Yes,
once again I got the British version. but in this case it was better,
because it was about British kids, so the language matched. Also, the
"Philosopher's Stone" is the proper name for the object it's talking
about. The US version was changed because publishers appearantly think
American kids are less educated/sophisticated than British kids. I really
enjoyed reading it; in fact, I read it 3 times in a row straight through!
I wish there had been some description of the bottles that went with the
riddle - it's kind of hard to solve a riddle without all the information.
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Contact by Carl Sagan.
During the time I was reading it, I received an e-mail listing some
movies that contained science, but were not Science Fiction. The 1997
movie based on this book was 2nd on the list. For the record,
SF is fiction (ie not true) with science (as lesson, message, or
plot device, etc). Contact meets all these criteria, and very
well. There are astronomy and a few other physics and math lessons
scattered throughout the story, and the messages (at least what I get
from it) are that the scientific method is important in life, not just
science, and that science is "numinous" (read the book or look it up in
a dictionary. Oh, and the book is much better than the movie (as
usual).
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CH Animorphs #4: The Message is a good place to start reading the
series if you can't find the first book. Unfortunately, I got the British
publication, and it is very strange to have an American kid using Britishisms
(vs. Americanisms). But that only happens a couple of times, and it is
a very good book. I can see why it won the Golden Ducks Award, and
highly recomend(sp?) it.
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CH Note: This is a guest review.
The illustrations in The Worst Band in the Universe: A Totally Cosmic
Musical Adventure by Graeme Base, Harry N. Abrams, Inc, are bright SF detailed that made me buy the book. I am
playing the Bonus Music CD now. Great morning wake-up music and an ice
breaker when I substitute elementary schools. The narrative is in
verse (could be worse). The first page tells of Sprocc who is somewhat
a rebel. As the front flypaper says: "So begins the cosmic tale of
Sprocc, a young Splingwanger-player who leaves his home planet, Blipp,
in search of musical freedom..."
The back flypaper gives details on "The hyper-dimensional entity known
as 'Graeme Base' was born on Alpha 10 but has lived on Sol #3 (Earth)
in the region of 'Australia' since the age .008."
So far I feel that the $19.95 US is a good investment of a book that I
can use in a different classrooms and with different audiences. The book
is on the short list as a finalist in the Golden Duck Best Illustrated SF
Book for 1999.
Dave Anderson
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Black Trillium by Andre Norton, Julian May, and Marion Bradley.
These ladies set the standard for fantasy, and this book was a real treat.
It is about three princesses who's country is invaded and their parents'
are killed. In order to retake the capital, they must each find a talisman
that combined will give them great power. These quests are structured slightly
different from the 'traditional' fantasy quest, in that the girls are
told that they must overcome their own, inner weaknesses in order to
obtain the talismans. The journeys are not without physical hardships,
either, and there are plenty of things to prevent them succeeding in their
tasks- two are captured and the third gets sidetracked thinking she's in
love.
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Star Wars: The New Jedi Order: Vector Prime by R.A. Salvatore.
It was better than I expected, and stayed with the storyline that had
been set. I originally thought the "vector" that the title refers to was
the disease vector for Mara's illness. The intended meaning, though, is
the vector on which the "Preatorite Vong" entered the Star Wars galaxy.
At first, this seemed to be another trick to give the New Republic
someone to fight, but it was handled very well. The characterizations
were all very well done and consistent. I especially liked the rivalry
between Jaceen & Anakin Solo.
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CH Star Wars: Jedi Apprentice #3: The Hidden Past by Jude Watson
starts out on Obi-Wan's 13th birthday, and he's so worried that Qui-Gon
forgot about it he can't complete the ritual a Jedi Apprentice is
supposed to use to commemorate it. But Qui-Gon hasn't forgotten and
gives him a stone from his home planet. During the course of their
mission, the two are separated and Obi-Wan subjected to a memory-wiping
procedure. Qui-Gon nearly jepordizes the mission by wanting to
immediately go after is student, but others remind him of his own
advice to have patience. Obi-Wan saves his memory by concentrating on
the stone and manages to put himself right in the middle of everything.
Qui-Gon's concern for Obi-Wan is very real and believable, but the way
Obi-Wan gets himself into and out of scrapes is too convenient. I was
disappointed that this book was written by the same author as #2. My
original impression of the series was that it was to give a number of
authors the opportunity to write in the Star Wars universe. And besides,
Ms. Watson is not as good a writter as Dave Wolverton.
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Tathea by Anne Perry. It started out pretty slow, and my
opinion of Anne Perry's writing was not very high. Since she normally
writes Victorian mysteries, I felt that maybe she should stick to them,
as her style seemed more appropriate to that genre than to fantasy. A
third of the way through, however, that changed drastically. A large
part of that first third turned out to be a dream or a vision, and when
the title character returned to "real life," the writing style and mood
created by it changed as well. This made the stroy very difficult to
get into at first, but once it engaged my attention i found it highly
enjoyable. The few stilted segments that remained in the last 2/3 of the
book were when Tathea was in a one-to-one confrontation with agents of
evil and before she recognized what they were. I think this is because
the agents of evil are painfully obvious as such to the reader, but it
always takes an exact quote from the Book Tathea brought back from her
vision for her to recognize them. The attention to detail was astounding,
and by the end I could believe that this really was another world in
our universe.
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CH Out of Time: Tiger in the Sky by Sheila Finch. Two kids from LA get yanked to stop some Tribble-like things called Thogemogs from destroying a
space station. They try to get cats to eat them, and when that doesn't work, they get a sabre-toothed tiger. The tiger goes wild and they have
to kill it, but manage to solve the problem themselves.
top
The Rest of the Robots by Isaac Asimov. It is a collection of
short stories by the grand Master of Science Fiction. They deal with how,
and whether, the robots or better than humans at their assigned tasks.
A common character in mst of the stories is Dr. Calvin, a robopsychologist,
and I can't figure out if we are supposed to sympathize with her or not.
Some of the stories deal with an ethical delimma of what happens when it
seems as if a robot has broken one of the Three Laws of Robotics.
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The Songs of Distant Earth by Arthur C. Clarke. It takes place
some 200 years after Earth is destroyed because there wasn't enough
neutrinos in the Sun. That's the hard science bit of it. The colony where
all the action takes place is composed of three islands, and the president
is chosen by lottery periodically. It all seemed very strange to me,
especially the lassitude of all the characters. And to make it even
stranger, Clarke pulled the Bug-Eyed-Monsters out at the very end of
what was basically a physics tale. This book brought up several rants
for me, but I will save those for another place.
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The Word for World is Forest by Ursula K. Le Guin. It is a very
thought provoking book. She is able to write both sympathetic aliens and
humans and non-sympathetic aliens and humans. In fact, the first person
you meet is a total jerk and racist. For such a short book (<170 pages)
it has a number of surprises. Overall, a highly enjoyable read.
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Summer Sisters by Judy Blume. It follows two girls from sixth grade
through adulthood. One is the daughter of a rich family, and the other
is from a poor family. The rich daughter invites the poor one to stay
with her family for the summer. They become best friends and make a
pact to Never Be Ordinary. They both succeed in their pact, but in
different ways. This book is as good as the ones Ms. Bloom wrote for
young people, but even the parts when the girls are young are written
to adults. The entire book is about the relationship between the two
girls, even the excerpts from other people's points of view.
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Magician: Apprentice by Raymond E. Feist. An orphan boy who has
been raised in the castle and his best friendare worried about which
crafts they will be apprenticed to. On the day when the craft masters
choose their apprentices, they are left till the very last. The friend
gets his greatestwish and is apprenticed to be a soldier, but the
orphan is chosen by the castle magician. He is quick to learn the
mechanics of spells, but does not have much success using magic until
one day he is asked to be the princesses escort in the woods and they
are attacked by trolls. As a result, he is made a member of the court,
and eventually discovers an invasion of aliens into their world. The
two friends meet the queen of the elves as the races continue to have
run-ins with the aliens. From this point, it becomes a journey tale,
and the two friends get separated, only to each become more than anyone
expected of them. It is a good book, with good characterizations and
descriptions. probably thebest thingabout it is that not only do the
two boys change and grow emotionaly, so do the princess, her brothers,
and another young member of the court.
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Divergence by Charles Sheffield. Set in the far future, humans
have come in contact with several other races & found artifacts of a
long-vanished race. OK, so it's a fairly standard SF plot, but this
time the artifacts are a selection procedure so that the ancient
"Builders" can find someone from one of the "younger" sentient races
to help solve a problem that is beyond their abilities. Unfortunately,
Divergence is the middle book of a series, so I don't know what
the problem is or how it gets solved. The characters mostly seem flat,
but one does go through a change. A rather unusual element is that
except for humans, and the "Builders" who developed in a gas giant, all
the races are bugs of some sort.
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The Horse Whisperer by Nicholas Evans. Ok, so it's not science
fiction, or even fantasy, but I still liked it. A young girl and her
horse are injured in a wreck with a semitruck. The mother is very
disturbed by this and ends up taking the girl and the horse to Wyoming
because there's a guy there that she thinks can help them. It is a very
sad story, with as much emphasis on the relationship between the girl
and her mother and the mother and the guy, as there is on the
relationship between the girl and the horse. The characters are very
real, and the descriptions of the places are also very real. I haven't
seen the movie, so I don't know how it compares, but the book is very
good.
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The Dragon & the George by ?. The main character is a 20th
century teaching assistant who's fiance gets caught in an experimental
acccident and sent to a place with dragons that talk, and a basically
medival European culture. When the guy goes after her, he gets stuck
in a dragon body & must collect companions for the quest to rescue her
and prevent the dark powers from taking over the world.
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Red Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson. It is the tale of the
colonization of Mars- the first group to arrive, all the way through a
revolution a generation later as Earth falls apart.It explores pretty
thoroughly the relationships between the characters, what they think
about their interactions. The morals of the characters seem to be
pretty low, even compared with other science fiction.
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Star Wars: Bounty Hunter Wars: Hard Merchandise by K.W. Jeter. It is
the third in the series, and is probably the oddest of the three. All
the questions presented in the other two books get answered, except for
what makes Boba Fett click.
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CH Marlfox by Brian Jacques. It is about four adolescent animals
that go insearch of a treasure stolen from their home and manage to
defeat their enemies. The story takes a while to get started, but by
the time the kids start their search, it is an engrossing story.
Top.
Back to the Moon by Homer H. Hickman. A former astronaut and
his company has been hired to get some moondust for some experiments.
When their robotic shpaceship gets destroyed months before launch, they
hijack the spaceshuttle, replace its engines with one launched several
months before, and take Columbia to the moon. A secret group is
trying to destroy the vessel all the way there and back, but the people
on the shuttle manage to convince the controllers of the equipment to
be on their side, not the secret group's which is paying them, and they
manage to bring back some moon dust.
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CH Out of Time: Yanked by Nancy Kress. It is about two 15-year-
olds from 1999 America that get "yanked" forward to 2336 along with a
boy from 1800's London and a girl from 900's Iceland. Along with a boy
and a robot from 2336 they are sent to another planet to find some lost
kids and a message from their dead captain about how humanity can
further progress. very good, all realistic characters.
Top.
CH Star Wars: Science Adventures: Emergency in Escape Pod Four by
?. R2D2 and C3PO are sent to accompany a diplomat on a mission. When
the Empire catches up with them, Artoo and Threepio escape with the
diplomat's son and a science robot. Because none of them know how to
work the escape pod's controls, they have a wild trip through an
astroid belt and crash land on a planet. During the adventure, the
science robot teaches them the principles of science that allow them
to figure out how to control the pod, and after the story there are
several simple experiments for kids to carry out.
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Enchantment by Orson Scott Card. It is a retelling of the
Sleeping Beauty story set in Russia. The "prince" is a modern day
student of ancient Russian literature who manages to outwit the bear
that is guarding the princess. He tries to live in her time (about
900 ad), but the witch is trying to kill them, so they come back to
the 1990's. The witch follows them, so they have to go back to the
900's to defeat her.
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CH Amelia Takes Command by
Marissa Moss (and Astronaut Amelia). Written in the style of a notebook
or journal, this is the story of Amelia's fifth-grade year. Over
Christmas Break, Amelia gets the chance to go to Space Camp, and is
the commander for her group's simulator mission. She finds her "command
voice" and when she gets home, uses it to stop a bully that has been
picking on her all year. The book looks like a composition notebook, and
the pictures are as if Amelia drew them herself, or are things like
patches and wings, or other scrapbook-like things.
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The Last Continent by Terry Pratchet. It is a silly book,
kind of like Hitchiker's Guide. The wizards at Unseen
University go in search of a missing colleague and go back in time
through a wormhole in his window. They run into the god of evolution
and eventually meet back up with their missing collegue, who has been
having his own series of adventures. It was highly enjoyable, and a
fun read.
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CH Star Wars: Jedi Apprentice
#1: The Rising Force by Dave Wolverton. This book begins the
story of how Obi-Wan and Qui-Gon became master and apprentice. Yoda
did not feel that Obi-Wan had mastered the necessary skills to become
a Padawan apprentice and train to be a Jedi Knight, so he sent him to
a farming colony to use his ability to touch the Force to
help things grow. At the same time, Qui-Gon was sent by Yoda to the same planet to solve a
problem between the two companies that were colonizing it. Yoda was also trying to convince
Qui-Gon that it was time to accept another apprentice.
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Star Trek: Triangle: Imzadi II by Peter David. It starts out
like it might have some of the back and forth through time that the
first one had, but after a single change it stayed in the same time
until the last chapter which went back to the same time as the first
chapter. I was disappointed- it was the time travel, screwing everything
up, that I liked about the first one. They did use the Tom Riker vs.
Will Riker a bit, and it was done quite well. There were some really
bad Klingon jokes, and some other good jokes, especially with
second punchlines a couple pages later. Other than that, it was a
typical Star Trek Story (ie. second-rate).
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Acorna's People by Anne McCaffery and Elizabeth Ann Scarbourough.
This book continues where the other two left off. It reveals the history of
the unicorn people (it turns out that they are actually decended from the
unicorns of legend), and a human accidentaly finds their previous home. He
collects the horns from the graves there without knowing what they are,
only what they can do, because he was out of contact during Acorna's
previous adventures. This sets some of the people Acorna and her friends had
opposed before on trying to get the horns from all the unicorn people, and
they don't care whether the people are alive or dead. Very interesting
commentary on humanity.
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Star Wars: Episode I: The Phantom Menace by Terry Brooks. It
starts slightly before the movie does, with Anikin Skywalker in a pod
race. In fact, it's the race he refers to in the movie where he says "I
actually saved the pod, mostly." I don't want to ruin the story for
anyone who might not have seen the movie or read the bok yet, so I
won't say any more on the plot. Terry Brooks is a good writer, and I
got to meet him on the 21 of May, he's also a pretty cool person. It's
a good book, but don't read it until you've seen the movie.
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Singer From the Sea by Sheri S. Tepper. It takes place in the far future on a colony
that has technically cut all ties witht the rest of humanity (except medical services) and
chosen a feudalistic government. Yong women of the nobility are allowed to have their youth,
but must marry in their late twenties, and have a child by the time they are thirty. Many
die young, but the common women have many children and live to their eightiesor beyond.
When the main character is taken by her father to the capital to be a candidate for the prince
at barely twenty years old, she begins investigating this disparity.
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The Ghost of the Revelator by L.E. Modesit. Mr. Modesit is an LDS Science Fiction
writer. This book takes place in an alternate universe, where the "Saints" (i.e. "Mormons"
in our world) built a country separate from Columbia (equivalent to the eastern half of our
USA). The main characters are threatened after the wife, an internationally known singer,
receives an invitation to perform in Deseret. The husband, who has been a spy but only
wants to be a professor of environmental studies, has to call on his old skills to prevent
a war.
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Archived Book Reviews
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