(not the TV show - that’s Andy Griffith in the Twilight Zone, and I never cared for either of those shows)

Mom was ordering something or other from Amazon last week, scheduled it to arrive Saturday, and it did, and she called me in to the living room when she opened the box. She held out a book and told me when she was ordering, she noticed this book, and thought of me.

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Originally published at Chrystalline. You can comment here or there.

Battlestar Galactica Paradis by Richard Hatch & Brad Linaweaver

Unfortunately it has very small type, and the publisher seems to have dropped off the web. Not really very well written, it makes no real effort to explain anything from the book that apparently precedes it. The only reasons I knew there was another book before it were 1) baffling references to characters/planets I'd never heard of before, 2) unexplained changes in the characters - some dead and some promoted, and 3) the ad in the back of the book for another title by Richard Hatch and Alan Rodgers, though it didn't say anything about the sequence of the books. The story is very political, overall, and not very character-oriented; it seems male authors tend to focus on action and strategy to the exclusion of character motivation, even if the author in question started out as an actor. The dialogue tends to be a bit stilted, and while it could be treated as a continuation of the original series, the popularity of the new, completely revamped series makes it unlikely the novel will catch on.

House of Cards by Keith R. A. DeCandido

Moya and crew are hired to transport a passenger back to his native world, which happens to be surrounded with an energy field that prevents non-living ships from entering or leaving. The place reminds Crichton of Las Vegas, and it's got just as much intrigue. Gambling, mystery, assassination attempts, impersonating PK officers, spying, bargaining, and the threat of imminent destruction - it's all woven together in a grand tapestry.

Set in season two, this is an entertaining read. Easily believeable as an episode of the series, it's nice to see Crichton get a chance to be the intellectual scientist he was originally written to be. Everyone gets a chance to shine, and the plot is delightfully twisted - much more intricate than a single episode on video would have time to cover.

Tangled up in Blue by Joan D. Vinge

I picked this one up solely because of the author's name (having read her short story Fireship, which I loved), not knowing it was a sequel. Despite that, it works; there is enough exposition in the action to make the world comprehensible. A group of cops, frustrated with their inability to make a dent in the trafficking of illegal items due to governmental corruption, have taken up the habit of vigilante justice on certain special days - namedays. Unfortunately, on the protagonist's nameday, the vigilante bust goes very bad very fast, and the protagonist is the only one of the group to survive. Memory lost to the trauma, he has to figure out who to trust and how to survive what is obviously a widespread conspiracy. Excellently woven with clean, descriptive prose, this book has me wanting to get the rest of the Snow Queen saga as soon as possible.

The Messenger by Douglas Niles

The stereotypical warrior woman in a sexist culture opens the story with the traditional battle of wills against her father's decision to exclude her from men's work. Coincidentally, she's the only one with significant hunting/fighting skills to survive when the ogres show up and wipe out everyone who was unable to hide before they landed. With only women and children left, they have to find a place to survive the fatal "Sturmfrost" that comes every winter, so they head for the mythical hotspring toward the North, being wary of the walrus-like Thanoi and the also-sexist Highlanders, whose leader has decided he wants to marry this woman so much that he won't take no for an answer.

A disgraced and mercenary elf encounters a bizarrely mysterious kender out on the open sea, and they find themselves sailing so far south, they end up at the northern end of the icy realm where the women and children capture the elf. They manage to make a deal, and when things look to have settled down, the Highlanders show up and take over. Their presence turns out to be convenient when the Ogres show up, though, and the battle for the humans' survival is fierce and desperate. The elf gets answers to questions long thought unanswerable, and the humans manage to reclaim an ancestral stronghold.

Overall satisfying, but there is way too much of the ogres and their internal issues. It seems to be a frequent issue with Dragonlance books - the insistence that good and evil are equivalent tends to lead to the authors' spending equal time with both sides, when the reader only really cares about the heroes' feelings and motivations and plights.

The Spell of the Black Dagger

With the cover blurb focused on Tabaea, and the first two chapters centered on her, it isn't that surprising that the reader is confused when the heroine turns out to be the apparently boring but decidedly willful Sarai. Tabaea is the underdog, trying to come out on top of the world, but she lacks the character and knowledge to do it well. You know what they say about the road paved with good intentions...

Sarai, the daughter of the Minister of Justice (and therefore a member of the privileged class), spends a lot of time in detective work (for which she is naturally talented), trying to uncover what the reader already knows, which makes the reader desperately wish to just pop into the story for a moment and TELL her. When she finally gets the information she needs and makes her move, the story really gets rolling. In fact, it's almost too fast to follow.

There's a hiccup in the narrative when he replays a scene from Sarai's perspective immediately after showing it from Tabaea's, but otherwise, the plot races toward the finish. Tabaea's grisly demise is sad only because she flips back to her pseudo-noble mode in an attempt to prove her right to rule by eliminating the Seething Death that threatens not only the palace, but ultimately the entire world. She was misguided in her attempt, but the ending rather glosses over the supremely lazy and selfish methods she used to get to that point.

Basically, there was too much focus on the thief; we were in her head more than Sarai's, so we felt more for her. Add to that our almost-universal love for the underdog, and you can't help but feel disappointed with the ending, even if you knew it was the right way to end. He should have allowed the audience to remain in the dark about Tabaea along with Sarai, and get into HER head, from HER point of view instead. That would have eliminated both the divided loyalty of the reader, and the stalling of the plot while we wait for Sarai to figure out what we already know.

Nevertheless, if you like Watt-Evans' books, you'll still enjoy the action. If you've never read one of his books, I'd suggest starting with The Mis-Enchanted Sword: it's action and comedy in one.