So What Are you Reading?: Generations

ALLEGIANCE by Timothy Zahn. A spot of Star Wars, set between Episodes IV and V. Entertaining fun, though felt like generic space opera with added insistence on all the make and model numbers of equipment. Mara Jade's detective element was best – though at this point she's supposed to be 18 and already a superheroine who's just too fair and good to be working so well with Vader and Palpatine – with the Stormtrooper squad also providing fun – they should have done a series with them as the Rainbow Six to her Jack Ryan. The Luke/Han/Leia stuff didn't really sit that well, and I think things would have been tauter without them being in... But still, good fun.

I feel some comics reading coming on next, now that my eyes have recovered enough to handle dialogue balloons on coloured backgrounds again...

 

Star trek Forged in fire by Andy Mangels & Micheal A.Martin

 

At home: the current World Book Year Book. I expect to be done before the next ST novel comes out, and the "content rating" thread has given me an urge to re-read Spock: Messiah. (On the other hand, I can't think of a whole lot that would make me want to re-read anything by Marshak & Culbreath.)

On my lunch breaks at work: Model Railroad Planning 2017.

While riding trolleys and subways to and from Disney Hall, Hollywood Bowl, Exposition Park, and other transit-friendly venues in Los Angeles County (and also when sitting on a bucket of water when my hemorrhoids are acting up) various charity newsletters and other disposable reading material.

 

Just finished Rise of the Federation: Live By the Code.....looking forward to the next ENT installation later this year. I'm a new Trekkie and watched all of the shows / movies last year. Working my way through the Lit-Verse in a somewhat chronological order using different lists thanks to @Thrawn and 8of5.

 

Early next year, it turns out, and I can now reveal that the title is The Night Dahlia.

 

ANITA BLAKE, VAMPIRE HUNTER: THE LAUGHING CORPSE – ANIMATOR by Laurell K Hamilton and Ron Lim. This is a hardback graphic novel adaptation of the second Anita Blake novel, which I'd got free as a handout at a convention a couple of years ago. I know nothing about the series – thought it was one of thse cliched things for teenage girls, but actually this isn't bad at all (well, there's the appearance of vampire master Jean-Claude, but I suspect he's meant to take the piss out of the whole Anne Rice subgenre), and jumping on without knowing the first book wasn't a problem – it was pretty much self contained, with any necessary background exposition slotted in. It's a sort of police procedural mystery thing with zombies and vampires, and felt tonally very like the Harry Dresden books, which is a good thing. The art is nice too. What's not nice is that it collects five issues of comic and ends on “to be continued in The Laughing Corpse- Necromancer” which I haven't got. Still, it does actually make me wonder if the novels are of of a similar Dresden-ish tone, and so I may have to try one if I see one...

 

The popular wisdom is that the Anita Blake books started out as hard-boiled urban fantasies but increasingly turn into erotica as the series progresses. Take that as you will.

Trivia: Hamilton actually wrote a Trek novel years and years ago, before hitting it big with the Anita Blake books. (I actually worked on the cover copy of the first couple Anita books, long ago and far away.)

 

Didn't it also get a reprint with a "from the author of Anita Blake" blurb or something when she started getting big? I vaguely remember seeing that.

 

Just read Fatal Trauma by Richard L. Mabry.

 

Yes. Pocket did reprint it a few years back. Can't remember if there was new blurb or not.

But I remember the reprint puzzling some Trek readers who had no idea that Hamilton had become a hugely bestselling Big Name Author since writing Nightshade. "Why that book?"

 

Aha; maybe it was just the reprint itself I was thinking of, then.

 

The consensus on FB seems to be that the first 4-8 books are OK preternatural procedurals, and after that shit goes south. Since this is the second book, I do fancy seeing how it finishes.

Yeah, I've got her TNG book, when it first came out, and still have it somewhere. I know I read it, but don't remember anything about it, cos it's been, like, 25 years or something...

 

Will be reading The Face Of The Unknown next.

 

It was a basically a vampire story in STAR TREK drag, which irked me only because she beat me to the punch!

(Not that my VOYAGER novel isn't also a vampire novel in disguise)

 

I'm still working my way through ST: The Fall: Peaceable Kingdoms, but I was finding myself wanting something non-Trek to go along with it so on Wednesday I started reading Back To The Future Vol. 1: Untold Tales and Alternate Timelines, the first collection in IDW's ongoing BTTF comic book series. I'll post a bit more over in the non-big two comics thread over in the regular SFF section of the boards.

 

Made a start on the Cassandra Kresnov series by Joel Shepherd.

 

Thanks, Greg.

I'll keep my eyes peeled for the pre-order to go up. I'm really looking forward to reading all three of the upcoming Belcher books.

 

Glad to hear it!

While I'm plugging upcoming books I've edited, I'm also excited by DEADLANDS: BONEYARD by Seanan McGuire. It's a weird western involving a traveling circus and menagerie that runs into scary, supernatural doings in frontier Oregon. It's a really captivating book that's coming out in the Fall (with plenty of gorgeous interior illustrations to boot).

If you like Rod Belcher's "Golgotha" novels, you'll probably like BONEYARD as well.

 

You mean "the black shore" ? It felt more like a Hulk novel to me, be it was a very good read