Beddor Curley England Englehart Wilson

The Looking Glass Wars
by Frank Beddor
Recommended Ages: 13+

The first time I started to read this book, I didn't get past the prologue. What turned me off wasn't the fact that it built on the fantasy world created by Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (a.k.a. Lewis Carroll) in his classic Alice in Wonderland. I'm all for "further tales" of already-established, richly imagined fantasy worlds. I'm not even upset by the fact that the author put a fresh twist on Carroll's Wonderland. I expect some degree of originality, even to the extent of totally reimagining the concept. Where I think Frank Beddor crossed the line was in casting Dodgson as a dissembling fool, if not indeed a creep, who betrayed Alice's confidences, bowdlerized her true reminiscences, and got Wonderland all wrong. It is, after all, his (Dodgson's) creation, and we owe him so much for it. And frankly, I was offended by Beddor's central conceit that Wonderland, as we know and love it, was a deliberate and cynical distortion of something wilder and better.

I doubt I would have taken umbrage at this idea had the wonderland in question been any other than the Wonderland. The idea could have been (and, I later decided after finally finishing the book, really was) most compelling in its way; but by changing it to a fictional author's fantasy classic, Beddor could have avoided cutting the throat of a sacred cow right on Page One. Even a thinly veiled disguise might have sufficed. But borrowing the fruit of another author's imagination, only to attack him personally along with the rightness of what he wrote, is beyond bad manners. It is Not Done.

Nevertheless, I gave this book a second chance when an audiobook edition of it practically fell into my hands. In the daily discomfort of my car, one hour going to work and another coming home, I was a captive audience. And in fairness to Beddor's storytelling, once I got past the prologue (which ticked me off again), I found his take on the tale quite compelling. You see, Alice doesn't really get to Wonderland by falling down a rabbit's hole. She is actually a princess of Wonderland by birth, she has power as limitless as her own fertile imagination, and her name is Alyss. She only ends up in England when her evil Aunt Redd escapes from exile, murders her parents, and turns the happy queendom into a reign of terror.

Traveling through the lake of tears, which bridges the gap between our world and Wonderland, Alyss finds herself in Victorian England. She ekes out a living as a street urchin while her powers of imagination last. Then she goes to an orphanage and, thanks to her beauty, is lucky enough to be adopted by an Oxford don and his prim wife. The Liddell family (sounds like "little") have a hard time of it at first, but after Alyss (now Alice) recovers from the appalling results of Mr. Dodgson's interest in her, they finally manage to iron all the imagination out of her. She becomes such a charming young lady that a bona fide prince asks for her hand in marriage.

But all this time, back in Wonderland, a resistance movement has been fighting, and slowly losing, a civil war with the forces of Her Imperial Viciousness, Queen Redd. Though they don't know their princess survived, they call themselves the Alyssians. And just when Alice/Alyss is on the point of tying the knot with Prince Leopold, she gets pulled back into the conflict and, in a whirlwind of discoveries and reunions, must decide whether she will challenge Redd for the throne. And whether she can.

Space does not permit me to list even a fraction of the strange and exciting people and things Alyss and her Wonderlanders see and do. There's traveling through the network of mirrors. There's the shape-shifting assassin with nine lives. There's the general who, when stressed, splits into two identical people (and sometimes splits again). There's Hatter Madigan, head of an order of spies whimsically known as the Millinery, whose cloak and top-hat conceal whirring blades and razor-sharp boomerangs. There's Bibwitt Hare, an albino with huge sensitive ears. And there's a boy whose friendship represents all that matters to Alyss, and whose anger threatens it.

Far faster-paced and action-oriented than Carroll's original tale, this fantasy entertainment offers attractions for an older set of readers. It has romnace, horror, a bit of gore, a touch of social criticism (or, at least, a more Dickensian view of the 19th century), some technological upgrades to Carroll's card soldiers which make them considerably fiercer, and a story of tragedy and redemption. It invites the reader to contemplate the power of imagination and the responsibility that comes with it. With the reservations I have already stated, it could be the beginning of a new classic fantasy saga. And it already has a sequel: Seeing Redd.

The Dark
by Marianne Curley
Recommended Ages: 14+

In this second book of the "Guardians of Time" trilogy, the villainous Marduke has returned from the dead, even more twisted and deformed than before. The evil immortal Lathenia, goddess of chaos, and her Order (of Disorder) continue to meddle with history in the hope of changing the future into an age of misrule.

In the meantime, the Guard that tirelessly works to frustrate her plans faces frustrations of its own. As Lathenia racks up one timeline-altering victory after another, the prophecy that the Guard will defeat her begins to change in her favor. Ethan, a gifted young guardsman who just earned his wings, is preoccupied by a concern that his troubled mother may attempt suicide. Matt, Ethan's apprentice and supposedly destined leader of the Guard, has yet to come into his powers and grows more frustrated and uncertain each day. And Matt's sister Isabel, whose healing power and psychic visions make her critically important to the Guard, will risk the wrath of an immortal being to search the underworld for her soulmate Arkarian, who has been taken prisoner by the forces of chaos.

More seriously, Isabel will risk her life and the lives of Ethan and Matt, who go with her into a realm of horror from which they might not return. Without them, the Guard will lose more and more ground to the Order in their battle over time. And what do they have working for them? Besides Isabel's healing powers, they have Ethan's ability to create totally convincing illusions, such as a boat you can actually row across a river; the advice of a winged, pig-snouted, implike creature who has offered them his dubious loyalty; the desperation of a ghostly little girl to get in touch with her loved ones; the defection of one of Lathenia's minions, who also turns out to be a surprise traitor to the good guys (though not a very big surprise); and secrets and powers that Matt and Arkarian don't even know they have—while the latter, gravely wounded, is running out of time.

What lifts this series above the ho-hum teen-angst-laden fantasy adventure? To be sure, it offers plenty in the angsty teen department, including a creeping suspicion that a whole bunch of characters will be paired up as "soul mates." But it also has some spectacular images and weird hazards, such as a gigantic eight-sided pyramid of colored glass, a magical tunnel that forces you to face your deepest secret, and a lake of frozen acid that bursts into flame everywhere you step on it. Also there are time-diving expeditions into medieval France and ancient Rome, and a high school history classroom used as a litmus test to measure how the war to protect the timeline is going. (Hint: As the dress code goes, so goes civilization.) It's not high literature. It's not even high fantasy. But it may give teen bookworms a bit more than the average showcase for the words "I would have ruled the world if it hadn't been for you meddling kids!" The other two books in Australian author Curley's popular trilogy are The Named and The Key.

Favorite Operas by Italian and French Composers
by Paul England
Recommended Ages: 12+

This book reproduces a portion of the 1929 book Fifty Favorite Operas, the other part of which was reprinted as Favorite Operas by German and Russian Composers. And although it is no more visually attractive or attuned to contemporary culture than the average facsimile edition of a pre-World-War-II book about opera, I cannot recommended it highly enough. In fact, reading this book filled my head with thrilling ideas about how it could be updated, or at least expanded to include operas that have emerged as popular favorites and revered art-works since 1929. Or maybe a children's edition could be published, featuring pictures from great productions, sound samples of musical highlights, and a more storybook-like synopsis.

But for now, all that is small potatoes. As it stands, this is the book you have always needed in order to understand opera—even if you were afraid to start experiencing it because of all the barriers of technical, historical, and linguistic knowledge you must first surmount. This is the book that makes 29 operatic masterpieces make sense to a musical layman, with just enough non-technical description to help you understand why they are masterpieces, how to assess their strengths and weaknesses, and what to look for in a great performance. This is the book that demystifies a cultural tradition that, for far too many people, has been enshrined in a remote realm of impenetrable mystery; that explains the stories and the characters in dramas and comedies that always used to come across as so much foreign caterwauling; that could make a form of entertainment that is now 400 years old come alive in your imagination as movingly, as romantically, as hilariously, and at times as horrifyingly as what you experience in the film and broadcast media of today—with the added attraction of a piece of musical genius as long as a regulation baseball game. This is the book that could prevent your first night at the opera from being confusing, agonizing, and your last; that could make it, rather, the beginning of a lifetime of pleasure that will fill your heart and stimulate your brain. In short, this is the book you were afraid did not exist (especially if you were in danger of having to go to an opera at some point); or that, if it did exist, would be too hard to read. But it does, and it isn't, and here it is!

Music critic Paul England is not always on target. To start with, some of the synopses aren't even by him. At times (particularly when writing on Bellini and Donizetti), he may seem to judge an opera unfairly, his hindsight colored by the later phenomena of Verdi and Wagner. And his opinion, like anyone's, is open to debate. After more than 80 years, it is very likely that some of the weaknesses he finds in the works of great composers like Verdi and Puccini are now accepted as beauty spots on their own terms. Perhaps some works that England dismisses as being of light interest, unlikely to survive in the repertoire, still remain perennial favorites, while others are staging a comeback. Perhaps England was too optimistic about an opera's chances for remaining a hot item, such the works by Meyerbeer and Charpentier represented in this book. But often, his assessment of an opera's greatness seems to steal the words out of the pen of today's program-notes writers. Or to put it the right way around, maybe they're stealing from him.

I am grateful to Paul England for crystallizing some of my own thoughts, and clarifying others, on such opera favorites as The Barber of Seville (Rossini), Rigoletto (Verdi), Carmen (Bizet), and La bohème (Puccini), among others. Thanks to recordings, I have heard many of the operas discussed in this book, in some cases many times over. Even so, I think I will appreciate them better the next time I hear them; and I plan to keep this book as a handy reference when a night at the theater beckons, or even a night by the hi-fi. I also look forward to reading what England and his contributors have to say about Mozart, Beethoven, and Wagner in the volume on German and Russian composers. Bottom line: GET THIS BOOK, and claim your share in the fabulous cultural wealth in which opera is among the brightest jewels.

The Point Man
by Steve Englehart
Recommended Ages: 15+

The cover art of this book may lead one to expect a whimsical, comic-bookish fantasy in which a Vietnam war veteran turned disc jockey discovers a magical talent appropriate to someone who always volunteered to be "point man"—wherever he points his finger, magic happens. This mind trick is aided by the fact that author Englehart also wrote—besides a sequel to this book titled The Long Man—several well-received graphic novels, including the serial that inspired Tim Burton's movie Batman. A reader, like me, may make it all the way through the book before accepting the disappointing reality that the book's hero Max August (or, as he styles himself on the radio, Barnaby Wilde) never actually points his finger and shoots magic. Instead, he merely saves the free world from a Communist shaman's plot to subject it to the powers of Unbeing at the stroke of New Year 1981, San Francisco time.

Max's adventure isn't very lighthearted or whimsical, either. In fact, it is very grown-up, and may call for both an adult and an occult content advisory. Max starts to realize that he is in the middle of something big, hairy, and supernatural when he wakes up after a wild night of passion with his new boss, only to be attacked by an indoor storm cloud filled with eyes. Then a homicidal maniac takes a shot at him through the window of his studio. When he realizes that his boss/lover has also stolen an heirloom sculpture of a lion from his living room, Max starts to get really angry. He takes out some of his anger on a pop diva who has dropped by his studio for an on-air interview. But this proves to be a turning point, for Valerie Drake's mysterious agent is actually a 500-year-old wizard named Cornelius Agrippa.

Corny tries to prepare Max to understand what is going on. But it isn't until lightning fries one of his fans, and an FBI agent reveals that he has been targeted by the K.G.B.'s division of paranormal warfare, and a hitman gives him the fight of his life before killing himself in a freakishly gruesome way, that Max begins to accept that there are powers at work that he cannot explain. More surprisingly, when he tries to infiltrate the island hideout of the dark wizard who wants to end the world as we know it, Max survives capture, torture, and a long-winded, preposterous harangue, escaping with his sanity intact not because of his war experience, but because he, Max August, radio personality, is a wizard.

But it's not all hugs and Hogwarts from there on. The bad guys get Cornelius and turn him into a gibbering wreck. This leaves Max and Valerie with only a day or so to prepare for Armageddon at the Hyatt Regency, for which there is only one way to prepare: Sex Magick. Then it's a simple matter of stopping a ritual that will bring the world under darkness for a thousand years, trigger a force-10 earthquake that will cause California to sink into the Pacific, and turn the tide of the Cold War, at the crack between the years 1980 and '81. Fun times.

While it's always fun to read about people who know nothing about magic having to use it to save the world, I have to be honest about this book. I enjoyed large parts of it. But it did not really live up to my expectations. Some of it struck me as flat-out ludicrous; and given what I read most of the time, that's saying a lot. Other parts of it went in one eye and out the other, without calling up the usual imagery on my mind's movie screen, though I owe much of my love of reading to the fact that I can visualize almost everything I read.

Perhaps I am judging the book too harshly on the grounds that it is dated; perhaps at a later period, I could look back on a Cold War thriller with more sympathy toward the era it depicts. Or perhaps Steve Englehart's strange cocktail of ideological warfare, Vietnam flashbacks, music industry melodrama, and magic is simply a flavor too weird for my palate. Either way, I would recommend this book mainly to fans of Engelhart's comic-book creations and to readers who are game for a somewhat talky, slightly trashy, frankly bizarre take on magic set in the Bay Area in the final weeks of the Carter administration. As for me, I might read the sequel, just to see who wins the Cold War...

The Tomb
by F. Paul Wilson
Recommended Ages: 14+

A dear friend recommended this book to me, the first in the "Repairman Jack" series of horror/fantasy novels set in present-day New York. I dithered for a long time, though. One one hand, it looked like it might be cut out of the same cloth as the Dresden Files, and I wanted to get through as much of that series as possible before starting something new but similar. On the other hand, it looked like little more than the typical paperback thriller, of which I have forgotten nearly as many as I have read. Only one thing about this particular paperback raised an eyebrow: a glowing accolade by Stephen King, quoted on the front cover not as the author of The Stand or Carrie, but as the President of the Repairman Jack fan club. If Stephen King was the president of my fan club, I would have it made. But I guess, before that could happen, I would have to write a story as gripping and scary as this one.

Surprisingly enough, Repairman Jack turns out to be completely different from Harry Dresden. For one thing, he lives in New York (Manhattan to be exact), a city that comes to life in the imagination in a vividly colored (and scented), culturally vibrant, historically and geographically fascinating way that a certain midwestern city mostly known for its windiness just doesn't. Plus, he's not a wizard. He's just a repairman. He doesn't fix appliances, though; he fixes situations. Some of these situations require a rather brutal touch. Jack whatever-his-last-name-is is no stranger to violence. But until now, they haven't been paranormal situations. When magic and mythological monsters get mixed up with his career and his love life, Repairman Jack gets as freaked-out as you or I would be. The difference is his incredible toughness, bravery, and single-minded determination. When he sets his mind on getting something done, he gets it done. If it's impossible, maybe it takes a bit longer.

The first impossible thing Jack does in this book is to recover an heirloom necklace stolen from an old lady from India. By the time the woman's grandson—a one-armed, extremely Hindu character named Kusum—hires Jack to fetch it back, the silvery iron chain set with two yellow stones could be anywhere in the five boroughs. But Jack finds it well enough, and he teaches the mugger a lesson too. What he doesn't notice, however, is the nightmare out of Indian prehistory which climbs the wall of a hospital and snatches the mugger out of his room. This nightmare turns out to be a person-eating demon called a rakosh, which has been hatched for the very purpose of hunting down and destroying some of the most important people in Jack's life, simply because their ancestor did a bad, bad thing.

Karma sucks.

But then, so does getting on Repairman Jack's bad side. And when a cargo hold full of rakoshi target little Vicky, the daughter of the woman Jack loves, you almost feel sorry for them. But then you remember that they're terrifying monsters who, when they decide to kill you, usually manage it no matter how hard you kill them back. And that's where I'll leave you in this review, to decide for yourself whether you're up to a tale combining grisly claws, fiery explosions, sinister potions, and a hero whose strange and absorbing story ensure that his relationship with the strong-willed Gia will always be the most explosive thing in his life. In case you are, and you find this book as mindblowing as you might, wrap your mind around this: The Tomb is both the second book of six in "The Adversary Cycle" (each of which has a different protagonist) and the first of sixteen in the "Repairman Jack" series, both of which end with the same book! Of more immediate concern, most likely, is the fact that the second Repairman Jack book is titled Legacies.

Anderson Barron Curley LeGuin

The Pox Party
by M. T. Anderson
Recommended Ages: 14+

The full title of this 2006 National Book Award winner is The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation, Volume I: the Pox Party. And before you ask, there is indeed a Volume II: The Kingdom on the Waves, published in 2008. Having read only a few of this author's books before this—including the campy Whales on Stilts—I wasn't expecting the emotional depth, the brutal realism, and the 18th-century prose stylings of this book.

It is a work of historical fiction set in the area around Boston in the years leading up to, and the early months of, the American Revolution. It is a hard-hitting indictment of slavery and that institution's role in the founding of our nation. It shows men and women, both black and white, ranging across the entire spectrum of attitudes about color and race, from the idealistic innocence of a continental soldier named Evidence to the reptilian cruelty of Mr. Sharpe. It portrays the period of the birth of the United States as a self-contradictory swirl of scientific discovery, social progress, mob violence, and inhuman cruelty, all driven by the self-interest of one group or another. It presents an eloquent viewpoint upon a struggle for independence driven by the sometimes paradoxical ideals of liberty and property—and the hypocrisy of a war for freedom in which slaves were forced to fight in place of their masters, often without any promise of living free afterward.

At the center of this story is a boy named Octavian, who is raised in luxury and given the finest education by the fellows of the Novanglian College of Lucidity. Taught to read the classics in Greek and Latin, to play the violin with exquisite skill, and to consider himself an exiled prince by virtue of his elegant mother, Octavian does not at first realize that he is actually a slave. His African-born mother was already the bonded property of Mr. Josiah Gitney when Octavian was born, and now the boy (as he gradually learns) is the subject of an experiment. This accounts for why his upbringing, though lavish, is often also cruelly cold and lonely. Every detail of his growth and development, from the weight of his excrement to the progress of his studies, is measured and recorded in anticipation of a scholarly essay that will, one day, prove that the black man is just as capable of learning and refinement as the white.

But then the political scene shifts. Discontent with the tax-and-spend policies of the British crown brews and bubbles. A conflict approaches, in which the colonial governor will offer slaves their freedom if they betray their masters. Slave-owners, especially in the south, have a vested interest in proving that slavery is the rightful lot of black people. And for reasons I don't have space here to explain, the Novanglian College of Lucidity needs the support of those slave-owners. And so the nature of Octavian's experiment changes. His education comes under the management of a vile man named Mr. Sharpe. The care that used to be taken to teach the boy now seems devoted to keeping him from learning. Bluntly put, the game is rigged. Octavian is to be held up as proof of the inferiority of his race.

At the same time, as Mr. Gitney grows desperate to insulate his household slaves from the unrest and rumors of rebellion, he holds a "pox party" on the pretext of inoculating his servants and guests against smallpox. The outcome, tragic for Octavian personally, leads the boy to run and join the continental army, where his adventures among the early battles of the war are narrated by a fellow soldier in the form of letters to his sister—a passage of wry satire that spares not even the kindest of well-meaning people. What isn't told in Octavian's words is pieced together from the letters of other characters, and what isn't told at all can be inferred.

Octavian's recapture, extreme punishment, and second escape—this time with the connivance of one of his good-hearted tutors—exercise the reader, especially the youthful reader, in the art of picking a tale of horror, suffering, foreboding, and thrill out of old-fashioned lingo, classical references, enigmatic gaps, subtle ironies, and delicate circumlocutions. At the same time, the story is laced with grotesque surprises, graphic depictions of violence and filth, unexpected vulgarities, unapologetic passages of a very "adult" nature. Where his adventure ultimately takes Octavian, we can only tell by reading The Kingdom on the Waves. But it promises to be a dark and perilous journey, provoking serious thought about some less-than-savory details of American history. And we can also expect it to be a deeply stirring book of great literary value, more in keeping with the author of The Game of Sunken Places than Whales on Stilts.

The Merlin Effect
by T. A. Barron
Recommended Ages: 12+

They're an unlikely research team, messing with sensors and deep-sea submersibles off a treacherous stretch of Mexican coast. First there's teenaged Kate, who seems to have tagged along just for a chance to spend time with her historian father, only to spend most of the time paddling around in a kayak while Dad searches for the wreck of a Spanish treasure ship. What this has to do with his area of expertise (proving that Merlin was a historical person) is not immediately clear, but neither is the connection to a marine biologist studying the strange, evolutionary-throwback fish of the area, or to a geologist whose interest lies in the volcanic activity beneath the ocean floor. All they seem to have in common is an interest in studying what's going on under that particular patch of sea, and growing desperation as their permit from the Mexican government nears its expiration date.

Things start to change soon after Kate encounters a whale and a whirlpool during an almost fatal evening paddle in her kayak. Suddenly the evidence her father has been looking for—an underwater photo of the sunken ship Resurreccion—gives them a reason to take the submersible to the sea bottom, directly below the whirlpool. But due to a freak accident, it is Kate who gets there first, even without any diving gear or vessel. Surprisingly, she finds dry ground at the bottom of the 3,000-foot whirlpool, and on that ground a shipwreck, and in that shipwreck a 500-year-old monk named Geoffrey who has been kept alive by the power of the Horn of Merlin. Geoffrey tells Kate the whole story about the horn, its maker Emrys, the wizard Merlin, and how they are all connected to a kingdom beneath the waves and a power to give some type of immortality. Basically, if they don't recover a group of ancient, powerful artifacts before the sorceress Nimue does so, King Arthur will never be able to return and win the final battle.

And by the way, Nimue has Kate's Dad. The life or death of the entire research team now matters more than Kate ever realized, especially now that Terry (the geologist) turns out to be such a good friend. As for who Geoffrey turns out to be... Well, I can only spoil so many surprises before a book recommendation becomes a book autopsy. And I do recommend this book to readers of all ages who think they might be interested in a tale of danger and magic, of warmth and whimsy, of sea monsters and battles and myths and merpeople. I started this book by the author of The Lost Years of Merlin expecting something Diana-Wynne-Jonesesque, like perhaps The Merlin Conspiracy. Instead I was reminded more of the Merlin lore of T. H. White—or more precisely, Disney's rendition of The Sword in the Stone. I'm disappointed that there hasn't been a sequel to this book. However, it turns out to be the third book in a series of Kate's adventures, which also include Heartlight and The Ancient One.

The Named
by Marianne Curley
Recommended Ages: 14+

Ethan is like most teenaged superheroes. He keeps his true identity secret. He maintains the illusion of being an average high school student, except in history class, which he can't help but excel. No one would suspect that he is anything but a normal boy in the normal town of Angel Falls. But like the town, the boy has something else going on below the surface.

Ethan is, in fact, a Guardian of Time—an member of the Guard—a defender of history. He regularly travels back in time to prevent agents of the Order of Chaos from re-shaping history to the taste of the evil Goddess they serve. While his body sleeps, his mind is transported to a Citadel outside the universe, where he is given gear, knowledge, a complete makeover, and a new identity to fit each mission. And then, armed with the power to create illusions and to move objects with his mind, supported by a 600-year-old sidekick named Arkarian, and trained in the arts of combat, he goes forth to battle the agents of Chaos.

Nor is Angel Falls all it appears to be. It is built over the ruins of a lost city whose walls are inscribed with a prophecy. In Ethan's time, that prophecy achieves a new level of urgency. The council that governs the Guard, and which has the power to make or break Ethan as a Guardian, begins to put unheard-of pressure on the boy. All the while, other members of both the Guard and the Order are revealed, one by one, within the city limits of Angel Falls.

The first new discovery is Isabella, the kid sister of Ethan's former best friend Matt. Though a seductive girl named Rochelle came between the buddies and destroyed their friendship, Isabella still nurses a raging crush on Ethan. Before she quite understands what is going on, Isabella has become Ethan's first Apprentice. And he has only a few weeks to prepare her for her first mission.

As Ethan and Isabella defend history in the time of England's King Richard II, and the childhood of America's second First Lady, and other key pressure-points the Lady Chaos has targeted for troublemaking, more and more people from their everyday lives are drawn into the conflict. The monster who has haunted Ethan's dreams since, at age 4, he witnessed his older sister's brutal murder, has materialized in the real world. A grudge match with evil will awaken the slumbering spirit of Ethan's father. A heroic young man will risk his future as a Guardian to do what his heart tells him to do. A fearless girl will stake her just-discovered powers of healing against the killer who has taken her brother hostage. A pair of soul-mates will find each other. A traitor will make a plea to be trusted. And a small group of heroes will do battle against seemingly impossible odds.

With this book, Australian author Marianne Curley begins a trilogy titled "The Guardians of Time," combining the turbocharged hormones of teen romance with a magical fantasy about a secret society hidden within our everyday world and defending reality as we know it. Teen and older readers who enjoy The Mortal Instruments should also like this trilogy, which continues with The Dark and The Key. The conflict is gripping; the imagery is vivid; the characters are appealing. If there's anything to complain about, it's only that the pace picks up so much towards the climax that I got a little confused; but this might be a symptom of brain cells stiffening with age. And where this book excels is precisely in how it distills the essence of youth into an adventure that could have come straight from the daydreams of a 10th-grade history buff.

The Farthest Shore
by Ursula K. LeGuin
Recommended Ages: 13+

It's a shame that it took me until now to read this book, which is as old as I am. As I write this, my fortieth birthday looms only a few weeks ahead of me, and the third novel of Earthsea rings true for me in its depiction of the wizard Ged, a.k.a. Sparrowhawk, beginning to come down off the crest of his career. After a youth full of mighty deeds and daring quests, Ged has progressed so far as to be elected Archmage of Roke, as it were the Dumbledore of his world. Whether due to this more settled way of life, or the feeling of becoming old, or perhaps the sense of the destined ends for which he has striven finally coming together, this book finds Ged restless to sail out to the limits of the island-studded world of Earthsea. And it is the arrival on Roke of a young prince named Arren, bearing the disturbing news that magic is going out of the world, that gives the Archmage the chance he needs to embark on one last quest.

But this book imbibes more than the spirit of men at the height of their power, beginning to descend toward old age. In Arren, it also drinks of youth gaining experience, of boyhood turning into manhood, of hero-worship ripening into a loving companionship concocted of equal parts compassion, trust, and self-sacrifice. When LeGuin writes of Arren "falling in love" with Ged, she does so in the same sense in which T. H. White wrote of Lancelot falling in love with Arthur. Princeling offers himself to wizard as a servant, follows him as puppy follows master, and seems ready to give up even his own destiny as a ruler of the island of Enlad.

But as the pair sail out toward the bitter end of civilization, facing a succession of horrors that bear witness to an evil will bent on destroying all life, the direction of flow changes. Increasingly it appears that the wizard will use up the last of his wizardry to secure for his companion the throne of all Earthsea. And it is not magic alone, but also the boy's strength of body and spirit to master adversity, to face death, and to fight for life both for himself and his friend—no longer "master"—that will restore the Balance that preserves the magical world of Earthsea.

I read the first two books of this series, A Wizard of Earthsea and The Tombs of Atuan, almost a decade ago. At that time, I think I was discouraged from continuing the series because of the rumor that the books became increasingly tied up in Taoist mysticism and/or feminist ideology. I am glad to say these rumors do no justice to this beautiful book, which concludes what was once considered the "Earthsea Trilogy"—though there are now two more novels (written much later) and an anthology of short stories to go with it. On the other hand, I am sad to think I missed out so long on what really could be the most beautifully written book I have read this year.

In mythopoeic world-building, Ursula LeGuin is easily the equal of J. R. R. Tolkien. In economy of words—this magnificent book being a mere 259 pages long—she has no equal. In a work of fantasy that almost obliterates the boundary between prose and poetry, this book could almost be sung. And when it ends, it leaves one with a wistful feeling, as though one wished to re-enter its strange, wonderful realm and stay there a while longer. To do so, one will have to explore the later books of this series—Tehanu, The Other Wind, and Tales from Earthsea—regardless of the rumor that their author had lost her feel for Earthsea by the time she wrote them. Maybe, when magic does drain out of a world, memory can pour it back in.

Anderson Butcher Hardy Martinez

Standard Hero Behavior
by John David Anderson
Recommended Ages: 12+

Mason Quayle has the bad luck to be a bard in a land without heroes. It has been years since the city of Darlington, formerly known as Highsmith, has needed heroes to defend it against orcs, goblins, trolls, and the like. Or rather, it has only needed one hero: the Duke in whose honor the town was renamed. In return for crippling taxes, Duke Darlinger sallies forth every month or so, and comes back boasting of great deeds done in defense of his people.

The Duke already has a bard. So young Mason, whose father left Highsmith years ago with the last party of heroes, has nothing to do but mooch up and down the street lined with the abandoned mansions of bygone heroes, listen to his mother tell tales of his father's heroism, and compose ditties in honor of paying customers' daring deeds, such as shooing away a chipmunk. Things are even worse for Mason's best friend Cowel, whose blacksmith uncle is no longer needed to make armor and weapons, and whose career as a plume salesman is hampered by a shortage of helmets to stick plumes in. So even with the safety and security the Duke has brought to the town, life has become desperate for Mason and his mother, Cowel and his uncle, and others. They barely earn enough money to pay the Duke's taxes. Starvation approaches.

Finally Mason becomes so desperate that he risks his mother's disgust and decides to beg the Duke for a job. But he arrives at the castle just as the Duke finds out that a certain ogre chieftain, whom he has been paying off to leave Darlington alone, has been killed in a coup. The new chieftain demands more money than the Duke can possibly pay to continue the arrangement which has, without any heroism whatsoever, kept the town safe all these years. Someone needs to go out into the world and bring back as many heroes as possible, and with only three days left before the deadline. It's not going to be the Duke who goes, because he's a quivering wreck. That leaves Mason, mounted on a mild-mannered horse, accompanied by his friend Cowel, and guided by the wisdom of his father's magnum opus: an unfinished book titled Quayle's Guide to Adventure for the Unadventurous.

Mason does find some heroes, but he is disappointed to find how little they live up to his father's description of "Standard Hero Behavior." Some of them seem just plain useless, like the deadly swordsman who can only fight while he is sound asleep, but who cannot control when he sleeps or wakes. Some of them have settled down and sworn off the hero business. And some of the greatest heroes seem to have risked everything on one last, stupendously dangerous quest—and never returned. Mason and Cowel follow in their footsteps, meeting lots of interesting people, getting into numerous scrapes, and making discoveries that, at least in Mason's case, change everything he thought he knew about his father.

This 2007 adventure is, to-date, the only book published by its Indianapolis-based author. Nevertheless, it is an assured piece of writing, with endearing characters, memorably original fantasy concepts, warmth, romance, danger, sorrow, and a hearty helping of humor. The scene in which Mason consults a fortuneteller made me laugh so hard that I felt compelled to share it. (My mother has probably realized that I only call when I want to read aloud to someone.) And while a little sadness tinges the happy ending, there is one way author Anderson can turn some of that sadness into joy: Keep writing!

Changes
by Jim Butcher
Recommended Ages: 14+

In the first sentence of this book, Harry Dresden answers the phone and hears his half-vampire ex-girlfriend Susan say, "They've taken our daughter." Harry could well ask, "What daughter?" But he hardly needs to ask who took her. Susan has spent the past several years harassing the Red Court of vampires as a member of the Fellowship of St. Giles, an organization of half-turned, semi-immortal vigilantes whose super-strength and endless anger make the Irish Republican Army look like a knitting circle. Their energies are focused on Latin America, where the vampires—descended from the false gods of a Mayan blood cult—herd humans like cattle and maintain a reign of terror that puts the drug cartels in the shade. And Harry being Harry—a wizard, a private investigator, and an instinctive protector of women and children besides—he's not going to sit still and let the Reds have their way with his Maggie. Even if he hasn't met her yet.

But to save one girl from a literal army of monsters, including some of the most ancient powers of evil in this world, is going to take more than the power wielded by one wizard—even one as extraordinarily strong, brave, and lucky as Dresden. Harry will need to plead for help from pretty much every muscle he knows. Some of them will turn him down. He will learn who his true friends are. And he will go ahead, knowing that he may lose some of them in an all but hopeless attack on the heart of Red Court power. But once he learns that the vampires mean to sacrifice his daughter in a ritual to unleash deadly power, the odds no longer matter.

True to the book's title, Dresden's lifestyle and career undergo some major changes in this book. Since the beginning of this series, twelve books ago, he has had the same apartment, the same office, the same car. This is the installment in which he loses them all. His staff, his rod, almost everything he owns, even his cat, are no longer with him by the end of this book. He loses almost everything, and risks losing everyone. And above all, he could lose himself: for he can only succeed in his mission to save Maggie by making a Faustian bargain with the Queen of Air and Darkness.

Part of what makes this book especially thrilling, even by the usual standards of The Dresden Files, is the clear and present danger that everything and everyone in the series could change or go away forever. There is no safety net of a winning formula that will be back to normal at the start of the next book. In fact (not that I want to spoil the ending) you could turn the last page of this novel wondering whether there could be a next book. Be not afraid, however: a thirteenth book, Ghost Story, has been released; a fourteenth, Cold Days, is rumored to be in the works; and author Jim Butcher has said he has plans for a total of some twenty books in the series.

Far from the Madding Crowd
by Thomas Hardy
Recommended Ages: 13+

Published in 1874 as an anonymous serial in a literary magazine, this was not Hardy's first novel, but it was the one whose success enabled him to pursue a full-time writing career. It is also the first book to take place in Hardy's imaginary county of Wessex, somewhere in the southwest of England. Its tale of a five-sided love triangle in a pastoral setting gave English lit some of its most enduring characters, and they apparently served as a template for the celebrated characters in Margaret Mitchell's Gone with the Wind. It is a novel whose poetic diction and psychological depth qualify it as a great work of literature. Yet at the same time, its vivid depiction of setting and people, its dry humor and eye-moistening melodrama, its hints of classic tragedy and its daringly sympathetic depiction of a strong woman ahead of her time, and the agonizingly delayed fulfillment of the romantic promise hinted at in the first few pages, make it so much fun to read that you won't be put off by its literary merit.

Who are the sides of the love-pentangle I mentioned above? The most important two are Bathsheba Everdene and Gabriel Oak. We first meet them when the former is a beautiful, vain, strong-minded maid of 20 years, living with her aunt without a penny to her name; while the latter is a 28-year-old shepherd, just getting started as an independent farmer. After the girl saves the shepherd from being stifled to death, Farmer Oak decides to ask her to marry him. In one of the most uncomfortable scenes ever written, Bathsheba turns him down on the grounds that she is too wild, too independent, and never wants to be subject to a husband if she can help it. Oak accepts this with a good-natured stoicism that will surely go to your heart.

After some further reversals, Oak finds himself working as a shepherd on the farm inherited by Bathsheba. Now she is the independent one, and he is only a hired laborer. A lesser man would be embittered by this, but Oak proves himself one of the strongest, kindest, and most selflessly faithful heroes in ink. And this is in spite of Bathsheba being courted by a taciturn neighboring farmer named Boldwood (side 3), previously a confirmed bachelor whose peaceful existence is upended by a facetious valentine Bathsheba impulsively sends him. Boldwood conceives a passion for Bathsheba, a passion in every sense of the word: tormenting the man, body and soul, until it builds to an obsession and, inevitably, wreaks great destruction.

Side 4 of the love pentagon is a young sergeant in the army named Francis Troy, whose dashing looks and spirits captivate Bathsheba in a way no other man does. He, meanwhile, is so taken by her beauty that he jilts the love of his life (Side 5), a servant girl in Bathsheba's household named Fanny Robin. Actually you don't see a great deal of Fanny in the book, but she comes to the most pathetic end, and her death serves as the trigger for everything that happens in the final act of the book. The Troys' marriage falls apart. Her husband's presumed (but unproven) death leaves Bathsheba in miserable uncertainty. Boldwood's importunity becomes unbearable, forcing Bathsheba into a dilemma from which there seems to be no escape. Jealousy, rage, violence, and insanity complete the tragic tableau. And yet, all along, Gabriel Oak's self-denying faithfulness remains a constant. Or does it? One last test remains before the end.

The drama of all this is so compelling, and the way the people and places are described is so vivid and beautiful, that this does not seem at all like a long book. In fact, the characters—both major and minor—are drawn with such clarity that you may feel you know them personally, and care about them, and miss them when you close the book. It's the stuff that addictions are made of. So if you follow my recommendation and enjoy this book, you may feel a craving for more Hardy. To help you choose what to read next, other popular titles by this author include: The Return of the Native, The Mayor of Casterbridge, The Woodlanders, Tess of the d'Urbervilles, and Jude the Obscure.

Chasing the Moon
by A. Lee Martinez
Recommended Ages: 14+

Diana thinks she's found the perfect apartment. It's already furnished, exactly to her taste. Whatever she wants to eat magically materializes in the refrigerator. Plus, as long as she lives in it, she will neither age nor die. The part where it's all too good to be true is that she can never leave the apartment unless she opens a closet containing an otherworldly monster named Vom the Hungering, whose appetite is endless. Being eaten by Vom is the only way she can die. And taking that chance is the only way she can get out of the apartment.

It seems obvious at the outset that this is going to be a short novel. And it is rather short, but not for the obvious reason. Quite early in it, Diana does let Vom out—but instead of him eating her then and there, they work out an arrangement for living together as roommates. This turns out to be the first test of Diana's aptitude as a "warden" in an apartment building that bridges the space between realities where things are disturbingly different from back home. And it is the beginning of Diana's struggle to keep her world (and ours) from being torn to shreds by a plague of bizarre visitors from other dimensions, beings who so belong elsewhere that their presence bends our reality to the breaking point.

Some of those threats from beyond end up as additional roommates as Diana's apartment becomes more and more a refuge for misplaced monsters. There's the giant purple hedgehog who constantly spawns clones of himself, all different sizes; when stressed, he can quickly fill a room to the point of mutually assured suffocation. Then there's the giant, floating, tentacle-fringed eyeball who can shoot death rays out of his pupil. They aren't the only strange folks in the building either. The couple in Apartment 3 takes turns appearing in the form of a giant batlike creature. The stud in Apartment 2 lives in terror of the alien puppy-thing that sits guard outside his door. The building super, a hairy number named West, enlists Diana's aid in fixing the boiler to delay a future plague of giant insects who live backward in time. And there's also an apartment in which, from time to time, a bucket of fried chicken needs to be thrown into a bottomless pit in order to keep gravity online.

All this is disturbing enough, but as you learn long before Diana does, there's an even bigger threat to the way things in our world are supposed to work. A huge tentacly creature out of Norse mythology is trying to devour the moon. When it does, it could bring the end of the world. And nobody seems to want that more than a shapechanging cult of six-legged werewolves who worship a mild-mannered fellow named Calvin, who has been trapped on Earth for thousands of years. When Calvin decides it's time to go, the human race's time may be up. It depends on how he decides to go... and that depends, somewhat, on Diana.

When you've been reviewing the kind of books I have for as long as I have, you learn to take a weird opening sentence, paragraph, page, or chapter in stride. But nothing prepared me for the weirdness of the beginning of this book. It was so shockingly, disorientingly weird that I thought twice about continuing to read it. After a couple of chapters, however, I was so immersed in the book's steady procession of insane surprises and surprising insanities that I began to accept them as normal, textural features of a whimsical, chaotic world. Not that I was ever comfortable with them. I reckon this book hasn't done its job if it hasn't disturbed you with its dark, apocalyptic, yet at the same time zany worldview. It almost takes part in the Dadaist aesthetic, portraying our universe as a thin film of reality among an infinitely thick bundle of realities: a reality in which all meaning is essentially illusory, which is always in grave danger of being destroyed, and which only seems to be governed by consistent laws because of its (reality's) elastic way of snapping back to its original shape whenever something from outside stretches it. There are actually people who believe the laws of nature, as we know it, rest on such a flimsy foundation—and if their inner life is haunted by figments like the beings in this novel, I pity them.

Sinking Feeling

This week the neighborhood Lutheran Shrine to St. Shecky, patron of tackiness on holy ground, says:

LOOKING FOR A LIFEGUARD
OURS WALKS ON WATER

Yabbut, this Lifeguard wants to drown you and then pull out of the water a new person. Unlike the kid who made headlines this past week by being fired for rescuing a swimmer who got in trouble outside the protected zone, this One's coverage area includes everybody... But in the process of saving you, He must be rejected and die, and then come to life again through no one's act of resuscitation but his own. Having been saved by Him, your whole life belongs to Him. And when He sends you to catch men, He does so with instructions that go against all your reason and experience—and a warning that no other method will work. Just so you know what comes with the "walking on water" trick...

Butcher, Shan, Shüsterman

Turn Coat
by Jim Butcher
Recommended Ages: 14+

The eleventh book of The Dresden Files begins to shake up some of the comfortable formula, if a series of thrillers pitting one smart-aleck wizard detective against a Chicago-load of vampires, zombies, demons, homicidal fairies, and hell-bent necromancers, can be said to fall into a "comfortable formula." In this installment, wizard Donald Morgan—the sword-wielding wizard cop who has had it in for Dresden since the start—shows up on his younger nemesis's doorstep, asking for help.

Morgan is on the run after being caught standing over the dead body of a member of the Senior Council, but he swears he has been framed. Dresden agrees to help, figuring no one will expect him to shelter the wizard who has been looking for an excuse to cut his head off since he was sixteen years old. Plus, solving this latest crime may mean exposing the "Black Council" that has been thwarting the aims of the wizardly White Council. Clearly there is a traitor at Wizard Central in Edinburgh, but before Harry can finger him (or her), he has a lot of things to do. Things like saving his mostly-reformed vampire half-brother from an evil being so powerful that the mere sight of it nearly drives Harry insane. Things like finding out who paid another vampire and an otherworldly-thug summoner to mess with him. Things that will involve his cop friend Murphy, his apprentice Molly, and his Warden Captain girlfriend in ways that take him far beyond the comfort zone.

Some of the threats Dresden faces in this book seem as scary and unbeatable as anything he has crossed wands with before. And some of the tactics he takes to survive them push the limits of what he can do without losing himself. At one point, Dresden lures multiple groups of dangerous customers to the same spooky island and then, while they fight amongst themselves, plugs himself into a vast malevolent power, which he then uses to even the odds against the Shagnasty that has Thomas. And when the dust settles, the whole dust-up turns out to have been a diversion from his real plan. Even then, the danger is far from over.

Turn Coat shows us a Harry Dresden whose youthful brashness is backed up by the wisdom of experience and a wider repertoire of survival skills in a magical world that just keeps getting more dangerous. Call it acquiring more powers; or call it having more friends to back him up. Some of those friends, however, will be lost or out of commission by the end of this book. Harry will pay a big price in heartache. That's the cost of standing up for good in a world full of supernatural crooks and monsters—to say nothing of pragmatic wizards who value the appearance of power more than truth and justice.

Author Butcher knows how to keep you on the hero's side, even when he does not seem awfully heroic. Blending arcane knowledge with pop-culture savvy, the never-say-die soul of a fighter with the wit of a ne'er-do-well, exceptional (though somewhat unfocused) power with the vulnerability of an innocent, Harry Dresden is a hero who makes it easy for the reader to share his loves and hates, joys and aches, dread and terror. His adventures have plenty of action, but the fight scenes are held together by the complex interaction of the plans, rash acts, loves, and hates of many groups, people, and creatures he is involved with. And though the answer to the question "Who done it" may not come as a big surprise, neither will you be surprised when you close the book wanting more. The spell for that is book 12: Changes.

The Vampire's Assistant
by Darren Shan
Recommended Ages: 12+

In Book 2 of Cirque du Freak, newly-minted half-vampire Darren Shan becomes so lonely that his vampire master takes pity on him. Instead of keeping his 14-year-old, unwilling apprentice to himself, Mr. Crepsley takes him back to the traveling freak show where it all started. There Darren becomes intimately acquainted with such remarkable people as Mr. Tall, the boss of the show, who can disappear from one place and reappear instantly somewhere else; Mr. Limbs, who can cut off any part of his body and grow it back again within minutes; and Mr. Tiny, a terrifying man who manages the mysterious, blue-cloaked, and ravenous Little People.

Darren goes to work feeding the wolf man, hunting small game for the Little People, doing odd jobs around the camp, and assisting Mr. Crepsley in his performances with Madam Octa the trained spider. He and Evra Von the snake boy become fast friends. And the two of them also befriend a local boy named Sam, whose gruesome fate is tied to that of an environmental protester who lives in a neighboring camp. What happens one night when the plans of these two outsiders collide outside the wolf man's cage is best learned by reading this book—so long as you don't eat a big meal before reading it.

In the four trilogies of the Cirque du Freak cycle, Irish author Darren Shan seems to be telling the kind of story that would have captivated him when he was a boy who loved vampire movies and spooky comics. Though these books are not illustrated, they are told in such simple and direct language that your mental imagery may seem as vivid as any graphic novel. The narrator's routine illiteracies, such as using the phrase "Evra and me" as the subject of a sentence, might be forgiven as they seem so genuinely "in character" for a fourteen-year-old half-vampire. And Shan really knows how to tell a page-turningly intense, macabre story. He is especially skilled at teasing the nastiness to come, and so keeping the reader in a constant state of dread. With another ten books to go, this series promises plenty of unrelieved dread and macabre twists.

Tunnels of Blood
by Darren Shan
Recommended Ages: 12+

Once again, Irish author Darren Shan chills, shocks, and teases with suspense in an innovative vampire novel for young adults, featuring a teen half-vampire named after himself. This series, generally known as either "Cirque du Freak" or "the Darren Shan Saga," is safe from the current backlash against teen and tween vampire series such as the Twilight Saga (which, after a series of hit films, is now widely recognized as a hideously banal and unconvincing romance) and the True Blood novels (now a cable-TV series which no one watches except for the sex scenes). Young Darren, by contrast, is just a nice boy who has barely started to notice girls, and who realizes that his status as a half-vampire assistant to the full vampire Larten Crepsley pretty much kills any chance of his having a long-term girlfriend. Though he does, in this book, pick up his first short-term girlfriend, the innocence of their relationship and the danger it puts her in guarantees two things: first, that the supernatural horror side of this vampire tale will never take a backseat to romantic ickiness; and second, after the lesson Darren learns in this installment, he will not be in a hurry to play the relationship game again. And so, teen vampire fans who are a little disillusioned with series that turned out to be mostly romance novels, can safely navigate this series without discomfort.

Assuming, of course, that they don't have a problem with exploring "tunnels of blood" beneath an unnamed city, where dwells a species of blood-sucking monster related to, but distinct from, vampires. Here Darren learns about the vampaneze—creatures of the night who drain their victims dry, rather than (like vampires) drinking only enough blood to wet their whistle. It's the difference between beings who eat to live and those who kill to eat. Not realizing that one such vampaneze is the killer Mr. Crepsley is after, Darren almost kills his own master. But the danger gets worse when the vampaneze gets away, abducts Darren's friend Evra the snake boy, and threatens to murder the girlfriend and her parents.

Anyone following this series will have learned by now that author Shan is a master of inventing bizarre character names, reinventing vampire mythology with surprising new details, and keeping readers on the hook by teasing plot twists ahead of time. All these specialties are strongly evident in this book. This adds up to a story well-stocked with creepy suspense, shocking goriness, and a surprisingly winsome humanity, for all that it is told in the grammatically imprecise plainness of speech of a narrator whose education, after age 14, was limited to work experience as a freak-show crew member and a vampire's assistant.

This book concludes the "Vampire Blood Trilogy," which began with Cirque du Freak. If you feel unready to depart from Darren Shan's dark world of bad, worse, and unimaginably awful vampires, that's all right. There are three more trilogies in the series after this, and the next trilogy starts with Vampire Mountain.

Antsy Does Time
by Neal Shüsterman
Recommended Ages: 14+

In this sequel to The Schwa Was Here, Anthony "Antsy" Bonano—a ninth-grade trouble magnet from Brooklyn, New York—decides to do something special for a terminally ill classmate. Typing it up to look official and legal, Antsy hands Gunnar Ümlaut a month of his life, signed and witnessed. This idea comes to our impulsive narrator after a tragicomic incident at a Thanksgiving Parade leads Gunnar to confide that he has six months to live. What started as a symbolic gesture of friendship, however, soon turns into a schoolwide craze as weeks, months, and even years off the end of people's lives are traded like stocks, used as hard currency, and exchanged as gifts between sweethearts.

Meanwhile, as Ansty grows closer to both Gunnar and his beautiful, eleventh-grade sister Kjersten, things start to unravel around the edges of his plan. Something is just a little off about Kjersten's romantic interest in Antsy. Something is more than a little off about Gunnar's parents, who seem to have problems bigger than their son's fatal disease. Meanwhile, Antsy's blind friend (and ex-girlfriend) Lexie is acting jealous, and the feeling is mutual. After a disastrous double-date, a regularly scheduled kidnapping of Lexie's curmudgeonly grandfather, and an incident at his father's restaurant that brings Antsy citywide notoriety, he is no closer to understanding what is going on with the Ümlauts. When it finally comes to him that Gunnar isn't really dying, it's too late: Antsy is already backed into a corner, with notes for his speech at a school rally crumpled in his sweaty fist. And that, naturally, is the moment when something truly awful happens.

Like his first adventure, Antsy's second captures an elusive blend of laugh-out-loud comedy and heart-moving humanity. The laugh I got out of Antsy's description of his first kiss with Kjersten, early in the book, was so satisfying that I had to call my mother afterward and share it with her. Towards the end, I do not lie, my throat was choked up and my cheeks were moist. You have to respect a storyteller who can lead you through that range of emotions. And you have to love a character like Antsy: a boy both keen-witted and naïve, humble and cocky, honest and kind, whose judgment is frequently off but whose heart is in the right place. I look forward to meeting him again.

Enterprise Season 4

+++ Review in Progress +++

In the 2004–05 season, Star Trek: Enterprise retreated somewhat from the previous year's all-in commitment to serial storytelling. Or maybe it pushed the envelope even further. It depends on your point of view. This final season of televised Trek closed eighteen years of continual production of at least one Star Trek series, not by adding one more year's worth of standalone episodes to the 27 that already existed, but by dividing what was essentially one story—the birthpangs of the United Federation of Planets—into a sequence of two- or three-episode arcs. The only thing that distinguishes these "arcs" from the season's pair of two-part episodes is whether or not the writers decided to give each part a unique title. And so, only three of Season 4's episodes seem to stand more or less alone: "Daedalus," "Observer Effect," and "Bound."

It was a season of Trek that gave so many insights into the backstory of the Original Series that one can only writhe in unrelieved frustration to imagine what might have come in subsequent seasons. The year starts by ending the Temporal Cold War plot line that goes back to the pilot episode. It then resolves some of the last impediments to forming the Coalition that would someday become the Federation: (1) xenophobia on Earth; (2) militarism on Vulcan; (3) interracial conflict on Andoria; and (4) the covert machinations of those xenophobic, militaristic, racially superior Romulans. I guess you could also add (5) the Orion Syndicate, (6) the Gorn, and (7) the Tholians, of whom we get a real eyeful for the first time in the franchise; (8) the long-rumored disease that caused the Klingons to lose their forehead bumps for a century or so, and (9) a few last aftershocks from the Eugenics wars, in the form of genetically-engineered supermen who threaten etc., etc., etc. And the Organians! And the inventor of the matter-energy transporter!

But one thing the show couldn't overcome was declining viewership. When the ratings bottomed out at 2.5 million viewers (the night "Babel One" was aired), the network announced that the series would not be renewed. Outright cancellation would have ended the production of new episodes right then and there, but Enterprise was given a merciful death, allowing a handful of final episodes to tie up its main storylines and a series finale that skips ahead to what might have been the end of the Enterprise's seven-year mission—albeit with a crossover plot device that makes it more of an appendix to the TNG episode "The Pegasus" than a real episode of Enterprise.

Still, when I read certain quotes about the series finale, like Rick Berman's claim that it was a "valentine to fans," I'm more amazed by how out of touch the producers were than by the fact that the show was canceled. Clearly, it was time for Berman & co-creator Brannon Braga to go, even if it meant ending Trek before its time. Now that Trek has been "rebooted" on the big screen, maybe the time has come to reboot it on TV as well. Only, may the Great Bird of the Galaxy grant that this be done under fresh leadership!

Storm Front, Parts I & II, brings the whole "Temporal Cold War" plot line to a decisive conclusion. As Season 3 ended, Captain Archer was feared dead in the explosion of the Xindi super-weapon. Actually, he has been captured by a coalition of gray-faced aliens and Nazis in a temporally messed-up version of 1944 in which the Germans have pushed the Western Front across the Atlantic, and World War II is being fought roughly along the line of the Appalachian mountains. Time Cop Daniels, suffering from fatal exposure to a nasty time distortion, lives only long enough to tell Archer that he must stop Vosk (the leader of the gray aliens) before he builds a tunnel back to the 29th century and destroys all of history. Vosk's people are the main villains in the Temporal Cold War, and even though time tampering reaches farther back in history, the 1944 situation represents the one serious chance to stop Vosk and heal history. To do it, however, Archer will have to team up with some Italian gangsters, a black Brooklyn beauty (and remember, these were times when eyebrows rose at the sight of black and white people walking down the street together). And I haven't even mentioned Silik yet, that old Suliban rascal who has stowed away on the Enterprise with an agenda of his own. This two-parter features J. Paul Boehmer in his fifth Trek role (like his first, a 2-episode stint as a Nazi soldier); Tom Wright (who previously played "Tuvix" on Voyager); Steven Schirripa and Joe Maruzzo (who both had recurring roles on The Sopranos); second-time Trek guest Christopher Neame; Golden Brooks of Girlfriends; and the final Trek appearances by John Fleck (whose seven appearances as Silik accounted for only one of his six Trek roles) and Matt Winston (after eight appearances as Daniels).

Home dramatizes the lull in the Enterprise's (ahem) four-year mission after its heroic homecoming from saving the Earth. If the opening scene, with Archer accepting the planet's applause at a big open-air ceremony, seems too good to be true, that's because it is. Soon the Enterprises are brawling with xenophobic townies in a bar fight only just broken up by Dr. Phlox's instinctive panic response (his face puffs up like a blowfish, if you must know). Archer almost bites Vulcan Ambassador Soval's head off during his debriefing because he senses that he is being blamed for the hard choices he had to make, though the problem is that he blames himself. And Audra, I mean T'Pol, goes home to Vulcan to confront her disapproving mother, whose career at the Science Ministry was curtailed in response to T'Pol's wild lifestyle. Marrying her lifelong betrothed may be a way to regain the family's honor, but although Koss is a nice guy, T'Pol doesn't care for him. Nevertheless Trip, who happens to have come along on a lark, ends up watching the woman he loves marry another man. Good times. Guest stars include Who Framed Roger Rabbit? star Joanna Cassidy in her first of two appearances as T'Les; Ada Maris in her first of three appearances as Archer's romantic foil Erika Hernandez; Michael Reilly Burke in his third Trek role, and what would be his first of three appearances, as Koss; and Jack Donner, who had appeared as a Romulan in TOS's "The Enterprise Incident" 36 years before, here making his first of two appearances as a Vulcan priest.

Borderland starts a new three-episode arc featuring TNG star Brent Spiner in the role of Arik Soong, a 22nd-century eugenicist whose fiendish dabbling in the human genome threatens to revive the disastrous Eugenics Wars which would have happened by now if we lived in the Star Trek Universe. Archer springs him from jail to bring him along on the Enterprise's first post-Xindi mission: to stop a group of Augments—genetically enhanced humans whose embryos Soong stole from a maximum-security biohazard storage facility twenty years ago and raised as his own children—before they trigger a war between Earth and the Klingon Empire. The trail of clues leads the Enterprise to the Borderlands between the Empire and the Orion Syndicate, where those green-skinned brutes have a slave auction. Part of this trail turns out to be a ruse to give Soong a chance to escape while Archer tries to recover nine crewmen (including T'Pol) who have been kidnapped and put up for sale. But while Soong doesn't quite make good his escape from the Orion slave market, his kids show up soon afterward to take him off the Enterprise by force and continue their rampage of chaos and naughtiness. The guest cast includes Alec Newman of the TV miniseries version of "Dune," professional wrestler Big Show, Dayo Ade of Degrassi Junior High, and J. G. Hertzler in the last of his umptillion Trek roles to-date.

Cold Station 12 features Adam Grimes of The O.C., Kaj-Erik Eriksen of The 4400, and three-time Trek guest Richard Riehle, appearing as Phlox's human pen-pal Dr. Lucas. Lucas directs medical research-station C-12, which keeps dangerous germs on ice—to say nothing of embroys left over from the Eugenics Wars. Arik Soong and his Augments therefore attack C-12, aiming to liberate the embryos (and in Malik's case, to turn some of the germs into weapons). The Enterprises, meanwhile, search the outpost where the Augments grew up, discovering the runt of the litter, nicknamed Smike after the handicapped character in Micholas Nickleby. While Soong begins to realize that his beloved Augments have grown up to be monsters, the hostage situation on C-12 turns deadly. When the "To Be Continued" card fades in, Archer has 4 minutes to stop a bio-weapon from killing everyone on the station.

The Augments picks up where the last episode left Archer, forced to make what may be the most insane escape from certain death in all of Star Trek. But the one who is really insane is Malik, and Soong is finally forced to turn on his genetically engineered children and help Archer destroy them. They have to act fast, because Malik (who repeatedly justifies batshit crazy ideas by saying, "It's the only way," though a moment's thought would show other options galore), believes the only way to ensure the Augments' survival is to wipe out millions of Klingon colonists and let the Enterprises take the fall. Rather than spoil all the other neat things that happen in this episode, I'll just point out a couple of things that bugged me. First, it seemed awfully convenient that there was an escape pod for Soong to escape in. Since when do Klingon battle cruisers carry escape pods? Since the plot required it, I guess! Second, the cute ending in which Arik Soong says that he no longer thinks humanity is perfectable, but that maybe in a few generations cybernetics can produce the same result... OK, that ties in TNG's Data and his creator Noonian Soong all right, but when does this middle-aged scientist facing life in prison get around to starting a family?

The Forge begins the three episode arc about the Vulcan Reformation. By now, fans of this series will have noticed that Vulcan society isn't yet what it would be by the time of TOS, when T'Pau is an elder stateswoman (see "Amok Time") and mind-melding has progressed from a closeted aberration to mainstream behavior. The spark that ignites the reformation, literally, is a bomb at the Earth Embassy on Vulcan, which kills Admiral Forest and some 40 others. The Vulcan High Command is keen to place the blame on a sect called the Syrranites who supposedly follow a radical interpretation of the teachings of Surak, the father of Vulcan logic. DNA evidence fingers a youthful T'Pau, a member of the movement. Though the Vulcans shoo the Enterprises off, intending to use the bombing to justify an internal purge, Archer and T'Pol beam down and hike into a brutal desert known, funnily enough, as The Forge—supposedly where the Syrranites hide and do their mumbo-jumbo. Joined by a Syrranite calling himself Arev, they take refuge from an electrical sandstorm, where Arev explains that the High Command have corrupted Surak's teachings and could lead Vulcan back to the dark ages. Mortally wounded, Arev does that Spock/McCoy "Remember" thing to Archer, and so evidently Archer now carries the katra of some Vulcan or other. Trip and Ambassador Soval, meanwhile, realize that the High Command itself is behind the bombing. Guest stars include Michael Nouri of Flashdance, The Hidden, and The O.C.; and Robert Foxworth, who previously played a high-ranking Starfleet Admiral in a DS9 two-parter, here as the head of Vulcan High Command.

Awakening reveals that the late Arev was actually Syrran, leader of the Syrranites, and that the katra he placed in Archer's head is that of Surak himself. Captured by the Syrranites, Archer and T'Pol figure out on their own that these people did not bomb the embassy; but the High Command's security forces are closing in, ready to take any excuse to wipe out the dangerous dissenters, who are only dangerous because they dissent. T'Pau tries and fails to extract Surak's katra from Archer, while the latter has visions in which Surak warns him that he must find something called the Kir'Shara in order to save Vulcan from collapsing back into its violent old ways. Bruce Gray, who previously played the same Starfleet Admiral in one episode each of DS9 and TNG, appears as Surak, while John Rubinstein, in his third Trek role, plays the Vulcan minister who who has reservations about Administrator V'Las's insane acts of aggression, which (besides attacking the Syrranites) includes opening fire on the Enterprise. The episode ends when Trip, having learned that V'Las also plans to attack Andoria, orders the ship to withdraw to that planet while T'Pol cradles her mother's dead body (long story), and we wonder how all this can be resolved in just one more episode.

Kir'Shara concludes the "Vulcan Reformation" arc with an action-oriented, plot-heavy flair. When Trip tries to warn the Andorians about the coming Vulcan invasion, a skeptical Shran captures and tortures ex-Ambassador Soval within an inch of his sanity. Meanwhile, Archer, T'Pol, and T'Pau are trying to get the original autograph copy of the Vulcan Bible back to the capital, while trying to elude capture by Administrator V'Las's extermination squads, before the strain of carrying Surak's katra turns Archer into a drooling idiot. Though at least one Vulcan minister thinks V'Las is out of control, nothing seems likely to stop the war between Andoria and Vulcan—or prevent Earth from getting caught up in it—until, right at the climax of the battle, with the help of T'Pol's estranged husband, Archer & T'Pau bring the Kir'Shara right into the council chamber and prove that Vulcan society is headed down the wrong path. V'Las is arrested, pending an investigation of his role in the bombing of the Earth embassy, and the Kir'Shara goes straight to Kindle. The episode ends with the creepy revelation that one of the Vulcans, played by Todd Stashwick of The Riches, is actually a Romulan agent who has been egging on the hawkish V'Las as part of a plan to reunify the Vulcan and Romulan races. Oh, those rascally Romulans!

Daedalus guest stars prolific character actor Bill Cobbs and Odyssey 5 star Leslie Silva as the inventor of the transporter and his daughter. Dr. Emory Erickson, wheelchair-bound due to injuries brought on by mishaps in transporter tests, visits the Enterprise ostensibly to test a "next-generation" transport technology in a starless region called the Barrens. But the real reason he is there is to try to save his son Quinn, who years earlier got trapped in subspace due to a glitch in a transporter test. Quinn's pattern is still out there, periodically manifesting itself on the decks of the ship, where it messes up everything it touches. This causes a crewman's death, messes up T'Pol's hand, and blows up a piece of technobabble, but because of the long friendship between his family and theirs, Archer allows the experiment to continue—even though Erickson has proved he can't be trusted. The engineer finally decides to pull his son out of subspace, even though he knows it will kill him, rather than leave him trapped forever. The scary Quinn manifestations and the atmospheric lighting (resulting from the ship's power being drained by Erickson's phony experiment) are all that keep this rather talky episode from falling flat.

Observer Effect starts out as a deliciously creepy, unconventional episode in which two non-corporeal aliens—later revealed to be the Organians of TOS's "Errand of Mercy"—possess members of the crew while observing what happens when the humans encounter a deadly virus. Evidently they have been using this phenomenon as a test to determine whether a given race is worthy of First Contact; so far, they haven't been impressed. The victims of the virus in this instance are Hoshi and Trip, who are given five hours to live while Phlox races to develop a cure and the aliens bicker over ethics versus protocol. In the end, the surprising human trait of compassion saves the day—that and a persuasive speech by a doomed-to-die Captain Archer. Though the episode never gives up being creepy, it becomes increasingly thought-provoking on the moral and scientific tension between unbiased observation and humanitarian intervention. And at the end, it proves deeply moving due to the humanity of the characters and top-level performances by the show's regular cast.

Babel One begins another three-episode arc, dramatizing the birth of the Coalition that would, in turn, become the embryo of the Federation. Things get off to a rough start, however. While the Enterprise is ferrying the rude, argumentative Tellarite delegation to the diplomatic planet Babel (cf. TOS's "Journey to Babel") for important trade negotiations with the Andorians, Shran's ship is blown out of the sky by what appears to be a Tellarite vessel. Then, after the Enterprise picks up the survivors, it is attacked by what looks like an Andorian warship. This has the Andorians and Tellarites at each other's throats, but Archer smells a rat. It turns out to be a Romulan rat, or rather, a ship bristling with holo-emitters which can make it look like any kind of ship you like, and technobabble weapons that can fake the weapon signature of ditto. With great difficulty, Archer manages to shout loudly enough to get the squabbling Tellarites and Andorians to listen to his theory that the Romulans, for some unknown reason, are trying to disrupt their trade talks. The Enterprises track down the Romulan ship and send over a crack team, but for some mysterious reason the ship has no life support systems and it rides like a bucking bronco. Soon this ship is chasing the Enterprise at maximum warp while, trapped on board with a dwindling supply of air, Trip and Malcolm discover that nobody is flying it. Or rather, as we learn in the final scene, it is being piloted by remote control from the capital city of Romulus (pictured above). Guest stars include Lee Arenberg, three of whose four previous Trek roles were Ferengi; J. Michael Flynn in his third Trek role; and the lantern-jawed Brian Thompson in his fifth. It also happens to be the last of ten Enterprise episodes directed by David Straiton, whose name always jumps out at me because I have an uncle by the same name. Ah, the little things!

United continues the "Babel One" arc with Trip and Malcolm still trapped on board the Romulan drone, which continues to disguise itself as other ships and attack targets calculated to destabilize the region, even while the pair tries to disable it. Meanwhile, Archer works hard to get the Andorians and Tellarites to pause in their deadly enmity long enough to organize a concerted hunt for the drone. In order to prevent a duel between the two parties that can only lead to war, Archer takes advantage of a quick study of the Andorian rules of combat to insert himself into the duel as the champion for the Tellarites. This puts him in the uncomfortable position of being in a duel to the death against his friend Shran, but luckily the body part he has to cut off in order to defeat Shran with honor is one that will grow back. (Guess.) And finally the Romulan "telepresence" device, which remotely controls the drone ship, is revealed to be powered by the telepathic abilities of an albino Andorian, also known as...

The Aenar. And so this trilogy of episodes ends with Star Trek's first visit to the Andorian homeworld, where the cities are underground; where people live for years without seeing the sun; and where surface temperatures above freezing are known only in the tropical regions, and during particularly warm summers. The Aenar, a small and dwindling subspecies so good at keeping to themselves that they were long thought to be a myth, live in the harsh polar regions and survive the cold by dint of geothermal energy, with no sight in their eyes and only their telepathic powers to guide their steps. Although the Aenar abhor violence, one relatively pretty Aenar girl agrees to go back with the Enterprises to help them use a makeshift telepresence machine to disrupt the Romulans' control over their drone. The girl's brother, you see, is the poor dupe the Romulans have plugged into their telepresence gizmo, which you would have to see to appreciate what a horror it is. Both siblings stand in good chance of having their brains fried by the effort of wrestling for control of the drone, while Trip and Malcolm look for a way to outwit the ship's auto-repair systems and the Romulans' efforts to rub them out. Soon enough the Romulans have two drone-ships gunning for the convoy, but by working together the good guys prevail, allowing the negotiations between the four founding races of what will eventually be the Federation to go on. It would be wins all around, if a depressed Trip—smarting from his breakup with T'Pol—didn't end the episode by asking for a transfer. This episode was the last of 31 episodes in all four Trek spinoffs to be directed by Mike Vejar.

Affliction begins another two-episode arc in which the greatest mystery known to continuity-obsessed Trekkies is finally, canonically resolved: namely, why the Klingons in TOS had smooth foreheads, whereas all Klingons from the feature films forward have had bumpy ones. The answer surprisingly proves to be related to the Eugenics Wars (which are already behind schedule in Earth history) and the "Augments" arc earlier this season. You see, Klingon scientists(!) have somehow gotten hold of the genetically enhanced embryos that Malik & Co. stole from Cold Station 12, and have tinkered with the idea of combining these superhuman genes with Klingon DNA. So far, however, their tinkering has only triggered a plague which, by the time the Klingons kidnap Phlox and force him to search for a cure, is on the verge of wiping out an entire colony. At first all the plague does is to give Klingons a human appearance (by dissolving their cranial ridges) and to enhance their mental and physical abilities. But it also makes them more aggressive (if that's possible) and, eventually, drives them insane before at last proving fatal. The clock is ticking in more ways than one; for, if Phlox doesn't find a cure by the time the Klingon fleet arrives, the whole colony will be wiped out to protect the rest of the bumpy-pated master race. T'Pol and Archer, meanwhile, put on their deerstalker caps and try everything to find their missing doctor, including the first mind-meld T'Pol has ever initiated—guided by Archer's lingering memory of bearing the katra of Surak, in case the episode hasn't yet achieved its preposterousness quota. Trip struggles to feel at home on his new ship, while Malcolm, to ensure there are enough subplots to stretch the story into two episodes, is now reluctantly taking orders from his old masters—who, in case you can't guess who they are, base their right to exist on Section 31 of the Starfleet Charter. The episode ends with Malcolm in the brig and the Enterprise, sabotaged by Klingons, racing out of control. Guest stars include Eric Pierpoint, late of Alien Nation, in his fifth Trek role, as the recurring Section 31 agent who controls Malcolm (when the lad isn't in control of himself, that is); Philip Banks of The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air and five-time Trek guest John Schuck, both as Klingons; Marc Worden, who had played Worf's son Alexander on DS9, as the Klingon whose forehead dissolves in the teaser; four-time Trek guest Brad Greenquist as one of Phlox's abductors; and Derek Magyar in his first of four appearances as engineer Kelby, who was supposed to get Trip's job when the latter transferred off the ship.

Divergence continues the two-parter concerning the Klingon-Augment virus. Trip transfers back to the Enterprise (at least, on temporary loan) via a hair-raising maneuver involving two starships flying at maximum warp with a grappling line running between their shuttle bays. That scene alone is worth the price of admission. With a Klingon fleet (whose Admiral is played by three-time Trek guest Wayne Grace) closing in on the colony threatened with quarantine by fire, Phlox is running out of time to cure the plague. Part of the risk he runs is that his captors want him to perfect the Augment genome, not cure it. Besides a good deal of tactical maneuvering, and the revelation that Section 31 is working with the Klingons in this case, the big event in this episode is when Phlox uses Archer as an incubator for a vaccine to stop the virus (side effects pictured), then beams a canister of the virus on board the Klingon Admiral's ship to ensure that it's in the Empire's interest to wait for a cure before deciding the fate of the afflicted colony.

Bound is the one in which an Orion privateer dupes Archer into accepting the gift of three green-skinned slave girls. In the end the secret of Orion society is revealed: it isn't the women, but the men, who are slaves. Using a potent combination of pheromones, manipulative tactics, and nubile, scantily-clad flesh, the green girls soon have every male on the ship wrapped around their little fingers—strangely, excepting Trip. T'Pol theorizes that his immunity is a result of their having boinked, which apparently formed some kind of psychic link between them. But with the rest of the crew against them, except the women who have headaches and Phlox who can barely stay awake (also a result of Orion pheromones), the two of them have a fight on their hands if they're going to prevent Harrad-Sar from towing the disabled Enterprise to a rendezvous with the Highest Bidder. And remember, Archer is wanted by both the Orion Syndicate and the Klingon Empire. William Lucking, who played Bajoran rebel Furel in three episodes of DS9, guest stars as Harrad-Sar. Playing the ringleader of the Orion babes is Cyia Batten, whose previous two Trek roles included two appearances as Tora Ziyal on DS9 (a role she shared with two other actresses).

In a Mirror, Darkly, Parts I & II is a most unusual Trek episode, even for one set in the Mirror Universe. As such it is a sort of prequel to TOS's "Mirror, Mirror" and the whole string of Mirror-Universe episodes on DS9; but unlike them, this episode is conceived entirely from the point of view of the Bizarro counterparts of the Enterprises we know. None of the characters from "our" universe cross over, taking the alternate-reality conceit even to the point of changing the main title sequence and theme music to something more appropriate to the fascist militarism of a universe in which Zefram Cochrane, rather than shaking hands with man's first-contact Vulcan visitor, shoots him and commandeers his ship. To be sure, some of the Bizarro characters learn that there is a parallel universe where, instead of a Terran Empire, there is (or will be) a United Federation of Planets. They learn this from the records of the U.S.S. Defiant, last seen disappearing into an space-time rift in TOS's "The Tholian Web," a hundred years in the future and in the universe where Star Trek mainly takes place. Eventually this information is suppressed as a dangerous heresy, though the Bizarro-Enterprises happily take possession of the Defiant and use its superior technology, first, to crush a rebellion by such subjugated races as the Vulcans, Andorians, and Tellarites, and then to overthrow the Emperor and usurp his throne. Being pragmatical dogs with no loyalty except to their own personal ambition, naturally, the Enterprises (subsequently Defiants) disagree among themselves as to who the next Emperor or Empress should be. And by disagree, I mean shoot, stab, torture, and poison each other in a paroxysm of sex and violence. Worth noting: The four episodes from "Bound" through "Demons" contain between them more clothing-optional, sweaty bedroom scenes than the rest of the Trek canon put together, and this two-parter is especially thick with them. So sexual manipulation and treachery are evidently a main ingredient in the Mirror Universe Recipe for Success. We see, for example, Hoshi sucking face with a Captain version of the late Admiral Forester, a megalomaniacal Archer, and a particularly study-looking Travis (for crew wardrobes in the TOS era are far more figure-flattering than those proper to this series). The cat-fight between Hoshi and T'Pol is a scene many fans may want to rewind and watch again in slow motion. Besides this eye candy, these two episodes also afford fans an updated-for-21st-century-special-effects look at the Tholians (crystalline creatures who cannot survive at temperatures much lower than the surface of the sun) and the reptilian Gorn (who, had the Defiants thought about it, could probably also be neutralized by lowering the temperature in his section of the ship). It's a tremendously cool two-parter in which the main cast appears gleefully out of character, while suggesting that our version of the human race may be closer to that of Bizarro Trek than the real thing. Part II features Gregory Itzin in the last of his five Trek roles.

Demons was filmed after the decision was made to cancel the series. If it hadn't been, this episode might well have been the one to kill Star Trek. For it is one of the outings that reads like a spec script sent in by a fan who has no real understanding of what makes Trek Trek. The Enterprises are back on Earth, getting no publicity for the role they played in making possible the negotiations that will soon lead to an alliance with several alien races, but hanging around anyway. So they happen to be on the spot when a nurse drops dead after thrusting a lock of hair into T'Pol's hands. The hair belongs to a child who, according to Phlox's genetic analysis, is the offspring of Trip and T'Pol. The couple is surprised to learn that they are parents, but their happiness is dampened by the fact that their baby girl is in the clutches of a xenophobic cult that plans to stage a demonstration against the peace talks, on a scale that no one in the solar system can ignore. RoboCop star Peter Weller, playing Paxton, the leader of this fringe group, brings a certain physical woodenness to his otherwise convincing performance—sometimes when he is speaking you find yourself looking around to see where the voice is coming from, because his lips aren't moving—but that isn't the problem. The problem is Harry Groener, who was effective enough in his previous two Trek roles, but here playing the government minister in charge of the diplomatic talks has a tendency to suck all the Star Trekness out of every scene that he is in. Perfectly suited for the role, he projects such a bureaucratic blandness, even down to his wardrobe and the way his voice seems to elude the sound engineer's best efforts to invest it with a particle of charisma, that his scenes have the incongruity of a Chicago alderman talking about present-day zoning laws with the Captain of the Enterprise. Then there's the whole subplot in which Travis hops into bed with an old flame, whom he mistakes for a journalist on assignment to cover the talks, when she is actually a Terra Prime spy looking for a monkey-wrench to throw into the works. Maybe it's just the fact that Travis is such a bore, but any scene finding him in bed with a non-regular starlet comes across as a fragment of slash fanfic that got filmed by mistake. Guest stars include game-show maven Tom Bergeron, in his second Enterprise role, as the Coridan ambassador; four-time Trek guest Steve Rankin in a hard-to-see, historical-archive video of the genocidal Colonel Green (cf. TOS's "The Savage Curtain"); prolific character actor Patrick Fischler, late of Lost, as an ill-fated doctor; and Peter Mensah, late of cable TV's Spartacus, as Paxton's main stooge.

Terra Prime














These Are the Voyages...


For more on spaceship-based TV series, see my reviews of Star Trek: TOS seasons one, two, and three; of TNG seasons one, two, three, four, five, six, and seven; of DS9 seasons one, two, three, four, five, six, and seven; of Voyager seasons one, two, three, four, five, six, and seven; and of Enterprise seasons one, two, and three. See also my review of Farscape seasons one, two, three, and four; of Firefly; and of Babylon 5 seasons one, two, three, four, and five.