Book Review— The Heart of Valor

Tanya Huff's "Confederation" series has a fabulous heroine, Torin Kerr. As the series begins, in Valor's Choice, Kerr is a Staff Sergeant in some futuristic Marine Corps. In this opening yarn, Huff demonstrates good character development, better world building, and a wonderful flair for dialogue. While I really like other heroines of military sci-fi yarns such as David Weber's Honor Harrington and Elizabeth Moon's Esmay Suiza, those characters are officers. Huff's non-com is gritty and more realistic than either of those officer-characters.

Recently, I purchased The Heart of Valor, the third installment in the series. Kerr has been promoted to Gunnery Sergeant after her exploits in books one and two of the series. Her new found fame is unwelcome, so she jumps at the chance to accompany a platoon and some observers to Crucible, a frozen planet where recruits complete their training. Kerr is there mostly to watch, but once the training platoon arrives on Crucible, there is a series of unfortunate events. A longtime drill sergeant becomes ill, the training drones are out to kill rather than test the recruits, and something odd is happening with the the single officer in their midst. Of course, Kerr works overtime to save her comrades, by using all of the knowledge she has accumulated in her career.

While not boring, this third installment seems rather predictable, until Kerr figures out why things have come unglued, and the plot becomes much more interesting. Unfortunately, that happens about two thirds of the way through the book. The suspense ramps up along with the action, and a three star book becomes a five star read.

I enjoyed The Heart of Valor, but I can't say it lives up to the first two novels. Readers who like feisty heroines, humor, and lots of action should enjoy it, and the series continues with two more installments. I'm reading the next one now.

Book Review: The Blind Side

Last Christmas, the movie version of The Blind Side opened in theatres. Although I seldom watch television, hubby and I were in Charleston for our anniversary (what a great place for a romantic trip!) and he had turned on the telly one evening while we were getting ready for dinner. A reviewer proclaimed that Sandra Bullock should get an Oscar for her role in this movie, and the movie poster shot zoomed to the screen. At the time, we were more interested in she-crab soup and touring the battery, but after Bullock won an Academy Award and the DVD became available on Netflix, we watched the film. Great movie, but I wanted to know what they left out.

As anyone who both reads books and views movies knows, rarely is a movie made without leaving plenty of material on the page. Just as the news is less satisfying on television than in a newspaper, a movie, while entertaining, is less satisfying than a book. Quite simply, pages contain more information, and anyone who is even moderately literate can read faster than a film can unfold. So, I picked up a second edition of the paperback, the movie tie-in version with an afterward which contains some interesting observations by the author about reactions to the first edition.

Michael Lewis' book, The Blind Side, has a subtitle, Evolution of a Game. And the book contains much more information about football than the film does. The book opens with a gripping account of Laurence Taylor's tackle of Joe Theisman, the one that ended the quarterback's career. As the pages turn, The Blind Side alternates between discussions of the business of football, significant players and coaches, and the story of Michael Oher. Fans of football might be inclined to skim the passages which inspired the movie script, but fans of the film might skim the intricate treatment of the evolution of football.

Actually, I liked both parts, although they don't always blend together easily. Indeed, the Oher story is not told in a precisely linear fashion, and the football treatise has sections devoted to players, to coaches, and to others who have shaped the game. Lewis does a remarkable job of explaining how the game of football moved from a running game to a passing game, and it is fascinating. Of course, some readers will take far more from this book than others will. Even the title has multiple interpretations. Literally, it refers to the left side of the offensive line, because a right-handed quarterback turns his back to it as he scans the field. But, the phrase is also a tribute to the Tuohy family's attitude toward Michael, and toward the friends and family members who could not understand why a rich, white, politically conservative family would bring a homeless black boy into their lives and ultimately, into their home. Of course, the film begins and ends with football, but it is primarily the story of how Michael Oher came to live with Sean, Leah Ann, Collins, and SJ Tuohy, and his voyage to becoming a left tackle at Ole Miss, and later, a highly paid NFL player.

After I finished the book, I looked for videos of the real people who inspired both the book and the film, and YouTube has plenty of material. Interested readers will find interviews with Michael and the Tuohy family. My favorite one is with Mike Huckabee, and he calls The Blind Side a wonderful story for the holidays. And it is. Christmas stories fall into categories— religious, sloppily sentimental, and fairy tales. The Blind Side isn't any of those, but it is quite appropriate for the season of giving. Both the film and the book are worthy, because the film is emotionally satisfying, but the book satisfies on several levels.

Up Till Now— The Autobiography of William Shatner

As a leading actor on Broadway, the Priceline.com pitchman, police sergeant T. J. Hooker, a "B" movie actor, Alexander the Great, a recording artist, a husband of four wives, a frequent guest star on 50s and 60s television shows, a motorcyclist, a voice over artist, a father of three daughters, the star of a reality show, a horse lover, science fiction author, and a "has been" who won a couple of Emmy Awards late in life, William Shatner has truly lived. Most of us just go about, in relative anonymity, for seven decades, give or take a few years. However, just about anyone in America, and many beyond these shores, know the name, the voice, and the face of Captain Kirk of the original Star Trek series. In his autobiography, there's about a hundred pages of Shatner's life before Star Trek. And, at the time, Shatner viewed Star Trek as a failed television series and moved on with his career. Without its syndication, his life, and our culture, would be different.

There are many reviews of this book online, so I'll focus instead on some general themes within it. First, Shatner's energy comes across, as well as his ability to poke fun at himself. His work ethic comes from his upbringing— his merchant father taught him to take advantage of all opportunities and to work hard to achieve success. Although he decided to become an actor early in life, Shatner seems to have been very worried, for years and years, about not having work. That, and the financial instability that is part and parcel of an actor's life, motivated him to say, "Yes!" to almost every money making opportunity, however taxing— or downright bizarre. Being willing to work has kept him working. Every performance seemed to lead to some other opportunity, and Shatner's energy and his courage stand out, even when he pokes fun at many of the ways he has made money over the years. I did laugh aloud a few times, and the good humor of it all does keep the reader smiling and turning pages.

Although this account of Shatner's life starts early and ends late, Up Till Now is not always a linear narrative. Sometimes he tells stories which are on topic, but not in the time line. As a man who is gifted in years, he has much to tell, so the disruptions add to the charm of the book. In addition to his lengthy acting career and the Star Trek phenomenon, Shatner does address his lack of success in marriage, and the account of his third wife's death is particularly heartbreaking. With surprising candor, Shatner places much of the blame for his divorces on his own shoulders. A man who works that much is not available to his family, and he does acknowledge that he did not learn to be married until after he failed three times. Although he does not focus on his children often, it seems clear that he has a good relationship with his three daughters. Also, as he rambles through his life, most of his major roles are fodder for a few pages, and he does discuss Boston Legal, his latest television series, at some length.

Fans of Star Trek will enjoy the insights that the original Captain Kirk shares, but those who are interested in acting on stage and screen will also find interesting observations about the actor's craft in Up Till Now. Shatner discusses his approach to roles, and he often contrasts his way with the methods used by co-stars. At times, Shatner is funny, at times his struggle evokes a mixture of pity and amazement. Who would have thought that after Trek, Shatner would live in the back of a pickup truck in New York City, eking out a living doing an off Broadway play?

During the portions of the book devoted to the original Star Trek and the five movies it spawned, Shatner frankly discusses the challenge of making a television series set in space, but with such a low budget that the cast and crew had to be very creative. The movies were more successful and made money, but he states that budget constraints also affected Star Trek V, which he directed. Shatner doesn't dwell upon the disagreements he had with some of his Trek co-stars, but he does mention that many of them viewed him as difficult, and he did not become friends with Leonard Nimoy until the original series was long behind both of them. As a fan of science fiction, and of Star Trek, I especially enjoyed his assertion that Gene Roddenberry saw Star Trek as the quest for intelligent life on the other side of a television screen.

For Shatner's fans and for Star Trek fans, Up Till Now is a must read. Many others will enjoy it, however, because William Shatner is an ubiquitous, iconic figure. And, really, this book is funny. Who else would auction his kidney stone on eBay? Or play the amazing Denny Crane? William Shatner may not be tall, but describing him as larger than life is an understatement.

Parallels

Parallel is a neat word, with multiple meanings in mathematics, gymnastics, and in literature. The very idea that ideas can be alike, yet different, is intriguing. I’ve often enjoyed works with parallels, such as the fable, Animal Farm, which is the tale of animals rebelling in England, but closely parallels happenings in Russia, beginning with the Bolshevik revolution and ending with events which happened during World War II.

I just finished, and I say that with a bit of pride because it was difficult, Parallel Attraction by Deidre Knight. Having heard Ms. Knight speak at a writer’s conference, in her role as literary agent rather than as a writer, I wanted to like this debut novel. As I struggled to make it through the chaos of the time travel plot, I checked out the reviews on Amazon. Some of them were glowing, especially those by her clients and fellow authors. But others, by readers, gave it one or two stars, and I tend to agree with some of their comments. The opening of the novel works well enough, and Knight’s prose is quite good overall, although she sometimes does some odd phrasing, such as, “...as he barked something at a group of engineers out in the breezeway who had been working on one of his fighter planes when they’d stridden in.” More troubling was the plot/peril sequence, which was a confusing time travel sequence. The hero wasn’t particularly heroic, nor was the villain particularly villainous, which is a greater flaw. Also, there was very little romance in this romance novel, because the main characters became “mated” with almost no build up, and the characterization seemed to be more driven by introducing minor characters to become main characters in subsequent novels in the series.

Recently, the proprietor of a used book store told me that one can judge a book by its price used. As I write this, Parallel Attraction can be purchased via Amazon for one penny, plus shipping, from fifteen vendors, and for under a dollar from seven more. Perhaps that says more than all of those glowing reviews from Deidre’s colleagues.

I will no doubt revisit Animal Farm, with its entertaining parallels with both history and human behavior, and I hope that Deidre Knight does succeed in writing a great romance, since she seems to be such a nice person.

Research Reading

I read for pleasure, for work, and for research. If I am lucky, I manage to blend all three of those, but more often than not, I only manage one or two at a time.

A while back, I read a book which combined pleasure and research, The Physics of Star Trek. I was only a decade old when the original Star Trek first came on television, and it remains a favorite, even though I realize that it was and is far from being cutting edge science fiction. However, such books as The Making of Star Trek and The World of Star Trek helped me understand that sometimes the writers and directors of TOS were constrained by the economic resources and special effects available in the mid sixties. Later Trek series and movies were able to move past some of those constraints, but once the rules of the Trek universe were set, even larger budgets and digital f/x have had to please the fan base. Sometimes the science in this science fiction holds up and sometimes it does not.

Since I am no scientist, I often don't understand what is real, what could be real, and what is just plain bogus. But, Lawrence Krauss's The Physics of Star Trek does a good job of explaining that, and it certainly illuminates many scientific principles along the way. As a fan, I enjoyed this book quite a lot. However, it was more than a fun read, it was also research for science fiction writing. In the early chapters of Trinity on Tylos, my spacefaring characters depend on inertial dampeners to keep them from going splat against the bulkhead when the ship moves at ultra fast speeds. That concept was one that I took from Krauss's book.

Other principles and concepts that he analyses include discussions of such Trek technology as warp drives, transporter beams, and the holodeck which was the scene of so many great episodes of Star Trek; The Next Generation. My favorite chapter, entitled The Most Bang for Your Buck, discusses the physics of antimatter drives. Apart from my actually understanding more of this chapter, it is also practical for writers of space opera. Somehow an author must get those ships moving rapidly through the universe or the settings and therefore the plot may be as static as the ships.

The Physics of Star Trek is entertaining, but not necessarily an easy read. Some of the scientific principles in it do take more thought than a casual read, but Krauss's style and frequent references to Trek episodes make this far more palatable than a textbook version of physics.

I do recommend this one for fans of Star Trek and anyone interested in understanding the physics of science fiction in print and on the screen.