BW Media Spotlight

Chapter By Chapter (usually) features me reading one chapter of the selected book at a time and reviewing it as if I were reviewing an episode of a TV show or an issue of a comic. There will be spoilers if you haven’t read to the point I have, and if you’ve read further I ask that you don’t spoil anything further into the book. Think of it as a read-along book club.

In the previous chapter, we saw an attempted date go horribly wrong, and it couldn’t happen to a bigger jerk. It did give us a chance to explore the philosophy of the Followers Of T’Vet, and the author got to play with Vulcan mating habits and biology for a bit. Now we’re returning to Nisus and Korsal the Klingon. Don’t worry, the usual cast will be here soon enough. I hope.

Quick shoutout to the Spacebattles forum (yes, my stats told me you were talking about me behind my back again…hi!) and specifically Dragolord09 for linking to the first chapter of this review. Appreciate it. One of the other posters commented that making Nisus an unaligned colony makes it look like a “super-special colony that’s outside the Federation is really just the Federation, and it kind of ruins the suspension of disbelief”. It’s not the first time we’ve seen colonies or transporters not officially aligned with the Federation or the other Alpha Quadrant throughout the franchise, both officially and in fan projects like Star Trek: Intrepid. (I need to follow up on that someday. Darn backlog!) The books tend to exist somewhere between those two designations.

I think the reason Jean Lorrah chose to set it in such a place was to include races that normally wouldn’t be allowed to take part, either by the Federation/Starfleet or by their own planets. We have the Klingons who recently left, sans Korsal who is acting as a representative. I think Romulans were mentioned but I could be wrong. Our book-exclusive guest cast also includes Borth, an Orion looking to weaponize the plague and sell it to the Klingons as a bio-weapon since thus far they appear to be immune, or at least Korsal and his mixed species children are currently. Who knows what will happen if the plague mutates again. Korsal stated that Klingons would never do something so dishonorable, but I suspect this will come up again. (Also, what’s the Duras family like in this period? I wouldn’t put it past the sisters from the next century, but it’s been a while.)

As we saw in The Vulcan Academy Murders (previously reviewed), Lorrah likes to play with various races as part of exploring the conflict between them. Setting the story primarily where those races can best interact, like the Vulcan Science Academy that isn’t tied to the Federation despite working with them, or the Nisus science colony gives her open territory to build up that conflict, especially given what little we already know about the plague, and some currently unknown connection to the children before the Andorian who made the discovery died from it. The point is more about the potential for personal conflict that making it super-special. Gives her more toys to play with. And one of those toys is heading home, so let’s check in with our Klingon and half-Klingon.

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