Review: Flamefall

Flamefall by Rosaria Munda
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This is the second book in the Aurelian Cycle trilogy, a young adult fantasy dealing with politics, revolution and a repressive regime (with dragons). In this book, the stakes are heightened and a nasty and compelling antagonist comes into play. I did think the plot was more convoluted in this book, but the author's concentrating on the characters made that bearable for the most part. The two main protagonists, Lee and Annie, are not sure where their allegiances should be and run through quite the gamut of emotions, rage and guilt being the most prominent. A new viewpoint character, Griff, is introduced, which provides a nice counterpart to the main characters. One bonus is that we get more dragon fights, which are exciting and well-written. This book mostly avoids the problems inherent in a middle book and sets things up nicely for the finale.

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Streamin' Meemies: Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Season 1 Ep 8, "The Elysium Kingdom"

 

I don't know if the intention was for this show to separate its first batch of episodes into various shades of heavy drama and lighter character-based comedies, but that is more or less what has happened. The first four episodes were straightforward drama, and then we had the body-swap goofiness of "Spock Amok" and the "YARRRRR PIRATES" satire of "The Serene Squall." ("Please stop," begged Una.) (Of course, in between was the downer of "Lift Us Where Suffering Cannot Reach," with the ghost of Ursula K. Le Guin looking on and raising her eyebrows.) This episode is a combination of kids' fantasy fluff, Anson Mount's pitch-perfect portrayal of a cowardly obsequious snake, and the real heart of a father who, for his daughter's sake, has to let her go. 

It's also Dr. M'Benga's episode, wrapping up the subplot of his terminally ill daughter whom he has been keeping in the emergency medical transporter buffer as he searches for a cure for her condition. This was always going to be a delicate balancing act, as he has to take her out of the buffer at regular intervals for a minimum amount of time (never pinned down, but I got the impression that it had to be at least once every twenty-four hours) to prevent her pattern degrading. This forced exodus from the transporter lets her disease progress despite M'Benga's best efforts, and in this episode he admits she doesn't have much time left. 

The Enterprise is surveying a nebula, and when they're done with the survey and try to leave they can't. On the bridge, Ortegas is thrown to the floor, and Pike summons M'Benga to the bridge. When he gets there the door whoosh open on a transformed bridge, festooned with greenery (I imagine the plant budget for this episode nearly busted the bank--vines, ferns and ivy was everywhere), and the bridge crew were wearing costumes that looked like they were lifted wholesale from a Rennaissance Faire. M'Benga is also wearing a costume and bearing a crown, and the others call him "King Ridley." He realizes that what he is seeing and hearing, and the character he is apparently playing, have been lifted from the book he has been reading to his daughter Rukiya over the months, "The Elysian Kingdom" (written by none other than Deep Space Nine's Benny Russell). The bridge crew members have been drafted into role-playing the characters from the book: Pike is the craven, foppish chamberlain Sir Rauth, La'an is the Princess Thalia, Uhura is the enemy Queen Neve, Spock is the wizard Caster (and Ethan Peck looks damn good in his outfit, wizard staff, and long wig), Ortegas is the swordsperson Sir Adya, Una is Zymera the Huntress, and chief engineer Hemmer (a very welcome return, especially with his line "THE MAGIC OF SCIENCE!") is another wizard, Pollux. 

M'Benga has to see the story through to the end, with the help of Hemmer. The resolution takes an unexpected turn when it's revealed that the entity behind this is one of Star Trek's go-to tropes, the godlike energy being: in this case a Boltzmann brain, a spontaneously generated intelligence in the nebula that sensed Rukiya in the transporter buffer and reached out to her. The entity is also managing to hold Rukiya's illness at bay, at least as long as the ship remains where it is. If the entity releases the ship and the Enterprise leaves the area, the illness will return. Which leads to M'Benga's unexpected, poignant choice: he lets Rukiya go with the entity to give her a chance to live. She returns seconds later as a grown woman (the entity, who she has named Debra after her [presumably dead] mother, can apparently bend time as well), to thank M'Benga for letting her go and to tell him she is happy. 

Well. That was an emotional turn, and uplifted the entire episode, though I'm a little surprised Rukiya's predicament got solved in the first season. But though this episode was generally enjoyable (particularly Anson Mount's brown-nosing snarkiness), I think the comedy well has pretty much run dry. However, since there are only two episodes left, I imagine we'll return to the heavier drama next time. 

Review: Fireborne

Fireborne by Rosaria Munda
My rating: 4 of 5 stars



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Review: Jade City

Jade City by Fonda Lee
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

This is a doorstopper of a book set in a world similar to our own (technological levels of autos/phones/etc, although the countries and continents are different), with one large divergence: the most valuable substance in this world is jade, a "biogenetically reactive" mineral. Basically, people who live on the island of Kekon and are trained to handle it can psychically link with the jade to perform all sorts of feats.

This would be fine, and indeed the worldbuilding is fairly complicated and interesting....but unfortunately I have little to no interest in the characters. That's because this story is basically The Godfather/Goodfellas on a secondary world with magic, and I have never been into tales of gangsters or mobsters. There's a lot of kneecapping/assassinations/gore in the story, and while that would necessarily be a prominent part of these characters' lives, I found I really didn't care if they killed each other off. I managed to finish this book (barely) but the next two books in the series are as big or bigger than this 500-page monster, and I have no desire to tackle them.

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Streamin' Meemies: Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Season 1 Ep 7, "The Serene Squall"

 

The thing about this show being (mostly) episodic is that there are different tonal shifts with each episode. "Children of the Comet" was full of the joy of exploration, "Memento Mori" was as serious and suspenseful as a heart attack, and "Spock Amok" was a more lighthearted romp that nevertheless dug into the characters and relationship of Spock and T'Pring. This episode does a bit more of that, with the addition of some character beats for Christine Chapel, all wrapped up in an episode that's halfway serious and halfway a satire of the "space pirates take over the Enterprise" concept. Oh yeah, and the pretty bow on the top is an excellent performance by guest star Jesse James Keitel as Dr. Aspen/Captain Angel. 

The serious part of this episode is the basic setup: the Enterprise is taken on a wild goose chase (unknowingly) at the behest of Dr. Aspen, a counselor-turned-humanitarian who has been running aid missions to non-Federation space. The chasee turns out to be the Orion pirate ship the Serene Squall, who hoodwinks and takes over the Enterprise. Pike and crew implement the "Alpha Braga IV" strategy, fomenting an internal mutiny, while Spock, Christine Chapel and Dr. Aspen commit to the more straightforward method of attempting to fight off the invaders. That is, until the plot twist where Dr. Aspen reveals themself to be Captain Angel, the real leader of the Serene Squall, who has targeted the Enterprise and Spock for a specific purpose.

(The actor, Jesse James Keitel, is transgender. So is the character, but it's not remarked upon except for everyone using "they/them" pronouns. Keitel also turns in a marvelous performance, playing Dr. Aspen as a straightforward, empathetic and competent counselor with some rather useful advice to Spock about accepting both his human and Vulcan halves, and Captain Angel as a bit of a drama king/queen. Of course, when you get to the final scene, all of the Dr's and Captain's advice takes on an entirely new meaning.)

The satire part of the episode falls to Pike, and may I say that Anson Mount obviously had a glorious time making this episode? From his objecting to his Starfleet nickname of "Boy Scout," to his leading an away team to the supposed colonists' ship (and Una remarking on him "flouting the rules") to his immediate manipulation of the pirates by way of cooking them a good meal, persuading them to sell the Enterprise crew to the Klingons, and pitting crewmembers against one another to start the mutiny, to the final scene back on the Enterprise (which almost looked improvised to me) where he starts talking like a pirate, with over-the-top "Yaaarrrrrrs" and "walk the planks" (and Una begs, "Please stop"), Mount was having a hoot. On the Serene Squall's bridge, there was an actual wooden steering wheel--I mean, obviously that was for looks, but Pike stood there twirling the thing as they were bearing down on the Enterprise (and his asking Erica Ortegas to fire phasers to temporarily immobilize his ship, gently, came out sounding so pained). 

Spock and T'Pring also come to a better understanding of each other through these events. At the beginning, T'Pring tells Spock she has been "doing research on human sex" (and Ethan Peck delivers Spock's response to this, the single word "What?" perfectly--he sounds like he's choking on his own spit). At the episode's climax on the bridge, when Spock throws a monkey wrench into Angel's plans by revealing to T'Pring a pretend affair with Christine Chapel (and kissing Chapel quite soundly on the bridge to prove the point) in an attempt to get T'Pring to renounce him and leave him to his fate, T'Pring goes along with it. After everything is over, she meets Spock in his quarters and tells him she knew he could not have feelings for Nurse Chapel. She also notes that his human side is a strength as it provided him with the passion  necessary to pull the ruse off. It's very interesting that the writers are exploring and deepening Spock's and T'Pring's relationship, even though we already know, unfortunately, how it will end. 

But the final stinger in the episode is the reason Dr. Aspen/Captain Angel captured the Enterprise to begin with. They wanted to use Spock's relationship with T'Pring, and her status as head of the Vulcan Criminal Rehabilitation Center, to force her to release a prisoner who is Angel's lover or husband. Angel called him "Xavareous," but as she talks about him (and the fact that this Xavareous told Angel about Spock!) Spock realizes who it is. The final scene in the episode takes us back to T'Pring's rehab center as the camera zooms to the back of a Vulcan prisoner's head. Spock's voiceover tells us it is "a Vulcan I have been instructed to avoid at all costs. My half brother, Sybok." 

Well, hell. I guess the almost universally maligned original series movie Star Trek V: The Final Frontier was good for something after all. 

I certainly hope they're setting things up for both Angel's and Sybok's return, as Jesse James Keitel stole the show out from under pretty much everybody. The actor playing Sybok didn't get any lines or even a head-on shot, but as the casting is generally spot-on this series I would like to see him again. I don't think I would rate this episode as the best of the season, but it was pretty solid. 

Review: A Mirror Mended

A Mirror Mended by Alix E. Harrow
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This is the second of the Fractured Fables series, continuing the story of Zinnia Gray, the dying young woman who accidentally found her way into the multiverse. Specifically, she found her way into a multiverse of stories and fairy tales, and her fairy tale was Sleeping Beauty. She rescued one beauty, Primrose, from her crappy story and brought her back to Earth, where Primrose fell in love with Zinnia's best friend Charmaine (or Charm for short, heh heh). The act of moving between the universes also apparently sent Zinnia's fatal genetic disease into remission, and at the story's end she was taking it on herself to use the time she had been given to free other Sleeping Beauties from their stories.

This novella takes up Zinnia's story five years later, after she has freed forty-nine other beauties from their stories. This volume is just as beautifully written as the first, but the tone is more melancholy and bittersweet. As in the first volume, a character in a story reaches out and yanks Zinnia into another universe--but instead of another Sleeping Beauty, this is a character in a rather darker fairy tale altogether: it's the Evil Queen from Snow White. She and Zinnia immediately butt heads, but Eva, as Zinnia names her, wants the same thing as the other characters: to be freed from this story and her terrible fate.

"Then tell me how to get out of this damned story." The queen's voice is ragged, pushed far beyond exhaustion but still unwilling to bend. It would be admirable if it weren't extremely annoying. "Tell me, and I swear I'll stop."

"Bite me."

"Now is not the time for your crude fantasies!" She climbs unsteadily to her feet, takes two wavering steps in my direction. "You have no idea what it's like to fight for your own right to exist. To know yourself doomed, yet to keep striving--"

I throw a wad of leaves at her. "Cry me a fucking river, woman. You just found out how your story ends last week. I've spent my whole life under a death sentence."

The queen is clawing wet leaves out of her hair, teeth flashing white in the gloom. "You think I haven't?" Her voice is a strangled hiss. "I may not have known about the iron shoes, but I was always headed for a bad ending. I was an ugly second daughter with uncanny power, and then I was a foreign bride who bore no heirs. Now I am a queen who is feared only slightly more than she is hated, and my time is up. But I have fought tooth and nail to survive, and no pretty little princess is going to stop me."

This little monologue leaves me with two not entirely comforting sensations. The first is the sudden, lurching shame of my worldview being wrenched out of shape, as it occurs to me that Snow White might not be the only victim here.

This is Eva's story, but it is also the continuation of Zinnia's, as she discovers her story-hopping has done damage to the multiverse. I don't think the theme of this story can be reduced to something as simplistic as Zinnia needs to grow up, but she has been using her travels to escape her friends and the ramifications of her own story, and Eva confronting her story makes Zinnia realize she has to do the same. Of course, along the way Zinnia and the evil queen fall in love, and Eva writes out an entirely new story for herself, creating a new universe Zinnia cannot stay in, at least not now. At the end Eva comes up with a bit of a "cheat code" which holds out hope that someday she and Zinnia will be reunited.

I don't know if this is the end of the Fractured Fables series, but it feels like it, which makes me sad. I would have loved to follow Zinnia through all manner of multiversal fairy tales (I can just imagine what the author would do with Little Red Riding Hood, or Cinderella). Still, these two books are lovely reads.

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Review: A Snake Falls to Earth

A Snake Falls to Earth by Darcie Little Badger
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This author is an enrolled member of the Lipan Apache tribe, and this story draws on Lipan mythology. An animal person (another term for shapeshifter) is one of the main characters, and the settings include the Reflected World, basically an extradimensional echo of this one.

It makes for an interesting background, but it's not without its flaws. The pacing in particular: the first half of the story is pretty slow, and the second half--starting when the titular "snake falls to earth"--kicks into high gear, so fast it makes the reader's head spin a bit. A lot of the first half is taken up with detailing the two settings of the main characters (our Earth and the Reflecting World), which also involves stories and oral histories of the protagonists' families. Now, as a non-Native person, I'm sure I don't appreciate this to the extent that I should. Nevertheless, it makes the story drag in the beginning.

But altogether this is a refreshing change of pace from the usual run of YA. I also appreciate that there is no romance for either of the main characters; it's more of a coming-of-age story for both. In particular Oli, the animal person (cottonmouth), who is separated from his blood family and is continuing to search for them at the book's end, now has a supportive found family to help him in his quest. It's an inventive and original concept for a young-adult book, and I'm so glad we're getting more of these kinds of stories.

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Streamin' Meemies: Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Season 1 Ep 6, "Lift Us Where Suffering Cannot Reach"

 

After the lighthearted tone last time out, this episode takes a decidedly darker turn. It's the darkest episode of the season so far. It's also based on (or inspired by, at the very least) Ursula K. Le Guin's famous short story, "The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas." This story is almost fifty years old, so I'm sure a sizable portion of the audience hasn't read it. I'm not going to say which is better, the episode or the original story, but I think you should read the story to get a fuller picture of what is happening. 

This is another Pike-centric episode, with Dr. M'Benga as a secondary featured character. Arguably M'Benga gets the greater plot movement, as he receives a theory of a possible treatment for his daughter. We see his daughter Rukiya out of the transporter buffer for a greater length of time than previous, and it's evident that she's getting tired of staying there, even though it is keeping her alive. Christopher Pike reconnects with an old love, and gets an offer to join with her people, the Majalis, to avoid his fate. (Honestly, I wonder why this hasn't been discussed more often. He knows what's going to happen, and he knows when it is going to happen, so it seems to me somebody should be talking about inspecting/repairing the component that fails beforehand and making sure the cadets who are shown to be in danger simply aren't anywhere near the fated spot that day. The multiverse is a thing in Trek, y'know? So the circumstances are different, the timeline branches, and life goes on.)

(Of course, that would also upset fifty-five years of established Star Trek canon, but hey. Anson Mount is doing a good enough job with this character--a track record he continues here--that I wouldn't mind a little retconning.)

Cadet Uhura also has an important role to play in the plot, as does Security Chief La'An Noonien-Singh, who is rapidly becoming one of my favorite new characters. One person who is absent for the second episode in a row is the irascible Andorian engineer Hemmer. Maybe they don't quite know what to do with him yet? Although the last time we saw him, in episode 5, "Memento Mori," we found out a bit more about him and got a glimpse of the person underneath the arrogant, egotistical mask. Perhaps the writers are thinking a little Hemmer goes a long way? That may be so, but I think he's an interesting enough character to support a brighter spotlight. 

As for this episode....I think it's arguable whether it 1) stands up to the original Le Guin story; or 2) is a coherent narrative in and of itself. In the end, Alora is right that the Federation has no jurisdiction over what her people do; but on the other hand, Pike could certainly raise enough hell to force the Majalis to reach out to other Federation members to see if their centuries-old technology could be weaned away from demanding "the neural network of a child" to support it. There are other floating cities in the Federation, after all, going back to the original series' "The Cloud Minders." That wouldn't save the kid in this episode, but it would save other children going forward. 

Thinking along that line, this is the first episode where this series' episodic format is not successful. This story and the fallout thereof really deserved another episode or two, I think. Perhaps it could be revisited further along the line? (Not that any of the powers-that-be are listening to me, but I'm going to throw my opinion out there anyway.) Unfortunately, while Anson Mount does his usual excellent job, and Babs Olusanmokum shines as Dr. M'Benga, this episode is not the best of the season (that spot is co-shared with "Memento Mori" and "Children of the Comet"). It's not quite a dud, but....well. I'll stop there, I guess. 

Review: When Women Were Dragons

When Women Were Dragons by Kelly Barnhill
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

At first, as I was reading this, I thought I would give it four stars or perhaps even 5. It's beautifully written and deals with some pretty heavy themes: oppression, feminism, love and loss, mothers and daughters, and the stifling lives of women in the 1950's, before the feminist revolution really took hold. But gradually something about the setup began bothering me. Finally, about two-thirds of the way through, I had a sudden insight: I'll bet nearly every one of these characters is white. There was precious little description along that line, which is a strike against the book in and of itself; I believe each character in a book should have skin tone described, along with hair and eye color, to get away from the more or less standard white-as-default. But once I made that connection, what was bothering me clicked into place, and it revealed some deep structural problems with the worldbuilding and premise.

The setup for this fantasy/magical realist alternate history is that mid-20th century, according to the jacket copy, a "seminal event" took place: "the Mass Dragoning of 1955, when hundreds of thousands of ordinary wives and mothers sprouted wings, scales and talons; left a trail of fiery destruction in their paths; and took to the skies." There is never any explanation given for this; it just happened, and the country has to deal with the fallout. Except they don't, until most of the way through the book when the dragoned begin to return. This initial event is swept under the rug, studying it is banned, and it becomes Something We Don't Talk About. Of course, a reaction like this could only take place long before the rise of the internet, but as the book goes on it also becomes clear that it could only happen during the decade of the 50's: that post-war period of expansion, the Cold War, the paranoia around communism, and the burgeoning civil rights movement. (The absence of any discussion about that tipped me to this novel's focus, because as far as the narrator was concerned, Rosa Parks didn't exist.)

To put it bluntly: This is a story of white suburban women, and white surburban women turning into dragons, and that thought throws a (heh) dragon-sized monkey wrench into the entire idea.

It wouldn't have mattered so much if the "Mass Dragoning" had been presented as the first time, or nearly the first time, such a thing had happened. But it wasn't. There are chapter breaks written to give the history of the phenomenon, written by a Professor H.N. Gantz, which purport to show "twenty-five discrete historical examples of mass dragoning." The author tries to handwave away her worldbuilding mistakes by saying a "mass forgetting" follows each mass dragoning, documented as "a collective refusal to accept incontrovertible facts, and a society-wide decision to forget verifiable events that are determined to be too alarming, too messy, too unsettling." (pp. 19-20)

That explanation, however, simply does not hold water, and the reasons are due to the nature of the mass dragoning as presented. In almost every case, it was due to a reaction of an oppressive society ("the explosion and resulting fire occurred on the very day the female factory workers learned that they would soon be losing their jobs"), domestic violence ("Her husband had been an officer in the European theater. A hard man, everyone said. Ill-equipped for civilian life. Neighbors whispered that his return wasn't going very well") , harassment ("There had been, prior to the event in question, numerous complaints filed regarding the behavior of a certain nighttime supervisor...In the end, nothing happened. Kind men patted pretty little heads and cases closed. Martin O'Leary and his rapacious smile remained in place, and the employees had reportedly been told that they should simply steel themselves against any advances, to look to the example of the cleverest of mice who always know how to avoid the marauding cat. They were told to count themselves lucky to be in a job at all"), and other reasons that boil down to female rage against oppression and discrimination that manifests itself as a physical transformation when the women involved can take no more. Which was the last straw for me, because if women were to start turning into dragons as a reaction to the reprehensible behavior of the men in their lives and the societies they lived in...the phenomenon would not be an occasional happenstance. It would have happened throughout history, and it would have reshaped our world from the inside out.

For example, just to talk about American history, what would female slaves have done? They would have dragoned and burned those cotton fields and plantations to the ground. Native women would have dragoned and charred the U.S. Army, and George Armstrong Custer and Andrew Jackson would have floated away to the heavens as bits of ash. Hell, Christopher Columbus wouldn't have lasted five minutes in the Bahamas--the Nina, Pinta and Santa Maria would have been burned and sunk once Columbus started enslaving and murdering the native people. African, Indian (as in the continent) and Chinese women would have driven European colonizers away in gouts of flame, and the Amazons, if they existed (arguably there is reason to believe they did) would have flamed a broad swathe through ancient Greece.

In short, the world would be utterly unlike the one presented in this book. On page 207, one of the characters discusses "the patriarchy" with the protagonist Alex Green. This grated on me when I first read it and even more so when I finished the book--because if the author had truly thought out and followed through on her basic premise, there would have been no patriarchy. It would have been burned away thousands of years earlier.

And we sure as heck wouldn't have gotten a narrowly tailored, severely flawed narrative that doesn't even touch on race, and becomes pretty much Just Another White Lady's Tale of Woe.

Which is not to say the book is completely irredeemable. As I said, it is beautifully written, and the main character has some profound things to say about finding one's place and family, throwing off society's shackles, and living the life a woman wants to live, unrestrained and undisturbed by the smallness and pettiness of (some) men. The final chapter is lovely, and goes some way towards--not redeeming, or canceling out, but providing somewhat of a counterpoint to all the mistakes that came before. In the end, that wasn't enough for me and couldn't erase my disappointment. I really wish the author had gone back to the drawing board and ruthlessly pursued the implications of her world to their logical conclusions. Of course, the book then produced would have been completely unlike this one. Still, with the author's evident skill with her craft, I would far rather have read that book.

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Streamin' Meemies: Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Season 1 Ep 5, "Spock Amok"

 

After the first four episodes of the season (and especially the last, "Memento Mori") we needed a lighter episode, and this is it. The Enterprise is in spacedock for repairs and the crew is on shore leave (except for Captain Pike, who has a diplomatic mission to finish up) for some needed downtime. But while this episode has its fair share of laugh-out-loud moments, there is also some good character work done for Spock, T'Pring, and Christine Chapel.

There are three main interweaving storylines: Pike's mission; Una and La'an, who stay behind on the ship, getting sucked into "Enterprise bingo" (a list of absurd and/or dangerous tasks to be checked off); and T'Pring meeting Spock to spend time together. We open with a dream sequence lifted directly from the original series' "Amok Time," with Spock coming to marry T'Pring and realizing he is in his human form, and her saying "I will not marry a human" and calling kal-if-fee--the challenge--on him. Only he doesn't fight Kirk--he fights his Vulcan half. (The original series music is also used here to great effect.) In fact, Vulcan Spock kicks Human Spock's ass, and Human Spock is about to get his head chopped off by the lirpa when Spock wakes up. This opening clearly depicts Spock's fear: that T'Pring will end up rejecting him because of his half-human heritage. This is shown as he yells at his Vulcan half during the fight: "I'm not human. I'm not." 

This theme of Spock and T'Pring each fearing the other's reactions and not understanding each other continues throughout: when T'Pring arrives, she notes Spock's quarters are "too human." He says he's redecorating (he's really not). We find out what T'Pring does: along with her colleague T'Pyll, she "undertakes to rehabilitate those who have committed crimes by showing them the true path of Vulcan logic," which rather sounds like a combination of bounty hunter and social worker? At any rate, she's still expecting Spock's duties to interfere, even as she tells him "We must prioritize our relationship." 

Unfortunately, what she fears comes to pass. Spock had agreed to help Captain Pike in negotiating with the R'ongovian Protectorate to join the Federation before the Klingons and/or Romulans can beat them to it. (Admiral Robert April makes a return appearance, and Pike is wearing the green uniform from the second season of the original series, although he doesn't fill it out quite as well as William Shatner did.) The R'ongovians arrive early and insist on starting the negotiations right now, which spoils Spock's dinner plans with T'Pring. When he briefly returns to his quarters to tell her this, she is not pleased. "I am concerned that your time in Starfleet may be causing you to behave in a manner so human we may ultimately find ourselves incompatible." 

During another break in the negotiations, Spock is sitting in one of the starbase's bars/eating areas, and is approached by Christine Chapel, who is also on her shore leave. She's actually using Spock to get away from her boyfriend/fling, who is questioning her about where their relationship is going, which she doesn't want to hear. Spock asks her for advice, and after she hears what's going on with T'Pring, she tells him that although he's an extraordinarily intelligent person, he's also being an idiot. "I feel I should have seen that coming," Spock says, with such a dry tone it made me laugh out loud. Chapel says he has to put T'Pring ahead of his duty, as "that's what being in a relationship is," and says T'Pring most likely feels misunderstood. Spock then returns to T'Pring and comes up with the idea of a "Vulcan soul-sharing," a deep mind meld wherein they will share each other's katras and deepest thoughts. They perform the ritual and end up swapping katras, with each in the other's body. This also provides a nice opportunity for both actors, Ethan Peck and Gia Sandhu (who looks quite a bit like the original series T'Pring, Arlene Martel) to stretch and copy each other's character mannerisms, which they pull off pretty well. 

But this development leads to the episode's crisis point, because the negotiation with the R'ongovians have fallen apart. They don't want to speak to Pike any longer, and will speak only to Spock. So Pike goes to Spock's quarters to tell him what's happening, and gets a bomb dropped on him in turn, as Spock and T'Pring admit they are now in each other's body. T'Pring-as-Spock: "Now that you know, you can likely tell the very clear differences in our mannerisms." "Yeah, totally," Pike says, continuing Anson Mount's record of letter-perfect line deliveries. T'Pring and Spock try to get out of it, but Pike says the negotiations depend on it, and they reluctantly agree. T'Pring-as-Spock goes with Pike, and Spock-as-T'Pring gets dragged into T'Pring's job, as her assistant T'Pyll says their target Barjan will talk only to her. 

We then see them doing each other's jobs and temporarily living each other's lives. T'Pring-as-Spock talks to the R'ongovians and during that conversation they begin to sound an awful lot like him, which Pike picks up on. He also realizes T'Pring really isn't suited for this and ends up interrupting them, taking "Spock's" side, which impresses the R'ongovians. So much so they say they will give Pike the final "summation," the last word, before they make their decision about joining the Federation. Meanwhile, Spock-as-T'Pring goes to confront Barjan, but also seeks out Christine Chapel and asks for her help in solving his and T'Pring's problem(s). Chapel accompanies him to the confrontation with Barjan, who is an arrogant, superior little Vulcan snot, piling on insults about T'Pring's betrothal to the "son of Sarek" and making snide remarks about humans until Spock-as-T'Pring finally decks him. Which got another resounding laugh out of me. 

Back on the Enterprise, with both Chapel and Dr. M'Benga prematurely returned from their shore leave, M'Benga works a little handwaving technobabble magic with sea-urchin paste that will drive the katras from the wrong bodies back to the right ones. After all the dust has settled, Spock and T'Pring are finally honest with each other. 

Spock: "I admit I was afraid that I was not Vulcan enough for you. That you saw me as a human, more concerned about my duty to Starfleet than to my culture or my betrothed. My feelings about Vulcan are not easy. On our world, I was forced to prove my Vulcan-ness. Any deviation was seen as proof I did not belong. In Starfleet, I am accepted for who I am. Half Vulcan, half human. I am, quite simply, Spock." 

T'Pring: "I know how much you value duty. And I feared that you saw our relationship as just that, a duty, rather than something more. We must both want to be here." 

Well, they both clearly do, as they kiss and the camera pans up towards the ceiling. 

So Captain Pike ends up concluding the negotiations with the R'ongovians. They had earlier admitted that "empathy is a hallmark of our people," and Pike, remembering that and also drawing on his observations of what happened during previous negotiation attempts, plays a hunch of his own. He's brutally honest with them, saying that from the R'ongovians' point of view, it may not be such a great thing for them to ally with the Federation. They listen, say "Thank you," and walk out. Pike explains: "The R'ongovians were rude with the Tellarites, reasonable with us, and deeply logical when talking to a Vulcan. What if this was a diplomatic technique? They responded positively when I took Spock's side, even though it was in direct violation of what they'd asked. Maybe they're just looking for somebody to take their point of view. Radical empathy. Maybe what they value the most in others is the capacity to see things their way." 

This is spot-on, as we see a minute later when the R'ongovians get in their ship, fly the Federation flag, and deploy their solar sail as they leave (in a gorgeous effects shot). We are also shown Spock and T'Pring in bed together (hey, in this modern era, Spock can have a sex life!) and T'Pring admitting, "You know, I enjoyed being Mr. Spock for a day."

Spock: "In the spirit of total honesty, I should probably tell you I punched Barjan."

T'Pring: "Having met him, that is logical." 

So this was an interesting character study of both Spock and T'Pring, and Christine Chapel to a lesser extent. Obviously the powers-that-be are not interested in putting Spock and T'Pring at odds quite so soon, even though we know that's where they'll end up. (Although I'm now itching to find out more about the pilot Erika Ortegas. I hope she gets an episode soon.) We also see an exploration of Una's and La'an's friendship (although Una's hair is pulled back in a very unflattering bun that looks like a knob on the back of her head). That's probably the lighter of the three storylines, but the two of them have a good camaraderie. At any rate, this episode was a nice break. 

Review: Being Seen: One Deafblind Woman's Fight to End Ableism

Being Seen: One Deafblind Woman's Fight to End Ableism by Elsa Sjunneson
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This is a combination memoir, call to activism, and critique of horror and SFF tropes regarding the disabled. The author is what she calls Deafblind--she wears hearing aids and has no sight in one eye and limited vision in the other--and this book was written to impress on nondisabled people the challenges the disabled face in a society that mostly refuses to accommodate them. This book is not long, but it has some very pointed and sometimes horrific remarks about those challenges, especially in a country like America where the spectre of eugenics still hangs in the air like a sulfurous miasma.

It's often uncomfortable, but it's meant to be, and the least we nondisabled readers can do is accept the discomfort and think about the ways we can do better. The author has done a fine job in pointing out those various ways, and I thank her for it.

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Review: Never Say You Can't Survive: How to Get Through Hard Times by Making Up Stories

Never Say You Can't Survive: How to Get Through Hard Times by Making Up Stories by Charlie Jane Anders
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I have more than three shelves worth of writing books, but this one is unique. It's not so much concentrating on the nuts and bolts of the craft (although Anders does provide a little of that) as it delves into the emotional how-to's of writing. It's right there in the title: How To Get Through Hard Times By Making Up Stories. The author's central thesis is that the past few years in the world have been a fucking dumpster fire, and more than ever, creativity and stories are the way to survive.

This is a slim little book, but there's a lot of wisdom in it. It's one of the few books where I tore off bits of paper and napkins to mark pages as I was reading (it's a library book, so I couldn't make notes in the margins, and I wouldn't do that anyway) so I could refer to them later. For instance, from chapter 8, "The Most Powerful Thing a Story Can Do is Show How People Change," this sentence just hit home for me: "A character that doesn't evolve is just a pet rock: fun to look at, but not super compelling." (Unless, of course, you're Michelle Yeoh's googly-eyed rock from the wonderful film Everything Everywhere All At Once.) I wouldn't even call a pet rock fun; that would be more under the definition of meh and weird. In any case, this is one of those insights that are obvious in retrospect, but one that I hadn't heard stated in quite this fashion before.

Another napkin marker comes from chapter 12, "Hold On To Your Anger. It's a Storytelling Gold Mine." Like the best insights, it's simply stated, but it reveals so much: "Anger is like a primary color of emotion. If you can summon anger, you can write anything." Further down the page, the author expands on this thought (Charlie Jane Anders is trans):

For a lot of us, especially people who aren't cishet white men, anger is a huge taboo. We've been taught over and over that we should swallow our outrage. Marginalized people, in particular, are often told to censor our anger, or to act "reasonable" in the face of endless fuckery.

(Which reminds me of the unforgettable moment at the 2015 White House Correspondents' Dinner when Barack Obama brought forth his "anger translator" and proceeded to let out a great deal of the stuff he had been forced to bottle up for the previous eight years.)

The entire book is full of hidden gems like this. It won't tell you to blow adverbs into the sun like Stephen King's seminal tome On Writing, but it has a great deal to say about the emotional heart of writing, and working through your own emotions to channel into your stories. As Anders points out, writing is and should be a joy, and this book will help you to achieve that. I think it's an essential writing companion.

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