Chapter By Chapter> Star Trek: The Vulcan Academy Murders chapters 9 & 10

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 two chapters we checked in on Daniel after the mind meld and speculated he may have an admirer. Meanwhile, nobody knows how the bed shut down.

This week we just have the one chapter…or so I thought. Chapter 10 is only three pages long, or so I thought when I skimmed through it. Apparently two pages were stuck together and it was more like five or six pages, but it’s a bit late to change it back. I read it, I’m reviewing it. Chapter 10 takes place at the funeral and chapter 11 takes place after it, with the focus most likely focusing on the investigation, so I’m keeping 9 and 10 together. Also my book is starting to fall apart. I found two corners on the desk and the spine is a bit bent. Given that this is only my second reading I’m worried I’m not taking proper care of my books.

I’m still waiting to see when this becomes a murder investigation but it’s still nine chapters out of 35. I’m guessing we’ll get past the character development soon. However, while we all know Kirk, Spock, McCoy, and Sarek if you’re a Trekkie, Lorrah has been introducing us to the rest of the cast, the helpers and the suspects alike. Everything has been needed. Still, I would like to get on to what we’re all here for. Perhaps this chapter will be the start of that?

The rest I’ll keep off the homepage as we have our first clue as readers, while the cast still doesn’t know there’s a mystery that needs clues outside of the stasis field collapse. So I’ll put that past the jump if you’re on the homepage or just joining us and don’t want to be spoiled. To start from the beginning, there’s a tag for this book in the article credits to start from chapter one. For the rest of us, onto to today’s chapters.

On the mystery front, Elena didn’t know anyone else besides Amanda was undergoing the process. There were three, now two. Assuming this is our title mystery, was T’Zan the target? It could be Amanda, or Remington for reasons we don’t know yet. Perhaps it doesn’t even matter and the goal is to make the process itself look bad. My point with bringing this up is they’re not broadcasting who is taking part in what is essentially the “human trial” phase. Even Sarek’s assistant only knew about Amanda because she’s Sarek’s assistant.

Chapter nine starts with a bit of flavor as Kirk wakes up. We learn a bit about an old grandfather clock Amanda set to Vulcan time and the greenhouse she keeps at home, before going to the hospital to begin the investigation. They may not know about the murdering but they do know the equipment keeping T’Zan alive failed and they want to know why. Kirk wishes Scotty was here because he knows how good his engineer is, but seeing to the Enterprise repairs will probably keep him out of the story, at least for now. That’s a good excuse not to have the “miracle worker” here, making the investigation a wee bit more difficult.

All we know on the investigation is that we still don’t know anything. Elena comes in to use the computer and Kirk tries to flirt with her…and fails. Yes, the supposed ladies man fails to impress the girl, but she’s nice about it and Kirk’s ego can handle the rejection.

On to chapter ten. It’s the funeral, from McCoy’s perspective. It does make an interesting point of view. McCoy isn’t so much prejudice against Vulcans so much as having a strong preference for Earth culture versus Vulcan culture. So when T’Pau makes an appearance (I wonder if she goes to every funeral or if she also is a distant relative of either Sorel, like Sarek and Spock, or T’Zan?), McCoy gets to see her a bit humbled when Daniel stands up for himself as Sorel’s surrogate brother joining in the main proceedings. T’Pau may actually be prejudice in a way the Vulcans were depicted on Star Trek: Enterprise. Of course, they were dealing with Jonathan Archer.

Here’s where Sendet makes himself a suspect. I was originally concerned he had an interest in T’Zan, but it appears T’Mir is actually the target of his attention. He mentions “in passing” that he had hoped to be part of the family party, looking her way but she puts her gaze away from him. Something interesting is going on there, much like T’Mir’s statements to Daniel earlier. In fact she had to be restrained by her father and brother when Daniel had to defend his station to T’Pau. McCoy doesn’t like Sendet’s attitude, or that he appears to be more interested in his station than the grieving family.

Then Kirk makes a mistake trying to give T’Pau a chance to apologize. It seems like a lot of authors love to reference “Amok Time” and have some kind of confrontation between Kirk and T’Pau whenever a story takes place on Vulcan. If I get to review another Star Trek novel set here, we’ll see it again, I promise you. In canon they only meet again in the movies when Sarek wants to restore Spock’s katra. It happened. Both have reason to not be happy about what happened in the episode. Not every novel and comic set on Vulcan has to bring this up. Just let it go, folks.

That aside this was a nice duo of chapters. It’s all stuff a novel has time to go over and is important for those events to happen either for character or for story. I’m assuming the plot will be moving soon. We have time and I admittedly may just be impatient because I really want to get to the mystery. If there are no more distractions or suspects, maybe that will start next time.