Chapter By Chapter> Star Trek: The Vulcan Academy Murders chapters 25 & 26

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 our previous chapter they actually got the murder investigation going after I thought we were going to get more character moments. We have 10 chapter left after this so we really need to get the mental drama done before we do more emotional drama.

Of course we’re at the point in the book where I run out of things to say and I want to keep spoilers off the frontpage. So I have to repeat myself. I have nothing against the character parts. They’ve been fascinating as we explore the differences in human and Vulcan society and approaches to marriage. It’s just I wish the investigation had been better spaced out through the story. We’ve had two murders and then everyone all but forgot about it while Amanda is still in danger. If the story went back and forth between the emotional moments (or what passes for it with Vulcans) and the murder plot, even have the two plots intertwined so that our suspects either became more or less suspicious depending on what happened, that would have been better. Or don’t do the murder plot. Have it a story about defending the new practice, old ways versus new, and tie that into the romance plot and the flashbacks to previous episodes and previously untold tales of the characters’ life. Then the title event, the murders in the Vulcan Academy, would feel like less of an afterthought to the story the author really wanted to tell.

Plus now we’re getting to the obligatory “Kirk meets T’Pau and discusses the pon farr” event. As I said before, so many authors feel the need to go into this every time Kirk ends up on Vulcan. T’Pau doesn’t like humans because they disrespect our ways so on and so forth. I’ve never gotten that from the source material, the movies and TV shows, but there hasn’t been a lot of interaction with T’Pau and the humans in those stories. Maybe this author can do it properly, given how well she’s done so far with this book besides the plot/subplot issue. Let’s read up and see…wait, it looks like chapter 25 runs into chapter 26, which is only four pages. So I guess we read two chapters today after all.

I’m not sure why these last four pages couldn’t have been put in with the other chapter. It’s not much of a cliffhanger and just continues the existing conversation. Also, points for this not being a confrontation. That’s what I was worried about. Instead there’s mutual understanding. T’Pau has apparently done some introspection since that day, and even gave McCoy the benefit of the doubt as a doctor, respecting life even if he did fudge with tradition. For those of you who missed the episode, some spoilers or jump to the next paragraph. Spock’s betrothed decided to have Kirk fight Spock instead of her intended betrothed, Stonn, which by the rules has to be a fight to the death. Spock would die if Kirk refused because of how the pon farr works. T’Pring’s plan was that is Kirk won, T’Pring would still have Stonn, but if Spock won his mind would be clear enough to reject her, and she’d have Stonn, or they’d go through with it and he’s be off with Starfleet, and she’d have Stonn and status as Spock’s wife, including all his stuff. So what McCoy did was slip Kirk a mickey that technically killed him but he’d be easy to revive. It was enough to save everybody involved. Later novelists and comic writers decided to stick it to T’Pring by having the relationship crumble.

While Kirk admits she was on the suspect list, seeing how un-tech her lifestyle is shows that she couldn’t possibly be our killer hacker. Granted she could have gotten someone to do it, but she’s too logical minded to be our killer and there was no opportunity for causing the fire. Kirk had actually written her off his list and was coming her to compare notes with someone of her wisdom and understanding of Vulcans. I don’t agree that a Vulcan couldn’t have done it. You’d be amazed what some people try to get away with by twisting the logic a bit. We saw that in The Undiscovered Country with Valeris, a woman who breaks this novel’s protocol of a Vulcan female with “T'(name)” in her name.

I was happy that this wasn’t Kirk and T’Pau arguing about the events of “Amok Time”, and Kirk also brings up the events of “Court Martial” like McCoy did earlier. The point is seeing T’Pau accepts Spock’s choice in friends and isn’t an anti-human bigot. That’s nice. There’s also a origin for Surak and his followers, and a mention of a splinter group that tries to not just suppress emotions like most Vulcans, but do what many people (and writers) think Vulcans do and abandons emotions altogether. Bet they’d love to get assimilated by the Borg. Except “love’ is an emotion.

Overall this was a good chapter oddly separated into two for no apparent reason. We’ve had a few longer chapters and with approximately nine pages for chapter 25 an extra four wouldn’t have been out of the ordinary if the scene actually called for it. I do find the way authors and editors choose chapter breaks to be interesting. It’s something I should investigate in the future.

Speaking of investigation, this one into both the murder and the book comes next time.