Chapter By Chapter> Star Trek: The Vulcan Academy Murders chapter 34

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.

Two chapters left to go. Last time Kirk lived because of course he did. Anything else would be a spoiler and I don’t do that on the intro because that ends up on the homepage and I won’t ruin it for the random visitors. If you clicked on the article directly I’m assuming you’ve been following my reviews or read the book on your own at some point, and even then I keep spoilers to what’s necessary to discuss the book. We encourage reading around these parts.

With two chapters left, and the last one most likely the wrap-up and good-byes part, which won’t have any real good-byes because the sequel book that came out a few novels later takes place right after these events if memory serves, this has to be the part where the killer is finally revealed to all, though by now I think we all guessed who it is. Not much left to say so let’s see I’m right or if the author snuck a M. Night style twist in there.

With Amanda about to be woken up in a few hours this is Eleyna’s last chance to get rid of her rival, and now she really sucks at hiding what she’s doing. She comes up with a way to get inside the stasis chamber, though I’d like to know why the returned guard would let her get that close, and sabotages the equipment directly, then fixes the door, which may still be on the system even if the stasis equipment isn’t, so they in theory can’t get to her in time. Lucky for Amanda her timing is off, with Spock, Sarek, and Daniel inside. Spock and Sarek are able to bring Amanda’s mind back to the forefront. I wouldn’t think that would be as necessary with a human, but maybe the shock of the early awakening required it? Sarek could feel her waking up in fear and pain from his class and ran to the chamber she was in. I admittedly don’t know a lot about the human mind reacting to this kind of stasis, where the machine is keeping all her vital functions active without the body’s direct control.

This is when everything falls apart, as the girl has clearly lost her mind. She already made herself suspicious at her level of surprise that Sendet was found innocent, and he saw her mess with the tricorder she supposedly got from Jim after concluding his investigation. She even lied about him canceling the date. McCoy knew they were going and even if he didn’t find Kirk, he would have known he didn’t cancel anything. Then again she was hoping the killer plant would finish him off, or maybe hoped a le-matya would come by and help clean up the evidence. It’s also strange how she just happens to be there to over her shoulder given that news of Amanda passing wouldn’t possibly have reached her that quickly.

At this point, Eleyna has totally give herself away. Sarek realizes he got the password by recording their conversation and doing a little video editing. She has the skills to pull off everything the killer did because Sarek trained her, but she wasn’t trying to kill T’Zan, killing Remington to blame the process rather than a hacker. Then again, trying to delete the records the way she did let to the fire being started. Kirk finally wakes up and tells McCoy everything, and McCoy goes to get her. We get her motive, and as was teased early in the book, she’s one of those who falls for her teacher due to how Vulcans mature, believing Amanda had enough time with him and it was “my turn” now. The rest of the clues we’ve seen, like the mysterious program and monitoring Amanda, they’ll probably find out sometime later off-page.

The only thing I’m not sure about is that the Vulcans take her away for treatment, Eleyna no longer caring what happens to her now that Sarek has rejected her, Amanda is still around, and everything has fallen apart. I would think Vulcans would have some kind of penal system, but apparently her options are treatment or death. They can better treat her insanity, and right now that’s clearly on display rather than just lacking human moral in general. (Of course, we’ve seen a Federation insane asylum once, and that almost led to Kirk being killed off by Batgirl. No, seriously. “Whom Gods Destroy” has Yvonne Craig as the “he’s my lover, so I must kill him” Orion woman.)

Speaking of references, Lorrah really makes use of the ones she has used from the shows as well as the events she created for this book as ways to get Sarek and Spock to reach Amanda and bring her mind back to the surface. Within Amanda’s mind even Spock lowers his guard a bit. Vulcans do not lack emotions, they suppress them with logic, to keep their emotions in check. Considering Spock had stop his dad from strangling Eleyna, you can see why.

Next time is the wrap-up. We’ll see how everyone’s come out of this, and see if there is an opening for the sequel book that takes place just after these events. See you then.