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, Jean Lorrah went to her original characters from her last novel, The Vulcan Academy Murders, and told us what they’ve been up to in the month between novels.
I’m not that familiar with Lorrah’s previous or later works. So I don’t know if she has any medical interest. The previous book was a procedural crime drama but medical situations were a heavy part of the story. It’s how people were dying, it was why the Enterprise was there in the first place, and why Amanda was in danger. And yet most of the story seemed to focus on relationships, from the romantic to how Vulcans and Earthlings interact, to both at the same time.
Now we have a story that’s purely medical, a planet-wide plague, and an even bigger chance to explore multiple races getting along, even some non-Federation worlds that are usually threats, like Klingons and Orions. Everybody gets along for their own goals, and the plague is going to challenge that. Plus you still have those warlike Vulcans in place of the Romulans. It’s a lot to thrown in one pot, but this book pulled it off to me the last time I read it. As we head to chapter five, we’ll soon see if a second read through more critical eyes changes that perspective.
Korsal, the Klingon representative, has to share a room with an Andorian, Therian. They’re going over the data and nothing really comes up. The first strain was spreading more through doctors, teachers, and students. The second strain less the latter two since the schools had been closed. The computer is being overloaded taking care of patients, but Korsal manages to get Therian a patch into the engineering computers, which speeds up the test results. These are all things we can probably relate to given our last plague was in the computer age back in 2020.
Suddenly Therian sees something in the data, screaming it has something to do with the children before attacking Korsal, blaming not so much him directly but the whole situation. Orderlies try to restrain him but he dies. Convenient to the story, really, like a murderer who kills the guy who figured out his identity before he can tell anyone. Given the last book I could see that being the thought process. We now have one more connection, but without the details the rest of the book still needs to happen. Our incoming medical cast–McCoy, Corrigan, T’Mir, Sorel, and M’Benga–are going to have to figure out what Therian saw to find a solution, while the reader sits and wonders what connection the children of the colony have to this plague.
There isn’t a ton of technical or medical jargon. So thankfully it’s not a dry read of statistics we wouldn’t get. We get a human doctor mentioned by name just before hearing he’s the latest victim of the plague. All of the dialog is necessary to get the story going. No real character moments, but there’s still plenty of novel for that. It was a good chapter.
Next time we’re going back to Vulcan to check in on Sorel, and introduce some more supporting cast if my one page skim is any indication.
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