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, we saw an attempted date go horribly wrong, and it couldn’t happen to a bigger jerk. It did give us a chance to explore the philosophy of the Followers Of T’Vet, and the author got to play with Vulcan mating habits and biology for a bit. Now we’re returning to Nisus and Korsal the Klingon. Don’t worry, the usual cast will be here soon enough. I hope.
Quick shoutout to the Spacebattles forum (yes, my stats told me you were talking about me behind my back again…hi!) and specifically Dragolord09 for linking to the first chapter of this review. Appreciate it. One of the other posters commented that making Nisus an unaligned colony makes it look like a “super-special colony that’s outside the Federation is really just the Federation, and it kind of ruins the suspension of disbelief”. It’s not the first time we’ve seen colonies or transporters not officially aligned with the Federation or the other Alpha Quadrant throughout the franchise, both officially and in fan projects like Star Trek: Intrepid. (I need to follow up on that someday. Darn backlog!) The books tend to exist somewhere between those two designations.
I think the reason Jean Lorrah chose to set it in such a place was to include races that normally wouldn’t be allowed to take part, either by the Federation/Starfleet or by their own planets. We have the Klingons who recently left, sans Korsal who is acting as a representative. I think Romulans were mentioned but I could be wrong. Our book-exclusive guest cast also includes Borth, an Orion looking to weaponize the plague and sell it to the Klingons as a bio-weapon since thus far they appear to be immune, or at least Korsal and his mixed species children are currently. Who knows what will happen if the plague mutates again. Korsal stated that Klingons would never do something so dishonorable, but I suspect this will come up again. (Also, what’s the Duras family like in this period? I wouldn’t put it past the sisters from the next century, but it’s been a while.)
As we saw in The Vulcan Academy Murders (previously reviewed), Lorrah likes to play with various races as part of exploring the conflict between them. Setting the story primarily where those races can best interact, like the Vulcan Science Academy that isn’t tied to the Federation despite working with them, or the Nisus science colony gives her open territory to build up that conflict, especially given what little we already know about the plague, and some currently unknown connection to the children before the Andorian who made the discovery died from it. The point is more about the potential for personal conflict that making it super-special. Gives her more toys to play with. And one of those toys is heading home, so let’s check in with our Klingon and half-Klingon.
I had to rewrite the intro because I thought this would be Korsal and his son, Kevin, going to check on the ice damage that caused the power plant issues previously. Instead, Korsal goes home after helping the best he could and the encounter with the supervisor’s husband. That showed some of the stress everybody is under. Instead, as if the intro was kismet, we have a dip into Korsal’s history. His first wife was human, and that’s where Kevin and Karl came from, a mix of human names and Klingon naming systems I guess. Kevin is old enough to operate a flyer while Karl is only old enough to ride this story’s version of a motorcycle on the Klingon homeworld.
Sorry. This is a longer installment, and there’s no images to go along with this discussion to break the text wall.
The first part of the chapter goes over Korsal’s first marriage, to a Federation officer assigned to protect their interests on Nisus, but she left when she got a chance to be on a starship. Unfortunately, that kept them apart so much that she (or at least that’s what’s in her letter) decided she was holding them back from having a proper family and filed the divorce.
In the TNG era that wouldn’t be an issue. Klingons are allies of the Federation and family can join Starfleet personnel on a Galaxy-class starship, and maybe a few others. I’m not as versed in other ships of the period we didn’t see in the shows. However, we’re in the 23rd century of the classic timeline, where neither of those things exist, Korsal wasn’t really welcome outside of Nisus and the Empire. Too much bad history with the Klingon empire and Federation worlds. On Nisus there’s no such baggage.
Now he’s married to an Orion, Seela, probably related to Borth. I double-checked the first chapter and didn’t see anything, but I could see this book doing a jerk-in-law bit. At any rate, it’s a possible reason he went to Korsal hoping to make some money. We don’t learn much about his new Orion wife, but we do learn that his kids will someday have to choose their destiny. Kevin is trying to get into Starfleet, while his younger son doesn’t have to decide yet. Korsal, despite not being the warrior he wants to be as a Klingon, would rather see Kevin join the Klingon military for required service, though it would mean potentially fighting humans like his mother. (It would be interesting if she was serving on the Enterprise, but if she is I don’t remember it from my original reading, and we have enough conflicts.) Kevin was also called up due to the shortage of pilots and tomorrow Korsal will need him to check the ice. I guess Korsal needed a good rest first after fighting water and generator parts all afternoon, plus the confrontation he opts not to tell his wife about.
Since Thoris was using the engineering computer due to the the medical computer being heavily occupied, Korsal checks into what he was working on. Playing games with the mixed heritage children, and then the adults, and doing a bunch of other medical stuff he apparently knows despite not being a doctor, he thinks he found what Thoris did, and it could ruin the whole nature of the various races on Nisus. How? We’ll have to wait on that. Nice cliffhanger. It just needs the dramatic commercial break stinger.
This was a good chapter, and in light of the intro discussion I didn’t know was going to matter when I wrote it, it exposes the central conflict of the story’s themes: a mixing of races both culturally and biologically, the essence of Infinite Diversity in Infinite Combination. It’s not just racial diversity but culture and worldviews (galaxyviews?). Lorrah even managed to push the plot forward. The next chapter is really short, but the chapter after is typical length for this book. So I don’t know if next week we’ll have two chapters, one with McCoy and the other back with Korsal, or just one really short one. Depends on time and what mood I’m in I guess. Not too many short chapters like this, so still better than the Op-Center novels.
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