BETTY'S BOOK REVIEWS

3rd Rock from the Sun: The Official Report on Earth by High Commander Dick Solomon by "the creators and writers of 3rd Rock from the Sun." The alien High Commander doles out sage bits of advice on Earth-living, covering such topics as relationships, passing time in meaningful ways, and "what to do when you encounter Jell-O." Amusing, though not as fall-down funny as the TV show often is... though that should be regarded more as a compliment to the actors, rather than a complaint against the writers of the book. I did laugh out loud in a few places (such as Sally's version of a Cosmo quiz). B+

Farscape: House of Cards by Keith R. A. DeCandido.  I pretty much only discovered Farscape a few months ago when the Sci-Fi Channel started re-running the entire series from the beginning, but I fell in love with it almost instantly.  (Why I wasn't watching the first time around, I'll never know, but I'm kicking myself for it now.)  Great characters, cool-looking aliens, nifty science fictional adventures, a marvelous sense of humor...  What's not to love?  And since I've never believed in the possibility of having too much of a good thing, I picked up this original novel based on the show to get me through one of those long weekends between episodes.  This adventure takes the Farscape gang to a planet known mainly for its casinos... where our good friend Rygel promptly proceeds to lose Moya (our heroes' starship and a living being in her own right) in a card game.  (Yes, it's wrong in so many ways, but, hey, it is exactly the sort of thing Rygel would do.)  Of course, giving up Moya is out of the question, but the casino owner offers the crew a chance to work off the debt instead by performing some fairly simple-seeming tasks.  Needless to say, things end up not being quite what they appear to be, and many complications ensue.  The story, while decently executed and reasonably entertaining -- it's easy to imagine it as a TV episode if cut down a little -- is nothing particularly special.  What makes this book work is not the plot but the characterization.  The characters' voices are perfectly captured (not necessarily an easy task given the, um, unique nature of some of the characters' speech habits), their actions are all perfectly in character, their reactions and motivations all totally spot on.  Better still, everybody has something to do, which isn't always easy when you're dealing with an ensemble cast.  Chiana's eulogy for a dead biological ship is especially memorable, as is Aeryn's impersonation of a Peacekeeper bent on business negotiations Aeryn hasn't actually got a clue about.  I'm also quite pleased with the portrayal of Rygel.  It seems to me that it would be very easy simply to peg him as the comic relief character or as nothing more than the jerk who screws everything up and makes trouble for the rest of the crew.  But, while Rygel does qualify on both those counts, the author also realizes that the annoying little guy does, after all, have some useful skills when it comes to playing politics, and even he ends up being useful in bringing the plot to its resolution.  It ain't great literature, it doesn't bring anything mind-blowingly new and exciting to the Farscape universe, but for fans of the show it's a chance to spend a little more time with a cool group of people, and for that reason alone it should appeal. A-

Return to Chaos by Craig Shaw Gardner.  This is a Buffy the Vampire Slayer novel,  like Child of the Hunt, which I reviewed a couple of months ago.   This one wasn't quite as good as Child of the Hunt, though, I'm afraid...  Although I think part of the problem is just that I've never been fond of Gardner's particular writing style; I've read a couple of his comic fantasy novels, and they were very similar in style to this one.  I'm not entirely sure exactly what it is, either, but I think it has something to do with his tendency to write a lot of short, simple sentences.  It feels a bit like reading a kids' book, actually, except that in a really good kids' book, you don't even notice that the language and the style is simplified.  I strongly suspect that this may just be me, though.  I mean, hey, I don't like Hemingway, either.  (Not that I'm seriously comparing Craig Shaw Gardner to Hemingway.)  There were also a few little things that seemed a bit "off" with respect to the Buffy characters and universe.  Like, how come Cordelia is walking around Sunnydale?  Did something happen to her car?  And why is Giles—who hates computers—so gung ho about this computer program Willow's whipped up to predict what kind of supernatural nastiness they can expect next?  Actually, the thing with the computer program kind of bothers me all by itself.  Maybe it seems a little silly to complain about plausibility problems in Buffy, but the TV episodes all do really make sense on their own terms.  Bizarrely enough, if the computer had been possessed by a demon, or under a magic spell or something, I would have had no problem believing in its ability to spit out cryptic prophecies, but apparently it was just an ordinary program which Willow put together, but which even she didn't seem to understand.  Like Cordelia's car, it was a fairly minor point, but it bugged me.  I'm probably dwelling way too much on the negative, though, because this wasn't really a bad book at all, particularly for a tie-in novel.  The basic story could easily have been made into a decent episode of the series.  And Gardner does have everybody's dialog down well, which, as I believe I said in the Child of the Hunt review, really is the single most important thing in my estimation.  Bottom line: It's not a great book, by any means, but it's a fast read and (barring a few minor glitches) the characters are done right, so if you're into Buffy and you're looking for a quick, undemanding read for your next plane fight, it'll do you well enough (unless you're even more allergic to Gardner's style than I am!).  B-

Forever Knight: Intimations of Mortality by Susan M. Garrett is a novel based on the Canadian TV series Forever Knight, set, I believe, during the show's fourth (and final) season.  I discovered this show a couple of years ago, in reruns on the Sci-Fi Channel, and became instantly enamored of it and its neat blend of action and angst.  The premise of the show concerns one Nick Knight, an 800-year-old vampire, who has become a homicide cop and is trying to give something back to society after his long lifetime of bloodsucking, all the while searching for a "cure" for his vampiric condition.  This book focuses heavily on that quest, as Nick turns to some sort of magic talisman which he hopes will help him regain his mortality.  What it does is to give him a series of strangely vivid dreams, in which he is one of a handful of mortals striving to stay alive and human in a world dominated by vampires.  The writing here is good (especially for a TV tie-in), both the "real world" and dream segments of the story are interesting, and Garrett has a very good handle on all of the characters.  In other words, fans of the series are quite likely to appreciate it.  (And although such fans are, of course, the book's primary audience, Garrett has smoothly incorporated enough background information that it should be readily accessible to non-viewers, as well.) B+

Child of the Hunt by Christopher Golden and Nancy Holder.  I've recently become utterly hooked on Buffy the Vampire Slayer after watching the first two seasons on DVD.  And, fortunately for me, a friend of mine happens to have gotten exactly as hooked as I am, at exactly the same time and in exactly the same way.  Great minds, no doubt!  Anyway, she went out and bought a whole bunch of Buffy books on ebay, and since she somehow ended up with two copies of this one, she generously sent me the duplicate.  For which I definitely owe her thanks!   It really did help to assuage some of my withdrawal symptoms while I'm waiting for Season Three to come out on disc.  The authors have caught the characters' voices very well, and they clearly have an excellent handle on the show's quirky sensibility.  In my opinion, those are far and away the most important elements for any TV tie-in book, and they make this one well worth reading.  The story itself -- involving runaway kids, a Renaissance Faire coming to town, and some rather nasty mythological beings -- was fairly interesting, too, although I was a little unhappy with how much of it they gave away on the back cover.  The writing is just a little uneven in places -- some of the action scenes seemed a bit choppy to me -- but overall it reads just fine.  The novel takes place sometime during the show's third season, but fortunately didn't have any major spoilers for anything I hadn't seen yet (or at least, not for anything that it wasn't already obvious was going to have to happen in the third season anyway).  If you're a fellow Buffy fan in withdrawal, I can definitely recommend this one.  B+

Alien Nation: Dark Horizon by K.W. Jeter is the novelization of the cliff-hanging final episode of the Alien Nation TV show ("Green Eyes") and the cliff-hanger-resolving TV movie Dark Horizon. If you're a fan of Alien Nation, you've probably already seen both of these, so I won't rehash the plot or anything. But I will say this: even though I already knew everything that was going to happen, this book kept me eagerly turning pages. It stuck pretty close to the televised plotlines, but also went beyond and, with flawlessly on-target characterization, gave a good look into the characters' heads. Reads like a novel, not like a novelization... just the way it should be! A

Quantum Leap: Too Close for Comfort by Ashley McConnell. Actually, the coolest thing about this book for me is that it's set in Albuquerque, New Mexico (some 80 miles north of Socorro, where I live); it's kind of neat to read a story set someplace you're familiar with. The second-coolest thing is the way that McConnell explores some of the implications of the whole Quantum Leap concept, particularly the fact that Al is living in a present continually being changed by the actions of Sam in the past. It's great to see a good examination of the science-fictional aspects that were usually neglected in the show itself. On the other hand, the TV show's greatest strength was the "human element"... and McConnell really doesn't seem to be as strong on that as she does on the science fictional side of things (although she does try). Frankly, I found the characters whose lives Sam leaps in to affect so unlikable that I had trouble caring what happened to them, although I felt like I should. The characterizations of Sam and Al are decent, though. B

The Simpsons: A Complete Guide to Our Favorite Family edited by Ray Richmond is a colorful, browse-able episode guide to the first eight seasons of The Simpsons. For each episode there's not only a plot synopsis, but samples of memorable quotes and dialog, explications of subtle in-jokes and other things you might have missed, and a host of similar fun things. Besides the episode guide, the book also features a number of trivia-type lists (including Krusty Brand Products, opening-sequence couch gags, and the various times Homer has said "D'oh" or "Mmmm...") and short profiles on characters from Mr. Burns to Stampy the Elephant. It may not be quite as complete a guide to The Simpsons as it's possible to get -- I've seen did-you-notice lists compiled by obsessive fans on the internet that make the ones in this book look positively sketchy -- but there's nevertheless plenty here to entertain anyone who enjoys the show. A

The Beast Within edited by Stuart Wieck is an anthology of stories based on White Wolf's Vampire: The Masquerade role-playing game. Normally I avoid books based on games, but I broke down and picked this one up for a number of reasons: 1) For a while, I was rather "into" this particular game, and when I'm interested in something, I find it difficult to pass up a book that's related to it. 2) It was rather more attractive-looking than most of the Dungeons-and-Dragons novels and suchlike that it shared the bookstore shelves with... And 3) there were at least a couple of stories in it by authors whose names I recognized as not belonging to complete third-rate-hacks. (Lawrence Watt-Evans, in particular, has been on my "I-need-to-read-more-of-this-guy's-stuff" list for some time now.) So I took a chance on the book... and was pleasantly surprised. The stories in here do range quite a bit in quality, from fairly stupid to quite good... but there were just enough of the latter for me to feel that I'd gotten my money's worth. (Well, to the extent that I ever feel that way paying today's paperback prices, but that's another matter.) This collection could undoubtedly be read without too much confusion by those not familiar with the game it's based on, but I do imagine that those who've played Vampire will get the most out of it... and, honestly, if it's generic vampire stories you want, there are probably even better collections out there. Fans of the game, however, will likely find the book of interest, and not likely find it disappointing. B

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