Review: The Never-Ending Sacrifice (Star Trek: DS9)

A boy looks up. He sees a Cardassian's hand on his shoulder and knows that this is usually a prelude to a beating or, if he is fortunate enough, arrest. The boy knows how many disappeared during the Occupation of Bajor. So he does the one thing he can think of: he bites the Cardassian. Then the nightmare begins. 

He is ripped from the family that took him in as an orphan, clothed him, fed him, always loved him unconditionally. And no matter how earnest, how caring the commander of Deep Space 9 is, the boy knows this is all a horrible mistake. How can someone from Starfleet judge him by what he looks like, not by what he is? He prays to the Prophets; he is Bajoran. They all keep telling him that the test proves the large Cardassian man is his father, that the other Cardassian -- that oily gul -- took him away from his father. But the boy keeps telling them that he is Bajoran, he only wants to go home with his father. So they send Rugal home -- to Cardassia. 

On the homeworld of the Cardassian Union where sacrifice and devotion to the state are surpassed only by the government's need to keep its people in check, one very lonely boy discovers that if he doesn't resist, his life -- like those of so many others -- will be added to the tally of the never-ending sacrifice.

Star Trek: Deep Space Nine has one of the most complicated storylines of any TV series I know. It ran for seven seasons and involved, more or less, seven different political entities, with alliances that were constantly shifting back and forth. Today’s enemy might be tomorrow’s ally, or vice versa. It’s realistic, as any history student will tell you, but also somewhat confusing. 

That’s why The Never-Ending Sacrifice by Una McCormack is very helpful for putting all seven seasons in perspective.If you don’t know the series, you might not understand everything that’s going on, but there’s a glossary at the back of the book. Besides, the protagonist doesn’t understand it all either.

Rugal Pa’Dar is a one-off character from an episode called “Cardassians” in the second season of DS9. He was adopted by Bajorans, whose planet was once invaded by his own species, the Cardassians. Then his biological father found him and took him back. 

Needless to say, he’s got identity issues. He doesn’t fully belong to either culture. This makes him the perfect character through whom to tell the story of the Dominion War, because the war is being fought inside him as well as across the galaxy. This inner conflict almost tears him apart, but as he grows up, it also helps him make connections across all kinds of borders: class, species, sexuality and politics, to name a few.

Rugal is not much like the usual Star Trek heroes, brilliant diplomats, scientists and warriors who always save the day. He’s an ordinary person caught up in extraordinary circumstances, who mostly gets by on luck, resourcefulness, and a deep loyalty to his loved ones. He’s not trying to end the war or save his species. He just wants to go home, if he could only figure out where home is.  

McCormack does an excellent job of balancing the large and complicated plot lines of the original series with Rugal's individual story. He is clearly a product of a certain political landscape, but not a passive one. The older he gets, the more he refuses to let parents, commanding officers and governments make his choices for him. 

The Never-Ending Sacrifice is still a quintessential Star Trek story. It’s a story about war, and it does get very dark at times (Rugal’s time in the army is bleakly reminiscent of All Quiet On The Western Front), but more than that, it’s a story about love that transcends boundaries.

Review: Tin Star & Stone In The Sky

Cover Summary:

On their way to start a new life, Tula and her family travel on the Prairie Rose, a colony ship headed to a planet in the outer reaches of the galaxy. All is going well until the ship makes a stop at a remote space station, the Yertina Feray, and the colonist's leader, Brother Blue, beats Tula within an inch of her life. An alien, Heckleck, saves her and teaches her the ways of life on the space station. 

When three humans crash land onto the station, Tula's desire for escape becomes irresistible, and her desire for companionship becomes unavoidable. But just as Tula begins to concoct a plan to get off the space station and kill Brother Blue, everything goes awry, and suddenly romance is the farthest thing from her mind.

Warning: spoilers.

If you’re wondering what Firefly would be like with aliens, or Rogue One with a somewhat lower death toll, this duology is for you.

It subverts several important tropes that science fiction writers have come to rely on. Firstly, there is an interplanetary government, but humans are not the glue holding it together. They’re one unimportant species among many. The language spoken between different species, Universal Galactic, is clearly not English and Tula Bane has real trouble understanding it until someone equips her with translation technology.

Since humanity isn’t the standard, this leads to some wonderful world building on the author’s part, sometimes by what she doesn’t write, as much as what she does write. Casually referring to a character as a “biped” implies volumes about the different kinds of alien bodies on that space station (Stone, p. 29). When one of them stabs Tula with the sting in his tongue, she assumes it’s poison, but it turns out to be something quite different (Star, p. 33).

Secondly, the aliens are not stereotyped. Each species has its own distinct culture and biology, but the characters are still individuals: for example, the Hort are cunning, ruthless, and offended by the sound of human voices, but one of them becomes Tula’s mentor. The Loor are formal and hierarchical, but one of them bends the rules to help Tula while another of them is corrupted by power. Humans themselves are stereotyped by the other species as primitive nomads, but all Tula wants is a home of her own.

Speaking of stereotypes, I was a little disappointed that in Tin Star, the only female character besides Tula was a caricature straight out of the movie Mean Girls. Why do we still assume that women who wear lots of makeup and tight clothes are always selfish, promiscuous or both? However, the author fixed that issue quite thoroughly in Stone in the Sky. Hendala, Ednette, Elizabeth and Myfanwy are all strong, complex female characters, and even mean girl Els is shown in a different light.

Thirdly, Tula herself is not the average heroine. She’s strong and vulnerable in interesting ways. On the one hand, she’s a consummate survivor: beaten and left for dead, the only one of her species, with no money, no possessions, and a shaky grasp on the language, she still talks herself out of trouble. She has excellent social and business skills: she can mimic alien body language, keep track of a complicated network of trades, bend the truth, and even kiss someone she dislikes if it gives her an advantage.

But while she’s an expert at connecting to people on a surface level, deeper connections are a problem for her. When it comes to romance and friendship, she’s as confused as any other teenage girl; arguably more so, since she has no human mentor to ask for advice. Her strongest relationship is with her enemy, Brother Blue, and that trips her up as well; it takes her a long time to learn that hate should not be the reason you get up in the morning. These flaws make her more relatable, as well as driving the plot forward; most of her actions are fueled either by revenge or loneliness.

The only weak point in the series for me was Tula’s relationship with Tournour. All the hard work seems to be on his side: he saves her life many times, walks a delicate tightrope between loyalty to her and his duty as Chief Constable, watches her fall in love with another man, helps them be together, and makes considerable efforts to understand how her alien mind works. What does she do for him in return except cause trouble? That being said, I liked the subtle ways he finds to show her he’s on her side, even when he’s locking her in the brig or frisking her for weapons.

The two of them remind me of Constable Odo and Major Kira from Star Trek: Deep Space Nine.

Although it’s the Andorians who have antennae …

Okay, someone stop me, before I start making Trek references all through the night.

Needless to say, Tin Star and Stone in the Sky are highly recommended for all science fiction fans.

Review: Awaken

The irony of posting this online does not escape me.

Awaken by Katie Kacvinsky is one of the most believable dystopian novels I have ever read. Unlike some authors, who exaggerate to the point of absurdity and/or horror (I’m looking at you, Huxley and Orwell), Kacvinsky’s world is just a few logical (and still unnerving) steps away from ours.

We had 9/11. They have M28, short for March 28, 2048, a day on which a terrorist group (not an Islamic one though; that would complicate the story even further) bombed 17 elementary schools as a protest against overpopulation. The result? Digital School, a free online program developed by lawyer and educator Kevin Freeman, which has become mandatory throughout the U.S.

We depend on the Internet. (I know I do.) In Kacvinsky’s future, that hasn’t changed. On the contrary, it’s gotten to the point where Madeline Freeman, Kevin’s daughter and the story’s heroine, is really shocked to see her new friend Justin Solvi standing at her door instead of texting her like a civilized person.

In our world, even in “first world’ countries, state-sanctioned violence happens more often than many of us care to admit. Workers at a juvenile detention center in Australia were recently found to have abused their charges (see this article). So when Madeline learns that Justin spends his life rescuing teenagers who are being brought to detention centers for refusing Digital School – they need to be rescued beforehand, because once they leave the centers, they refuse any human contact – I was somewhat less surprised than she was.

Justin’s mission is to make Digital School a choice again. To that end, he does everything in his power to get Madeline on his side, so she can hack into her father’s confidential files – again. Madeline is not your average dystopian YA heroine, the innocent follower of the system who needs her eyes opened by a charismatic rebel. She already knows she disagrees with her father’s education policy. The only question is whether her father – whom, despite their polar-opposite beliefs, she still loves – matters more to her than personal freedom.

Justin’s recruitment tactics are, of course, highly effective: fresh-baked chocolate cake (as opposed to ready-made meals, which are ubiquitous in Maddie’s world), live music, sunsets on the beach, a witty and warm-hearted group of fellow rebels – who wouldn’t give up the Internet for that? The trouble is, his efforts to make her fall in love with reality have the side effect of making her fall in love with him. Sparks fly, physically and intellectually, as the highly self-controlled resistance leader has his own arguments for living life to the fullest turned back on him by a girl as smart and stubborn as he is. Their growing relationship is the driving force of this novel; since Maddie narrates in first person, we see Justin through her eyes, and when he challenges her to think for herself and question authority, you might just find yourself doing the same.

Kacvinsky is not anti-tech. If she were, the book wouldn’t be half as interesting. Kevin Freeman’s motives for creating Digital School, though misguided, are both logical and compelling: no one can deny that teen violence, pregnancy and drug use would go down if teenagers didn’t leave their houses. Some of the anti-Digital School rebellion’s most valued supporters are computer experts, following the precept of “know your enemy”. Justin himself enjoys new technology; the cars he drives on his rescue missions can swim and even fly. The author’s message, though clumsily and didactically expressed, is simple:

“You can see all of this online. But that's cheating. No computer program can compare to the physical experience. It's like learning how to play a virtual sports game. You're not really playing anything, against anyone. You're just a spectator. People are becoming spectators of their own lives instead of living them. But the best part is getting in the game. That's when it's all worth it.” (e-book, ch. 5, p. 14).

On that note, let me just go cross-post this to my four different social media accounts …

Seriously. We need more books like these. Please read it.