Kathleen SkyRezensionen

A bit of a murder mystery but not a great one.
The main investigator was not overly well written. Built up as being a complete hard-ass from the particular agency with augmented skills that can't be talked about. But then proceeds to be perfectly ordinary and friendly and vulnerable and falls into a tantrum when the stress of the answer just falling into her lap doesn't seem to occur. Does not appear to have any special investigative skills at all.
James Kirk portrayed as a very shallow womaniser but somehow this investigator falls completely for him and seriously considers a marriage proposal. This romantic development was a bit cringeworthy how it developed.
I also found it reasonably predictable how it would mostly go.

If I were the type of person to yell "Mary Sue," this book would have me yelling it. We learn of a wing of Starfleet that does investigations and is really rather gestapo-like; the lead character, Elizabeth, is investigating a series of deaths as the crew and a cargo of Federation ambassadors goes to try and, perhaps, negotiate a detente with the Romulans. Not great, but not great largely in that it reads very much like an actual original series episode that's been perspective-shifted onto the female love interest, so I can't hate it.

I do not believe the psychological underpinnings of this novel for an instant, nor its portrayal of Vulcans. Nevertheless, I enjoyed it in the way I'd enjoy an iffy lay-Spock fic.

I first read “Witchdame” by Kathleen Sky when it was new in 1985, and I was about 15 years old. I remembered I enjoyed it, so when I saw it available used now for cheap I picked up another copy to reread.

It’s still a pretty good fantasy novel. While taking place in a fantasy version of medieval England and Wales, Sky doesn’t give a huge amount of background about who the Witchlords and Woodwitches are, though eventually it comes out that the Witchlords and Witchdames are the nobility of this version of England, capable of magic, while the Woodwitches are more nature-oriented magic users who were mostly defeated by the Witchlords of prior generations. It’s not hard to pick up that the Witchlords aren’t, in general, friendly with the Woodwitches, however, the Witchlord king of England had married a Woodwitch woman, Dianne and their heir, the main character, Elizabeth, is both.

The novel begins shortly before Princess Elizabeth’s 18th birthday, with her mother dying and her father already having selected his new wife, who intends to give Richard a son to follow him on the throne. It’s clear that Dianne’s existence has been restricted for some time due to her being a Woodwitch in a Witchlord royal court, but she’s passed on a little bit of Woodwitch culture to Elizabeth.

Early in the book there’s tremendous amount of narration about the various women’s clothing. Considering how confusing it was to me now, I can’t remember what I thought of that when I read this the first time when I was only 15.

Sky isn’t very consistent on Richard supporting or hating Woodwitch culture, so that gets a bit confusing.

The main adventure involves the now 18 year old Elizabeth making a journey to the four compass directions of England, the land that she’ll eventually rule over as queen, and resolving a major issue at each of those points.

Sky was more clear on the timeframe of the travel at the beginning of the journey, but after they finished their “west” task, it was confusing how long it took the party to travel to their “north” task. The distance on the map was several times further, but there was nothing about it in the story.

The conclusion was a little disappointing, too much of a deus ex machina sort of thing, especially after Elizabeth went through a lot to become more powerful in her own right. I’d been hoping her victory would be much more her own.

Overall, I enjoyed the book, with the down points not detracting too much. If Kathleen Sky ever wrote a sequel to it, I’d read it.

I wrote a (probably too) long review of this over this way, but I'll just put the conclusion here, to save you time. Read the whole thing if you care to see some of the annoying bits of the book.

In short, Vulcan! is several kinds of boring and disappointing. The idea of McCoy having the duty of ensuring crewmembers' personalities mesh well is an interesting one, though little explored here. His taking on the role of psychiatrist is not new to this novel (for example, Blish had McCoy as a specialist in psychology in Spock Must Die!), though he did claim to be "a surgeon, not a psychiatrist" in The City on the Edge of Forever. The few slightly interesting features of the novel don't redeem it, though. It's certainly one to skip.

To be honest, I wasn't really looking forward to reading Kathleen Sky's book. The reviews on Goodreads are almost uniformly negative, dismissing it as a Mary Sue novel with a lousy plot and poor characterizations of the central crew. And after reading it for myself, I found that the criticisms are largely well founded, especially when compared to the many other works written since that do so much better of a job of crafting a story that is true to the elements of the original series. The plot is premised on a ridiculous notion that the border of the Neutral Zone between the Federation and the Romulans that can shift under the influence of space storms, which is an implausible concept that is refuted by the very episode that introduced the Romulans and the Neutral Zone to begin with. The characterizations are indeed poor, with Spock less controlled and logical than he should have been, and McCoy almost predatorial in his romantic aspirations. Worst of all, though is the central character of Katalya Tremain, who comes across as far too petulant and unprofessional for someone who is ostensibly a member of a professional organization like Starfleet.

And yet in spite of all that I found myself enjoying the novel much more than I expected I would. While the premise of a shifting border may be ridiculous, the mission itself to establish whether a species on a key world is sentient or not was an interesting concept that is surprisingly underutilized in the franchise. And for all of the flaws in the characterization of the central crew and her key creation, Sky does provide an interesting examination of crew dynamics that is surprisingly nuanced, addressing it in a way that is far truer to life than Roddenberry's overly-idealized premise of numerous species all working happily together and as later works would demonstrate would prove a fruitful source of storytelling. Perhaps it was a case of having my expectations lowered to a point where I could appreciate the book despite its flaws, but whatever the reason it resulted in the end in a better reading experience and a more nuanced assessment of what Sky's book has to offer.

A friend described these late-70s Star Trek novels from Bantam as "off-model." I took it to mean visually, but that feeling is reflected in the text as well.

The novel focuses on Spock, McCoy, and Kirk, and their characterization seems quite a bit off from how they have come to be presented over the years, in both action and dialogue. This, combined with the rampant libido exhibited by the male characters and the rampant "hysteria" (a term used several times in the text, occasionally more than once on a page) of the antagonist, it's a book best left in the 70s.

Wow, this was a 'fascinating' one. A fan can tell this is an early entry in the franchise, as Sky explores aspects of Spock's psychology & abilities that are almost implausibly human-like. That is to say, the Spock revealed here is the one usually hidden from us. McCoy's character is explored more deeply, too. Not much Kirk, almost no Scotty or Uhura, etc.

And the face-off with the Romulans is very well-done. Lots of death, but no real battle scenes, so the level of adventure was good, imo. The only problem I had was that Christine Chapel's character feels more like a caricature. And the cover of my edition is wrong, but I don't really care about that. David Gerrold's introduction was, imo, boring. I will look for more by Kathleen Sky.

And I will try not to read others' reviews of this book, because I have a feeling some fans may not have liked it as much as I did and I don't want it spoiled.

I adored this book back when I read it in high school and college. All these years later, I admit I see more flaws in it: a narrative that staggers between detailed scenes and rushed endings, an abrupt halt at the end of the book, and characters that could be more fully developed. Still, I found myself wishing, like back in high school, that the author had returned to this world and written more stories in it: the hints of an Elven (Roman) past, the mysteries of Faerie (Ireland), and the unresolved tensions between the woodwitches, witchlords, and humans all left me wanting to know more about Englene and its neighbors.

One of the earliest authorized stories, Spock and a strange doctor have the pleasure of overcoming her racial prejudices as they do the usual fight for their lives.
It was a fun book and a quick read.

Terrible book. The 'plot' is little more than a Very Special Episode About Racism, and the characters are flat, dull and poorly-done. A xenobiologist arrives aboard the Enterprise to help lead a research team on Arachnae, but - uh oh! - she's horribly racist against Vulcans! And presumably that isn't at all a problem in Starfleet, a military organization of a Federation FOUNDED by Vulcans, so no one seems to think it's a big deal beyond "oh maybe we should fix this so she can work with Spock." MAYBE YOU SHOULD REPORT HER ASS FOR INSUBORDINATION, I dunno, it seems like her constant temper-tantrums would be more than enough for a court martial or something. Christ, it's ridiculous.

It requires more than just a suspension of disbelief to read - it requires a suspension of all knowledge of literary technique and form. I've read fanfiction that was hundreds of times better than this ridiculous, inane, badly-constructed pile of words. I want to not only recommend that anyone else considering reading it stays far, far away, but I'd also like to completely purge the memory of this dribble from my brain.½

A fairly original "whodunit" murder mystery, in which an apparent "angel of death" is one by one murdering the ambassadors during a Federation diplomatic mission. A good mystery story, coupled with an original array of alien ambassadors, and for once a mature and serious love relationship developing between Kirk and the Federation investigating officer.

A fine novel about bigotry in Star Fleet. A beautiful scientist accompanies the Enterprise to determine if the antlike inhabitants of a planet are intelligent, before the planet drifts into Romulan space. The scientist, however, has a bitter hatred of all things Vulcan, which precludes her and Spock from working together. It is left up to Spock to discover the reasons for her bigotry and resolve them before they are killed by the Arachneans they came to study. An excellent study in issues of character, race and prejudice.½

This book is more of a piece of social commentary on the late seventies than a Star Trek novel, and i mean that even within the conext of all Star Trek novels being social commentary. This actually reads like Sky's research project on psychoanalysis and racisim using Star Trek characters, which is extremely interesting, but if you're looking for action, you can skip to the end.

That said, the last, oh, thirty pages is actually pretty interesting, if you can manage to get through the first two-thirds. The first part of the book consists of a xenobiologist who is both A. brilliant and B. gorgeous, and Spock even goes so far as to help decorate her quarters. I know, Sky broke the rule of Vulcan reserve and disinterest, but she tortures him so much later in the book i guess she needed to set him up for a greater fall. See? I'm getting the hang of this psychoanalysis.

When she gets on board the Enterprise, coming along to identify a race as sentient or not before the planet drifts into Romulan space, she refuses to work with Spock, refusing even to acknowledge him as a sentient being. Kirk is naturally furious. McCoy is torn, since now he doesn't have to compete for her affections, but her racisim is so blatant and horrific, none of them know what to with her.

Every man has his method. McCoy tries to pshychoanalyze her with an interesting machine called the Sigmund, which is a immensly time-consuming process that would absolutely cripple a working environment of any kind if a doctor had to send everyone through it... well, Sky sort of lost me there, but hey. Kirk tried to seduce her. That was REALLY funny. I'll give the author a huge round of applause. Poor Kirk. Not so much.

And eventually, as is only fair, Spock and she are forced together. And that is where the book warms up. Way up. Sky stumbles with the shy romantisism of the Southern gentleman, and does a neat and sharp smack-down on Kirk's brand of come-all-ye-women, but she is absolutely brilliant with Spock.

Ah, i think. This is where the author's heart truly is. And she was waiting all book to get there. It's worth reading just for that warm, rich conclusion.

gangly princess comes into her heritage and gets her man, after trials. detailed medieval language. various magical races, of which our heroine is a mixture, plus angels and demons, but no Christianity. seemingly anachronistic sexual mores (not porn). rites involving incest which are forbidden to mere humans.