Maybe it's because I'm not a Trek maniac (what are they called again? Trekkies? Trekkers?), but I'm not all that clear on the whole Klingon thing. In the Original Series, they were just these swarthy guys that kind of looked like Genghis Khan. By the time The Next Generation starts, they visually evolved into big, dark guys with a lot of ridges and a lot of hair. (The Deep Space Nine episode "Trials and Tribble-ations" gave a reason as to why TOS Klingons look different, but I don't buy it. I'd much rather pretend that they looked that way all along, which is probably why I'm not a Trekkie.)
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| OMG U GUISE! I totally can't tell them apart! |
That said, I wonder in just what sort of way I should see Kell, the protagonist of Errand of Vengeance. Did he look like a TOS Klingon before he was changed to appear human? Or did he look like a TNG Klingon? I guess it doesn't matter in the long run; he looks human at the start of the story and he's described as small for a Klingon from the start. But I still wonder.
Kell, of course, has gone under cover, wearing a dead human's face, and has infiltrated Starfleet for the sole purpose of assassinating Captain Kirk. He goes in with major prejudices against humans (who Klingons call 'Earthers' the same way Draco Malfoy calls Muggleborns 'mudbloods'.) He thinks they're cowards, soft, deceitful, and weak. So of course, he spends the first book learning that Klingons and humans are actually very similar. He even gets laid and sees just how awesome Kirk is (after spending half of the book calling him a liar and a coward. BLASPHEMY KILL THE KLINGON SCUM) By the end of the first book, he feels conflicted between his duty to the Klingon Empire and the bonds of honor tying him to the humans around him, but he's still determined to do the job he was sent in to do. (Gosh, I wonder how all this will end....)
I guess the most interesting part of this book is the insight Kevin Ryan tries to give us about Klingon culture. The three original characters that take up the most screen time, Kell, his brother Karel, and Lieutenant West, all provide information on them. Kell shows us their thoughts and feelings on the Federation and humans in general. Karel shows us the typical life of a Klingon warrior on board a battle ship. West, a xenoanthopologist, tells us about the cultural mentality of the Klingon race. I learned quite a bit from the book. (Nothing particularly useful for real life, though, unless I meet a Klingon face to face one day.)
The action is pretty agreeable, too. The main conflict surrounds a colony of anti-Federation folks being attacked by Orions. Why? We don't know, but they wrecked the Enterprise and killed off a lot of redshirts before Kirk saved the day.
You know, for a book with Kirk on the cover, there's surprisingly little screen time for the Big Three. Sure, Kirk is awesome for the most part, defeating the Orion ship and rescuing his men, but the rest of the time he's dealing with his remorse over losing people. Spock and McCoy play support, and while McCoy gets some shine time on his own (even redshirts survive sometimes), Spock is mostly there as Kirk's shadow.
... So not enough ship-teasing for my tastes, I actually had to force it at one point. There are a few parts where you can almost pretend they're flirting, but only if you forget that they're not.
There were some things that made me twitch a little in annoyance. The biggest one is 'Earther', though in hindsight, it's really not that big of an annoyance. This is put forth as one of the biggest slurs in the Klingon language, just behind 'yo mamma' putdowns (which will get you shanked). But does a species/culture-specific slur work on someone who isn't of that species or culture? I guess, going back to the Harry Potter analogy, if I called Draco Malfoy a 'mudblood', he might be just as, if not more, offended than Hermione Granger would be, not because he is, but because he's not and he knows just how bad of a slur it is? Does that makes sense?
Overall, I liked it. It was pretty short (finished in a few days), and the action was awesome.
But now that I think about it... Since this was a short book, I'm assuming the other two in this series are short as well... which means they could have been published as one book and spared me the pain of paying for three? (I mean, sure you can get them for a penny each
, but it's the principle of the thing.)Next up, Errand of Vengeance #2: Killing Blow
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