Posted in Blog, Book Review, Reviews, TV Review

StARe 10 – Dead End

Hi!

I must apologize because I have realized how much of a disservice I have done to you all.

The episode preceding this book is called ‘Misbegotten’ and it’s the second episode in Season 3. It has to do with the Wraith-turned-humans and (even though I’m sure you’ve caught up by now) I never mentioned Michael before this!

Michael Kenmore is one of the best bad guys ever. The reason is that the Expedition literally turns him into this thing and then he gets loose and causes SO many problems for them and the galaxy.

It is a perfect reflection of the Alteran’s and the Wraith.

Now, a little info about this situation we find Atlantis suddenly in.

Continue reading “StARe 10 – Dead End”
Posted in Blog, Book Review, Reviews, TV Review

StARe 9 – Exogenesis

This is going to be a good one so buckle up buttercups!

In Season 2, Episode 16 ‘The Long Goodbye’, we find Sheppard and Weir having a ‘Duet’ moment.

After finding two life pods in orbit around a planet, they bring them back to see if they can help. Unfortunately, the occupants have been in the pods for too long and die almost immediately after the pods are opened.

Not to fear though because the pods are equipped with devices that can download the occupants consciousness into another person.

Which is how Weir is taken at first and Sheppard agrees too because the woman who’s taken over Weir’s body claims the man in the other pod is her husband and she’d desperately like to say goodbye to him one last time.

She lied.

They are, in fact, enemy soldiers whose planets had been at war for generations and they were the last of their kind. Instead of calling a halt to the whole thing, this news just makes the two want to be the last one standing even more.

They go after each other in Weir and Sheppard’s bodies and are a serious problem because they have all the memories available to them about how Atlantis works and uses it ruthlessly. Thankfully, however, they don’t take it out on personnel and the one controlling Sheppard actually calls a medical team after Ronon is shot during a firefight instead of letting him die.

At least they have some kind of honor.

In the end the imprinting wears off before either kills the other and Weir and Sheppard are left with the uncomfortable fact that they had kissed and almost killed each other.

Fun times!

As for the book…

Exogenesis
SGA #5
ISBN: 9781905586028

What’s not to love?

The Long Goodbye’ sets this book up perfectly and we first find ourselves in a scene from ten thousand years ago as a Jumper with an Alteran couple try to get back to Atlantis to evacuate to Earth.

Unfortunately, the shield frequency has been changed and they are stuck on the wrong side. With stasis pods inside, they sleep at the base of an anchor (obviously that’s keeping Atlantis from just floating around the ocean) until discovered by the Expedition.

It never fails to make me sigh in frustration and annoyance at how eager Weir is to believe that the Alterans are somehow perfect beings to be held above all others. Seriously, it’s not even funny considering all of the things discovered concerning what they did. The sheer magnitude of their screwups should have made Weir cautious when it came to meeting them, but she’s always gung-ho.

In this book it almost leads to their deaths.

Again.

Two Alterans are still alive, but not for much longer. While trying to bring one up to the surface to be treated, he dies and the woman probably won’t fair any better, but dang if they aren’t going to try.

When the pod slips and opens, Dr. Beckett is caught in the same type of imprinting Weir and Sheppard just went through and is taken over by the Alteran woman who’s husband just died in their care (doesn’t matter that there was literally nothing they could have done).

She decides that, since the Expedition people aren’t Alteran, they aren’t worthy to have possession of Atlantis and sets off to keep them from keeping it.

Leaving several people to die in the cold water.

Thankfully, Sheppard is awesome and gets to them in time, but that meant letting the Alteran go.

She heads for the mainland and launches a terraforming device that has nanites in it. Because the planet is already livable, the device will change it into something else that’s still livable, just different.

In the process everything will be destroyed.

The Athosians on the mainland need to be rescued before it’s too late (hellish storms are cropping up in the first wave of the devices programming), but in an uncharacteristic moment, Weir decides that it isn’t safe and says no to Jumper’s going. Since the Daedalus is grounded due to repairs, Teyla is heartbroken.

While this is happening more information is being found about the Alteran’s in the pods and Dr. Beckett is recovering from the woman ‘dying’ and leaving him healed but feeling guilty because he almost killed some people and is about to kill more.

Turns out the Alteran couple was working on making the terraforming process faster, but they didn’t have permission from the council because the technology was too experimental and they had the Wraith to deal with so resources were needed elsewhere.

Not liking that their work was being set aside they did it anyways which is why they were on the last transport ship that was destroyed by the Wraith before full evacuation of Atlantis happened.

The planet they messed with however is in a precarious state because it was already being terraformed and the new device messed something up.

Rodney, Ronon and Sheppard go to the planet and find a civilization there that’s quite knowledgeable about their history (which is rare because of the Wraith culling’s). The people are happy to answer questions especially when Rodney says he can fix the original program to finish the terraforming.

Rodney is (as the people claim) caught in a deadly sandstorm, that has an acid like granule in it that can strip the flesh from humans, and dies from his injuries. All they can find is a disc he was carrying. Neither Sheppard, Ronon or Zelenka (who joined them on their return trip) believe it because the disc survived but not a shred of evidence that Rodney had been there.

They are finally convinced to spill when Sheppard pulls the plug on getting the machine to work and heads back to Atlantis. Apparently, there is a Wraith Hive on the planet and occasionally the Wraith come and steal children and defile women before hiding again.

A villager saw Rodney being taken by a Dart.

Rodney, waking up blind, spends several days being taken care of by a woman, Turpi (Rodney gets very emotionally attached to her), who says her father, Nabu, went out and saved him. Apparently, it was something her father did often because the people of the planet tended to throw children away when they were born with defects.

While the others continue trying to get the machine to work (which requires unplugging 12 ZPM’s spaced around the planet that shield massive amounts of water being stored for the terraforming) Rodney finds out a little bit more about the people who saved and healed him.

Including the fact that they are telepathic.

Piecing things together, Rodney suspects they are, in fact, Wraith, and has a bad reaction. Nabu is able to talk him around and explains how the terraforming caused changes in the humans of the planet as well which left many hideously deformed and/or with extraordinary abilities. This is why the people leave deformed children to the mercy of the deadly sandstorms and why Nabu (and many others now) can take Dart’s out to save the kids.

The day, Atlantis, Nabu’s people and his planet are saved in the end!

To say that this book was one of my favorites would be understating by a ton.

Nabu actually looks more Wraith than human which is where the Wraith stealing kids rumors come from. Turpi’s ability to heal is the strongest ever and they’ve seen a remarkable stabilization in the latest generations that bodes well for them as a people. The deformities are becoming rarer and the abilities greater.

It’s interesting that the Alteran’s intentionally meant for a Human Wraith to come from the experiment. Their reasoning being that the mental capacities could be used to fight the Wraith and eventually kill them off. That they continue to not see they’re the orchestrators of their own demise is cringe worthy, but completely on par with who they were as a people.

Okay, this post has gone on long enough and might be the longest yet.

Sorry again, but I’ll pull the plug here because I could go on for quite some time on this book, but you probably want to get to the next episode then the next review with me.

I too want to get to the next episodes because we are up to Season 3 now, and Todd makes his debut in this season! (feel free to scream with me when he shows up!)

Till next week.

Posted in Blog, Book Review, Reviews

StARe 8 – Mirror, Mirror

Well what do you know? You came back again.

After such a long review on the episodes between the books, we have come back to another book review!

Now, ‘Mirror, Mirror’ is one of the books that wasn’t clearly defined where to read it other than somewhere in Season 2. However, while reading I kept track of anything that might give a clue to where it falls (only 2 things appeared), and I decided that the best place for it was after this episode.

My reasoning is that Rodney thinks of Samantha Carter (in one sentence in the book), but I felt that he doesn’t usually give her much thought since she isn’t around, and his ego has nothing to prove to her. Thinking along those lines, ‘Grace Under Pressure’ (Season 2, Episode 14) is a fabulous episode rife with funny and heartfelt moments, but it also has McKay hallucinating Carter in an attempt to stay alive.

With the trauma of the ordeal (I’ll get a little into in a moment) still pretty fresh in his mind, I feel that reading ‘Mirror, Mirror’ after this episode would work much better than any other before it.

Of course, this is my personal opinion so feel free to read it wherever you’d like.

I still want to see if I can find an episode where the Daedalus is attacked after dropping out of hyper space reentering the Pegasus Galaxy since the book specifically mentions it’s been 3 weeks since then, but as of the end of Season 2, no such luck.

If I find such an episode in Season 3, I’ll update my watch/read order list accordingly.

Stargate Atlantis: Mirror, Mirror
SGA #9
ISBN: 9781905586127

In ‘Grace Under Pressure’ McKay and Captain Hugh Griffin are testing a Jumper that was damaged previously and Zelenka fixed but wasn’t enthused about testing it out himself.

On the return trip from the mainland the Jumper malfunctions and they plummet into the ocean. Sinking fast, it doesn’t take long for the forward window to crack so they get into the back of the Jumper and try to close the door between them but it won’t work.

Captain Griffin than says he has an idea, goes back and hits the control that closes the door.

Rodney hears the glass break and knows Griffin is dead and yells “Why would you do that?!”.

I like this moment because they had been arguing right before and Rodney is well aware that others find him abrasive and annoying so the question is definitely multilayered.

Things only get worse as the Jumper keeps falling and he loses contact with Atlantis, carbon monoxide levels rise, temperatures fall further down he goes and he has a head wound that’s causing his concentration to slip.

He starts hallucinating Samantha Carter (from SG1. If you haven’t seen it yet, she’s part of the first Gate team) of whom he’s worked with and has a crush on (but insists she has a thing for him).

His hallucination continues as he tries to fix the Jumper, though it keeps insisting that he just keep himself alive and let Atlantis save him this time instead of wasting power on a failed attempt.

In the end, Sheppard, Zelenka and ‘Sam’ the whale, find him and rescue him.

Which lead me to ‘Mirror, Mirror’.

This book was a roller coaster from page one!

Atlantis finds a room with a computer and, of course, turn it on only to find out that it has an A.I. inside it. Both Zelenka and Rodney realize the potential problem before anyone else does and shut it off.

Turns out the A.I. is so far advanced as to actually be A.I., as opposed to what we call A.I. which does not in fact have the same capacity to reason and make decisions with eh same speed as a human brain. (this isn’t me talking, it’s Rodney and Zelenka explain why it’s a bad idea to turn the computer back on).

Weir, however, decides it’s worth the risk once she’s read a report about the Alteran child prodigy who created the way to store his consciousness (and also a weapon on another world) in the first place. It was intended to change the timeline so that the Iratus bug never evolved into the Wraith but leave everything else alone.

Not unsurprisingly, it doesn’t work.

Rodney warns about it because he has a bad feeling about the whole thing, but everyone just thinks he’s being too cautious after the Arcturus incident when he destroyed a solar system. Even Sheppard feels the same way and brushes Rodney off.

The weapon splinters the realities and leaves the team in vastly different scenarios and they have to not only find a way back to each other to restore the original line, but they also have to stay out of the weapons way because it’s sentient enough to try and stop them.

Along the way they meet up with other versions of themselves. Sometimes it’s helpful and sometimes another version of Weir tries to kill Sheppard. They each go through their own twisted nightmares where the worst thing is thinking the others are dead and there’s no hope left.

I greatly enjoyed this book!

It was a little hard to keep track sometimes with the different realities and timelines, but within a few words I fell back in. The character development as they each try and survive just long enough to find their originals is fabulous and the fact that sometimes they are the original was an added ‘woohoo’ moment for me.

I definitely see why it’s a little harder to place the book though because it can be read any time after the Arcturus episode as far as I can see.

Once again I decided to read some of the comments/reviews on Goodreads for this book (in case anyone else had a different opinion of when to read it) and wasn’t surprised that some people thought it was ridiculous because of all the different realities and how truly different they were.

I thought it was wonderfully written and in keeping with what’s been established so far in the Stargate Universe to this point. I did think it was going to be another Quantum Mirror type thing though because of the title, but it not only proved me wrong but made my day. I hope it does the same for ya’ll, and I’ll see you next time for the ‘Exogenesis’ review!

Posted in Blog, Reviews, TV Review

StARe 7 – Catching up on Episodes

Bonjour!

This day we shall be catching up on the episodes between the books before we get back to the wonderful books themselves because there have been quite a few episodes in-between.

First though, it occurred to me that people might like to watch/read along with me or do it themselves. In that vein I’ll have a post set up for the order that I am personally following to post later this week.

As I mentioned in the first post, the wonderful people who did the ‘stargate.fandom.com’ site led me to the majority of what I wanted with just a few books not seeming to fall in any particular order between the episodes. The few that don’t, I thought I’d keep notes on while reading (SO hard to do because they suck you in so easily!)  and change the reading list accordingly to my personal opinion.

What that means is that the list might change as I go along, but by the last book before the Legacy Series begins it should be complete with no further additions needing to be made.

Continue reading “StARe 7 – Catching up on Episodes”
Posted in Blog, Book Review, Reviews

StARe 5 – Entanglement

The book today is…

Stargate Atlantis: Entanglement
Book #6
ISBN: 9781905586035

(te woot!)

Here’s the thing. After the last review I did, I watched the next episode ‘Duet’ (Season2, Episode 4), and came to the conclusion that there was something a little off about the order.

In ‘Halcyon’, Ronon is with Sheppard’s team and so I read it as he was part of the team. However, watching ‘Duet’ its clear that he hasn’t accepted Sheppard’s invitation to join and Weir isn’t sure she wants him to at first.

At this point I’d have to say that ‘Halcyon’ can, and should, be read after ‘Duet’. As in-

watch ‘Duet’

read ‘Halcyon’

read ‘Entanglement’

watch ‘Condemned’.

Sound good? I do plan on going back and looking at ‘Halcyon’ to see if they mention that Ronon is there on a trial bases or not, but I’m almost positive it was read as he was a part of the team. Sheppard certainly treated him as such so we’ll see.

Continue reading “StARe 5 – Entanglement”
Posted in Blog, Book Review, Reviews, TV Review

StARe 4 – Halcyon

I’m back!

These next three reviews are going to be interesting because they follow back to back episodes. Season 2, Episode 3 through 5 is where we’ve landed now so let me fill you in yas?

Season 1 ended with Daedalus arriving and saving Sheppard from certain death (he decided to fly a jumper with a nuclear warhead into a Wraith Hive). They fooled the Wraith into thinking they destroyed Atlantis and since then have been laying low, as much as they can, and lying to people when they have to if they’re recognized as being Atlantean.

With the arrival of Daedalus comes regular contact with Earth which means they won’t have to find an alternative to toilet paper anytime soon (this is a hilarious thought that someone has and I like that the author felt like adding it because it shows a concern that’s very real, but not something you’d think about when watching the show).

Directly before this book is the episode ‘Runner’, Season 2 Episode 3, where we meet one Specialist Ronon Dex who takes the place of Lt. Ford.

Don’t worry, Ford isn’t dead, but during the battle with Atlantis a Wraith began to feed on him and they ended up in the freezing ocean for hours. The enzyme that the Wraith use to keep their food from dying of shock is changing him. Far from the upbeat, optimistic young man we’ve grown to love, Ford is now paranoid and power hungry. The only way to sate his hunger is with more enzyme.

And if Atlantis won’t give it to him, then he’ll just have to harvest it straight from the source.

This is where Ford leaves SGA 1 and Ronon takes his place.

Ronon is from Sateeda and after being captured by the Wraith, was implanted with a tracking device and hunted for sport. He fought back and has managed to stay alive up to meeting Sheppard. With Dr. Beckett having removed the tracker, he’s now a free man.

One without a home.

In a display of ugly waste, the Wraith destroyed his home world and killed every human there.


Stargate Atlantis: Halcyon
SGA #4
ISBN: 9781905586011

Halcyon begins with a prologue where a Wraith female is being hunted and then is killed. Chapter 1 begins with our team and another team Gating to a planet and almost immediately being attacked by Wraith. It’s insinuated that this second wave of Wraith are there to find out what happened to the others.

A mysterious group comes to the Atlantean’s aid and ‘invites’ them to join them at their home. It isn’t really a question and being intrigued by a people that can take out Wraith, and hoping for allies, they go.

Halcyon is the planet’s name and is ruled by their rescuer, Lady Erony’s, father. The people of Halcyon are a brutal and warlike race.

They hunt the Wraith, not the other way around, and strength, honor and logical thinking is everything.

Another example of those with power abusing it, the nobles have no intention of letting their positions be questioned. Magnate Daus rules with a narrow vision that makes his life easier while the people below suffer from a disease they call bone-rot. Keeping his position of power is easy, since he has the most Hounds to fight for him when he commands it.

Our team have a very bad feeling about Halcyon, but other than thinking themselves superior to the non-nobles, there really isn’t anything they can point at to explain the feeling.

Except for the fact that Lady Erony’s group took live Wraith with them when they returned to Halcyon.

Refusing to answer their questions about the Wraith makes things even more tense, but Weir has ordered them to proceed and try to make friends while also hammering out trade deals and such. Sheppard is not happy with being the delegate in this situation but does as he’s told.

At first.

When the team is brought out to see how disputes are settled between nobles, when other methods don’t work, they are horrified to discover that the nobles pit live armies against each other in a bloody game of capture the flag, to decide whose honor will be avenged.

Ronon Dex has had enough of war and decides that the only way to stop the people below from being slaughtered for some worthless nobles ‘honor’, is to capture the flags himself. Sheppard is forced, via a not so subtle threat, to join Ronon on the ground and bring him back under control. Capturing the flags is easy enough when Ronon’s cleared the path already and has them in his hands.

But the rules are not so simple and Magnate Daus takes a legal bribe that allows one side to unleash its Hounds onto the battlefield to decide once and for all the victor.

Ronon, Sheppard and the Magnate’s right-hand man are forced to fight the Hounds if they want to live. Succeeding is the only option, but there’s something eerily familiar about how the Hounds fight. Both Ronon and Sheppard find out why when all the Hounds are dead and they remove a helmet to reveal a Wraith.

Thinking their control collars and an Alteran dolman, that interferes with the Wraith’s natural mental abilities, are keeping the Wraith subservient, the Halcyon people have been hunting, capturing and using the Wraith for hundreds of years and think they are superior because of this.

The Atlanteans are not so stupid.

When Rodney is taken hostage after exploring the dolman, that has a ZPM inside, Magnate Daus makes Sheppard an offer.

Kill a Wraith inside an enclosure, that has thus far eluded everyone who went in after him, and Rodney would be returned. With no other choice Sheppard agrees.

The Wraith, known as Scar, is not so easily taken down.

Capturing Teyla and killing another soldier, Scar uses a control collar on Teyla and forces Sheppard to leave Ronon behind and take him, and a few of his pack, wherever he wants to go.

Which turns out to be the dolman that’s been slowly losing power and influence over the years. Destroying it will free the Wraith’ minds and allow them to retake their place at the top of the food chain.

Rodney is in his own bit of trouble as Magnate Daus has been waking Wraith from a downed Hive for years to use as his Hounds. Problem is, with the Wraith all waking now, they can’t stop the automatic sequence from releasing all the Wraith. Though Rodney would certainly like to try, with the destruction of the dolman, the Wraith are able to take back control of the Hive and it begins to lift off.

He can either stop the Wraith from waking or stop the Hive.

Choosing the latter, he and a Halcyon scientist try to destroy the ship, but Magnate Daus kills the scientist, leaving Rodney alone to finish the job.

The Daedalus comes to the rescue once again. Transporting Sheppard and his team aboard before Scar hits the last command to destroy the Hive. The Halcyon people, now lead by Lady Erony as her father was killed by Scar, are happy to call the Atlanteans friends and follow Lady Erony as she dismantles the hierarchy and institutes a more democratic system.

Why was this book so good?

Because of Scar!

One of the things that would have been fantastic about the show is if we had been given more of an insight into the Wraith. This book gives me just what I was looking for in that regard.

Scar is devious, having lived for so long without going mad because of the dolman is a testament to his standing aboard the Hive before it was forced down into sleep so long ago. His pack are nothing more than mindless animals, but they still do as they’re told which is all he needs until the machine is gone and they can regain their senses.

The Magnate and his family being able to keep the Hive secret for so long just made the intrigue so much better because they were literally poking the hornet’s nest for years and thought they were safe. And I adored being given a look into the mind of a Wraith and can’t wait for later books cause, ya know, Todd.

That the book began with a Wraith female and there was another one on the Hive makes it seem like there aren’t as few of them as the show leads you to believe. Outside of Queens, there must be more females that don’t gain the mental prowess a Queen needs to control a Hive.

All in all, SO DANG GOOD!!

Meet ya later when we discuss Entanglement.

Till then!

Posted in Blog, Book Review, Reviews

StARe 3 – Reliquary

I see you have returned. You must like me!

Another awesome read happened and it happened to be Stargate Atlantis: Reliquary. Here’s the info.

Stargate Atlantis: Reliquary
SGA #2
ISBN: 9780954734374

And on we go!

This book comes after Season 1, Episode 12: The Defiant One.

Sheppard, McKay and two other scientists travel fifteen hours to see if they can get an Alteran defense weapon on-line. They can’t because there’s no breathable air on the weapon and they don’t have suits with them. Before they turn around though an SOS from the planet draws their attention and, after wheedling and cajoling with Weir, they go see what they can find out.

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Posted in Blog, Book Review, Reviews

StARe 2 – The Chosen

Hello squeeks and peeps!

This week we will be focusing on Stargate Atlantis: The Chosen. Which comes after Season 1, Episode 11: The Eye.

Stargate Atlantis: The Chosen
SGA #3
ISBN: 9780954734381

Of course, a lot has happened since book 1 and a quickish recap is in order if you still haven’t binge watched Atlantis yet.

SGA 1 has been through the gate countless times looking for allies, information on the Wraith and what they’re up to, and searching for ZPM’s. Episode 10 and 11 have Atlantis being bombarded by a massive hurricane that covers a good percentage of the planet.

The city had to be evacuated because they weren’t sure Rodney’s idea would work and didn’t want people dying if it didn’t. However, the Genii (potential allies who turned on Sheppard and his team in an attempt to steal C4 and other weapons) heard about the storm and took the opportunity to Gate in and take the city.

Sheppard is able to get the city back but at a cost.

He not only almost single handedly takes out the Genii soldiers, but is able to activate the Gate’s shield to stop reinforcements from coming in. This weighs on his mind for a long time because that single action killed over 20 people instantly. Of the many things he is, Sheppard is a soldier, and as he says in the books, the reason a soldier fights is for peace.

The leader of the Genii, Kolya, will be coming back later on several occasions. As much as I hate him, he does bring us Todd. Which we won’t get into here for obvious reasons.

Now, onto the book!

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Posted in Blog, Book Review, Reviews, TV Review

StARe 1 – Rising

Alrighty, here it is. Enjoy my StARe! (See what I did there? StARe? Stargate Atlantis Review? Am I funny or what?)

My review of Stargate Atlantis Season 1, Episode 1, Rising Part 1 & Episode 2 Rising Part 2 and the accompanying novelization titled Stargate Atlantis: Rising… I’m seeing a pattern here.

Stargate Atlantis: Rising
SGA #1
ISBN: 9780954734350

(Most of the books can only be found used now or at conventions. The ebooks should be readily available via any ebook seller, I know Barnes & Noble and Amazon for sure, but you can always ask on social media for help finding them.)

If you’ve never watched an episode of Stargate a day in your life what even are you doing?

Continue reading “StARe 1 – Rising”
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