Raymond Benson has done a superb job with his own Bond series,combining the modern film Bond with the classic Fleming Bond.(its a shame that it appears that he won't be doing anymore)His novels are all fast paced entertaining reads.His novelisations of the Brosnan series have almost always improved on the movies-adding alot of character moments as well as a great deal of depth and dimension to the villians.This one,however,reads like a great action movie.The pace is relentless as it is basically one giant action scene after another following a shocking beginning where we see 007 as we have never seen him before.Now as a movie this will be alot of fun to see but as a novel it seems to be over much too quickly(I finished it in a day). The character moments Benson usually puts in his own series were few and far between because of the incredible pace of the story . While this works on film you end up missing these moments on the printed page and waiting for a little break in the action.That being said,this is filled with one incredible scene after another.In fact,you end up smiling and cheering just as you would in the movies.The action sequences are all original and exciting and 007 is better than ever...coming through the most harrowing experience he has ever been through on film.If this plays out as written it will easily be Brosnans best Bond film to date.Benson captures the feelings of a "Bond movie on paper" perfectly.This may not have the depth of his original stories but it has all the fun of the movies.
If this is his last Bond novel he has gone out in style.

Raymond Benson has been a Bond fan for years. That being said, Benson took the film's script and elevated the material to a point where it at least has plausibility and some style perhaps out of respect to the memory of Ian Fleming. Also, the focus in the novel is on James Bond, not computer generated stunts (that's rather hard to do in a book any way you look at it). This is a great improvement over the various plot elements and this time out they work. I was pleased that we got something good out of this last Bond movie.

Raymond Benson returns with quite possibly some of his best writing ever! After the okay-good The Man With The Red Tattoo, he returns to write Die Another Day in a superb style of description, action and nonstop 007 adventure! Rumors are flying that he may be giving up his role as the 007 author, if it is true he leaves with a bang.

Die Another day begins with Bond in Korea to disrupt the evil Colonel Moon and his henchman Zao. They are purchasing diamonds and have a great deal of deadly machinery in his demilitarized zone. Bond infiltrates the zone to result in a explosion of diamond shrapnel scarring Zao's face and a deadly chase with Colonel Moon of hovercrafts over a minefield. Bond is captured by General Moon, (the colonel's father and is held responsible for his death. A year passes by with Bond in a tortured state being traded for freedom with Zao. M meets Bond and tells him of her dissapointment in him. Bond then searches for Zao down in Cuba and meets NSA agent Jinx. Bond discovers that Zao has been under gene therapy to alter his face in a clinic on a nearby island. Bond traces the island to a one Gustav Graves, an eccentric millionaire that owns diamonds and has a local ice palace in Iceland. Bond challenges Graves to fencing in the Blades Club, where Bond wins and meets the ultra-cool icy princess Miranda Frost, Graves personal assistant. Bond is equipped by Q and sent out to Iceland by M. While in Iceland Bond meets up with Jinx and discovers the Gustav Graves has created the ultrapowerful satellite Icarus, which canharness the Sun's power. He later confronts Graves where he makes a startling discovery that Miranda Frost(while earlier claiming to be a British agent) is now against Bond. A magnificent chase enthralls with Zao, Graves and Frost running Bond down. Jinx and Bond discover that Colonel Moon is in fact Gustav Graves the same person. Jinx and Bond find out that Graves is going to destroy his demilitarized zone with the Icarus in order for the takeover of all nearby countries to make Korea an unstoppable power. Bond kills Zao in the ice palace and rescues the stranded Jinx, where they aboard Graves plane to stop the crazy Korean. Jinx and Miranda Frost break out into a exciting thrilling fencing fight with Frost succumbing to the sword of Jinx. Bond and Graves battle on the now crashing plane, where Graves is killed by being pulled into the planes wing. Bond and Jinx escape via helicoptor aboard the plane. Meanwhile we are allowed to see thanks to the 3-D machine the ultimate fantasy of Moneypenny to love James Bond. Bond and Jinx safely land in a temple where the story ends.

Raymond Benson has truly written a masterpiece here. All bond fans will love the exciting tale of James Bond 007!

This is an interesting work, though not one of James' best (I recommend "The Black Tower" or "The Skull Beneath the Skin" for that). The setting was great, a spooky Victorian mansion converted into a nursing school - this choice of location provided plenty of atmosphere and a restricted list of suspects.

The plot was well constructed, with the clues spaced just right, although I feel that James did cheat in a couple places. I dislike her tactic of having a character ask a question of another character, then not letting us see the answer, in order to keep from us information that the protagonist now knows. She did that in at least one place here and I find it annoying. The loose ends are tied up neatly and there's a surpising and very well done epilogue.

The characterization is where James falls down a bit. This is one of her early Dalgliesh books, and I think it shows, as most of the characters are more sketches than real persons. A big revelation about one character's past, near the end of the book, comes as something of a "so what?", since we don't really care about the character. Nurse Goodale was the only one I felt really stood out as a person. Even Dalgliesh seems to swing between supercilious and nasty, and he doesn't come off as a character a reader would care to spend more time with.

These flaws aside, I'd glady recommend this to any fan of the series, although it's not a good introduction for a non-fan ("A Mind to Murder" is perhaps best for that). Not on par with her best, but pretty good overall.

Adam Dalgliesh investigates the murders of two young student nurses at Nightingale House, the former by intra-gastric poisoning, the second by nicotine poisoning. His detective work leads him into a chilling world of deception, long-buried secrets, repressed sexuality, and blackmail among an almost exclusively female list of suspects.

This is James at her most provocative, her most intriguing, and her most thrilling. The plot is one of her most brilliantly conceived--not only are there plenty of well-laid clues and red herrings, but the murderer's true identity comes as a surprising twist. James' plot construction is even more sound than usual--everything fits perfectly. But anyone who reads a James novel knows that there's more to her books than just a satisfying mystery. She offers the reader a lot to think about--the motive behind the murders is both shocking and thought-provoking, and Dalgliesh is written with great sensitivity and complexity as a human being! . His subordinate, Sergeant Masterson, is a rather unsavory but interesting character, and the suspects are all extremely well-developed and vividly drawn. The setting, a dark, lonely nurse training school with a frightening history, creates atmosphere and adds suspense to an already suspenseful plot.

Read this book--you won't be disappointed.

I was not able to put "Shroud for a Nightingale" down. I have ready many of PD James' books. This one tops my list. Her character portraits are superb and so is the action. The cast of characters are diverse. The setting sinister. I'd call this a must read!

In recent years, a variety of sentimental books like The Lighhouse Keeper have entranced readers everywhere. And this title is no exception for those who enjoy this genre. The reader is consumed by a wonderful story based around a gentle man's past experiences as a once proud lighthouse keeper to a stoic man now suffering from a terminal illness. In a series of flashbacks we learn of his early tragedy, how he came to be a lighhouse keeper and about his powerful love for a woman who becomes his wife.

For those who enjoy windswept beaches and flashbacks to the past, pick up this book. You will enjoy the read and remember it for sometime.

I saw this beautiful cover in the store , totally unfamiliar with
the work of James Michael Pratt. This work is a great love story.
It tells of love between man and woman , yes of course. The love
of members of family bridging generations is the story. Peter O' Banyon 's oral legacy to his daughter Kathleen is touching to
the reader and teaches us lessons in life. The story for his
daughter, telling of suffering , love , lives , and strength is
a family legacy. There are many people who would relish knowing
their first hand family stories. Having a close family member tell their story and the story of those before them is truly a
valuable legacy to be cherished. The setting of the lighthouse
was a beautiful image to the theme of the story as it taught the
idea of strength and faith as one faced life tragedy. This novel
rates very high on the list of my favorites.

This delightful story of personal and family trials, tribulations and triumphs will appeal to all readers. James Pratt allows his readers to share his characters' lifes as he introduces the reader to Peter, Billie, Anna, Katie and Kathleen. Life is a struggle but it also has its rewards. As I was reading, I felt empathy for the characters. I laughed with them; I cried with them. I experienced their misery and I experienced their joy. Seldom has a book pulled at my heart and emotions as much as "Lighthouse Keeper" did. James Pratt has not just written a wonderful story but also a book that teaches a moral. I'm glad that i read "Lighthouse Keeper".

What ever your feelings on reengineering (dramatic process improvement or excuse for downsizing payroll) Hammer and Champy reinvigorate the topic for the new millenium in this clear revision. Learning from their mistakes (they move process to the front instead of radical in their four word description), they reintroduce the goal of making major gains in reducing wasted work and time. Their case studies read as a list of comeback stars in corporate America and show that great strides can be made and do pay off. Just as Six Sigma is trying to reengineer TQM for a new economic reality, this book once again brings process improvement to the forefront of business management conciousness.

I have read this book first time when I did a course in Business Process Reengineering. It gave me a very good introduction to the subject, history of reengineering and how companies are affected by the three C's Customers, Competetion, Change. Then I have read Beyond Reengineering by the same author. There is no doubt , both are a must reading for every person/company who would like to survive working in today's competitive way of earning livelihood, doing business and keeping fit.

It may sound, the Middle Managers / Supervisors are the most vulnerable group who are targets for change from the operational role perspective, in a BPR exercise.

I came to know recently, that several BPR projects fail also due to lack of proper Knowledge Management in companies. Might be the authors would include effective knowledge management strategies in BPR projects in the future release of their books. Knowledge management in terms of managing tacit , explicit knowledge of a company is also important. When we are reengineering, we are also reengineering the knowledge(creation, (re)distribution, evaluation aspects of knowledge) of a company. Also aspects such as competetive intelligence is worth considering.

James Champy and Michael Hammer published a key book in 1990. It is called Reengineering the Corporation. They define reengineering as "fundamental rethinking and radical redesign of business processes to achieve dramatic improvement in critical measures of performance". Allowing for the excesses of words such as dramatic improvement and fundamental rethinking - everyone wants to sell a book and get some consulting revenue! - what Champy and Hammer are reminding us is that the human relations movement in management is only one part, and that scientific management still has a role. Frederick W. Taylor, credited as being the originator of scientific management, may be used as a bogey-man to scare children but there was and is sense in what he said. The same goes for Champy and Hammer.
Their view is that any organisation needs to review its processes - indeed the very way that it works - to ensure that what is does is necessary and central to its needs, skills and concerns. Process engineering has a long and respectable history. There are ways to do things that are more effective than others. Processes in organisations do become cumbersome over time and many existing processes in any organisation are probably unnecessary. A UK based organisation, known as B&Q, once had a room set aside next to the CEO's office in which worked the Cut the .... committee. Their job was to review every system, process, report and control in the company to ensure that it was really necessary and really did add value. Systems and processes are like cupboards, basements and lofts. They can contain all sorts of unnecessary junk and garbage and need regular review. (They do not often get it!)
However, Champy and Hammer want to go well beyond the analysis and improvement of business processes. They want organisations to take a completely fresh look at what they want to achieve and how they achieve it. They argue for a blank sheet of paper as the start point. Such an approach would call into question everything that the organisation does now. Despite their critics - and there are very many indeed - most organisations spend too much energy on operations not central to their core activities. Most organisations have too much overhead. Champy and Hammer's fresh look at least motivates an organisation to examine everything and to hold nothing as a given.
Their critics are from the human relations movement side of management thinking. Henry Mintzberg calls reengineering, "just the same old notion that new systems will do the job". The truth may be that the relevance of more or less ml_topi_mngt_hrmv human relations movement and of more or less scientific management is situational. Some companies are more systems than others. In some companies, constant and daily repetition of quality is vital and such companies are like systems. McDonalds is the classic case. Stuart-Kotze has argued that organisations and leadership can have three orientations - Inspiration, People empowerment and System (he calls them task, people and system) - and that the relevance of each depends upon the organisation's situation.
Perhaps the main problem with reengineering has been that it is seized upon by the numbers people and used as a justification for staff reduction. Perhaps also every new idea, or re-statement of an old one as in the case of reengineering, is that they are taken to be the whole truth instead of part of it. New ideas are sold by academics and consultants as the total answer. Reeingineering is one of a series of such total answers from organisation and methods to participative management, to human asset accountancy, to MbO (Management by Objectives), to empowerment and TQM (Total Quality Management), all of which are highly respectable contributions to the art of management but none of which is the only answer.

Michael Cunningham's "Flesh and Blood" is in some ways a unique book. It is not the choice of the subject matter, a gripping family saga that starts with a young Greek immigrant and his Italo-American sweetheart and ends in the mist of the distant future, some 30 years from now. It's not even the vivid characters that populate this saga, characters that are in most cases complex and interesting enough to become almost real in one's mind's eye. What makes this book very special is the narrator voice, a voice that lifts mundane events that happen to regular people to an upper sphere, where those events and protagonists acquire a magic quality that is unlike anything else I read. It is the use of a highly original metaphoric language that enevlops the narrative with something that is almost poetry that makes this book a joy to read. My feeling is that Cunningham (perhaps because of his young age) has a better access to younger characters than to older ones, and in some cases the older characters lose some of their vividness and become more flat. Otherwise - this is an excellent book.

Having read this one several years ago, I was looking forward to coming back and rediscovering it, and I certainly wasn't disappointed. This is an absolutely gorgeously written novel, full of many, many insights into the human condition. Sex, family ties, loyalty, the immigrant experience, HIV/AIDS, generational differences, is all beautifully portrayed in Cunningham's beautiful portrait of American life. He has exploded the American dream in this gritty saga of the Stassos family, founded by Constantine, an ambitious Greek immigrant, and his Italian wife Mary. As Constantine ruthlessly pursues his fortune, his three children are caught between his fierce demands for family loyalty and his volatile temper, and what a temper it is!

This book is just so rich in vivid details of family life, and so masterfully crafted with a narrative voice of great emotional power and intensity. The words just ebb and flow, as they role off the page, and you just have to keep reading as each particular drama unfolds. I especially liked the characterization of Will, as he grows and matures and gradually comes out in gay life, and his strained and tenuous relationship with his father is portrayed so genuinely and vividly. In fact, all the characters, are just SO multi-faceted and multi-dimensional. Cunningham has a true gift for character and expressing the intricate nuances of everyday life.

A great work of literature from a fine writer.

Michael

This is quite simply one of the finest books I've ever read. Cunningham has a fantastic talent for being able to make you empathize with his characters--even the "bad guys." Some people may think there's no real "plot" here, but whether or not that's truly the case, Cunningham does such a wonderful job at telling a story, and telling it so beautifully, there's nothing more you could ask for without over-analyzing.

I've passed 3 exams out of 4 so far and honestly I'm disappointed. 70-210 was the last one and it was the best book so far. Server and Network are quite off the real exam topics and were not the most effectife resourse in my training. Another funny thing I've noticed is if you look at each book Amazon.com individual rating it's much lower then the whole set's one.

I beleive that these books are not only for passing the exam but also for learning what is need in those subjects. I used these books and I pass the four core already. I plan to buy the other ones for the electives too. In these books they show you screen shots which are not needed in the exam but you need them if you need to work with W2K products.

Let's face reality, Micro$oft modifed the MCSE 2000 exams so that simple memorization wouldn't be enough to pass (ie: the MCSE NT 4 "Paper Certification"). They were designed for people already in the IT/Computer industry. If you're not working in a tech related field, and you don't have at least SOME access to the hardware/software, you're gonna have issues.

That said, lemme say that these books are perfect for "Real World Techies".

I can't speak about other books in this series, but I can say as a former programmer and current IT Manager (yes, I got coder's burn out), I breezed through the first 4 tests with these books.

Read through one, take a practice test (I'm partial to Transcender), go over the weak spots, take another practice exam just to make sure I got it down, and take the exam.

I averaged one test every two weeks. Passed every time.

This is not to say the tests are easy. Nor are these books "all inclusive" But I manage a 10 server 50+ node 3 domain network that was entirely NT 4/Win98. Doing the migration after I passed the tests was a breeze.

I only needed one other book outside of these 4...and that was because TCP/IP sub netting can be a pain in the butt. (as we are all aware)

If you're a techie, and are thinking about taking the exams, buy this cluster of books. If you're solid with the basics of NT4, you'll never regret buying these.

With a book of this nature, it's hard separating an evaluation of the book from an evaluation of the technology itself -- so I won't try too hard. Yes, the book showed certain evidence of haste in editing and proofing but the errors and weaknesses are not of the type to cause an early adopter to stumble. For instance, there is no index but chapters are distinct enough so that it is easy to find the broad categories.

I eagerly picked up this book after attending a very impressive demo of Curl's capacities. Only skimming the two chapters on Object Oriented Programming, I concentrated on the other chapters most relevant to GUI developers of Web-based applications.

Being an ardent practitioner of the W3C's Cascading Style Sheets technology, I was a bit disappointed in Curl's implementation of styles, which seems clumsy and very limited, even considering the differences in syntax. The authors were very knowledgeable on HTML and CSS issues -- which made their reliance on tables for layout a bit disturbing. Does this indicate that Curl lacks equivalents for CSS positioning and layout properties -- or merely that the authors did not happen to see this as important enough to include in examples?

I was dissatisfied with the paucity of examples and the fact that these examples were not of the type of depth to glue the various parts of Curl together. There were some good examples involving 2-D and 3-D graphics which showed the technology to advantage. However, if your primary interest is in form-based Web applications, the examples were sketchy.

The book really needs to have context. Criticism of Java, HTML, JavaScript, etc. is not enough.
The authors must speak more directly to the questions:
{}Does the Web world need another proprietary, Java-like browser plug-in?
{}Does the Curl organization have what it takes to go against Microsoft's .NET, which has a similar architecture and revenue model?

Answer these questions and you not only have a good book, but a real cool winning tool.

Curl is an important new client-side web language that permits you to create web applications that have the same rich interactive power of local applications (Word, Excel) while reducing the complexity that arises from using multiple existing web languages.

This is currently the BEST Curl book on the market. Ok, it's currently the ONLY Curl book on the market, which makes it Good News/Bad News.

Good News: This book does a great job of providing Curl information and "how to" examples in more depth than the Curl manuals. All the major topics are covered, which makes this a good overall reference book. The graphics architecture section is particularly helpful, where the authors describe the overall graphics framework of Curl. This info would save any new user time when learning Curl.

Bad News: by targeting the early adopter, the book is timely, but shows some warts. Some sections still show and describe the last beta version of Curl. The last beta was mostly similar to the current version of Curl, but the small differences are occasionally distracting. The book also has a number of typos and the class descriptions in one table were copied directly from the (free) Curl manual. As most of the authors are from Curl Corporation, this is not plagiarism, but it is not new information either.

Overall, this book serves its purpose by being the first overall book on Curl. The book itself is a great way to learn Curl in conjunction with the Curl manuals. Despite its warts, it is well worth owning.

[Bruce Mount worked as one of the Technical Reviewers for this book. No, he didn't review the section with typos. :-)]

If you have never been to curls website and looked at this new web technology, you do not know what you are missing. In some ways, you can think of Curl as Flash on steroids, although you can do much more than the eye candy Macromedia is known for.

They call this book an early adopter book, but, since I think Curl is most likely going to go the way of Microsoft Agent, it is more a Bleeding Edge book. Unlike Microsoft Agent, however, I do think this technology is very useful.

So, what is Curl? Curl is a new OO technology for web UI development. In many ways, it is what Java promised, with applets, in its early days. The main difference here is Curl is designed to create dynamic, awe inspiring presentations (ala Flash) without a lot of work (once you learn the language, that is).

The book deals with Curl primarily as a UI development language. Through the chapters you will learn to work with 2d and 3d environments, multimedia and even dynamic client interaction. As with all Wrox books, there are plenty of code examples (all downloadable from the Wrox site).

I really love this book, although I wonder if the technology will ever really take off (Curl engine download is huge if you have a dialup).

Donald James has written a strange novel that I enjoyed, but only in a limited fashion. In it the stage is set in 2015, in Russia. Constantin Vadim has been transferred from Murmansk to Moscow to run a homicide squad, for which he has no experience and little talent. This, however, is a cover, as he in reality is to act as a double impersonating the Vice President of the new country, Leonid Koba, who is really the power behind the throne.

No sooner does Vadim arrive in Moscow than it develops that his assignment as homicide investigator is going to be a real problem for him. For one thing, though his staff is large, most of them only engage in private enterprise for one of his superiors, and he can't complain about this. As a result, his squad of investigators is very small. In addition, there's a particularly nasty serial killer on the loose, nicknamed Monstrum because of the gruesome mutilations he inflicts on his female prostitute victims.

Then there are Vadim's personal problems. He's divorced from an ideologue who joined the losing side in the just-concluded Civil War, an anarchist with a seemingly endless ability to prevaricate and justify her actions, though they are less and less moral as time goes on. Vadim also has an affair with an American official who's helping with the Amnesty program locally in Russia, and a flirtation with the medical examiner. There's a dead son by the ex-wife, who figures in the plot, and various other characters.

One of the problems with this story is the way it's structured. I recently read a Mickey Spillane novel where the author managed to hold the final surprise of the book to the last sentence: there's no pretence of that here, instead the mystery concludes 40 pages from the end of the book, and the author then has to wind up the various plots. It's a bit anti-climactic...

I will say, though, that I did enjoy this book, and would recommend it.

Constantin, our hero, is a very likeable man: still loves his ex-wife, can't get over the death of his only child and makes nearly every woman in the book crave for him! But poor Constantin can't really enjoy all this affection, as he has to find out who kills all the girls, how to survive his friendship with Roy Rolkin, how to drink about 3 litres of vodka per page (more than 400 totally), how to overcome his allergy to V.I. Lenin (the office-cat who loves fishburgers for breakfast) and who his beloved Julia really is. I liked the book for it's surprising twists, the multitude of characters and the setting in post-war Russia of 2015. Downsides are some implausible story- and character developments, and sometimes the language: It's in 1st person and like: "Believe me, brothers, I didn't always look like this" (p1). The 'brothers' bit is repeated on nearly every page!

This book was such a pleasant surprise that I couldn't let go of it for weeks after I read it - and ended up going back to it at least twice since then. Donald James creates an entirely believable landscape in 2015 Moscow, and tells the possible story of the country through the eyes of his characters. I think one of the main reasons why I fell in love with Monstrum was the protagonist character, Vadim, a would-be passive police inspector who just wants to have a quiet job and a quiet apartment where he can miss his dead son and a wife who left him. Instead, through little fault of his own, he gets involved in events seemingly beyond his control. And as he stumbles through life, increasingly becoming more and more involved, making choices and searching for the truth, one can't help but ache for his fate and for the fate of those around him.

Female characters here are also especially interesting - I haven't seen such strong, complex women in many other novels.

Donald James is a historian and that is a great plus for Monstrum: he knows the shifts and spirals of history. The future he imagines for Russia (hopefully it can be avoided) is in tune at once with this country's turbulent past and its ambivalent present. I don't think even after 2015, this novel will possibly be outdated: instead it could be thought of as an alternate reality. A serial killer mystery is overshadowed here by its political connections, and that gives the writer room to go in many surprising directions.

While dark in content, it's ultimately uplifting, and wonderfully so, since after as much as the characters go through in this story, they deserve some hope at the end. This is a mystery with a heart of a romantic quest and a historic novel - and it does honor to all these genres.

I so wish he would write a sequel. There is room enough for it. I probably will be waiting hopelessly for it, but my point is...this book is too good to pass up.

Ticket Home is a wonderfully written book. James Pratt's talent for drawing his readers into the story is remarkable. He presents various aspects of love; from brotherly, to familial, to marital; and invites his readers to discover their own understanding of love and compassion. Ticket Home is a romantic saga and much more.

I have read everyone of James Michael Pratts books and have loved everyone of them. I love the romance between the people in every book. This one touched me and I think I cried almost through the whole book like I do with all of them. Paradise Bay was the same way. I enjoy Mr. Pratts work and will continue reading as long as he writes.

I highly recommend reading this book. I really enjoyed it. It has romance in it, and you also learn about what it was like living during the war. It was a very interesting story. I really enjoyed reading James Michael Pratt's other books too: "The Lighthouse Kepper" and "The Last Valentine." I highly recommend these too! They teach good values and a lot about relationships as well.

Shadows tells the story of a young Bones' marriage and divorce which influenced his decision to join starfleet. I liked getting the history of McCoy which helps explain his personality, and the idea of his meeting up with his wife again after all these years was intriguing. However, as the plot of this book developed it turned out to be a somewhat weak and predictable storyline.

I recommend the book if you're interested in getting a piece of Dr. McCoy's life story, otherwise there are probably better star trek novels out there.

The Starship Enterprise and it's crew are scheduled for retirement when they are sent on one last mission to a hostile planet. McCoy's past becomes the center piece to the diplomatic solution. Friedman explores a deeper understanding of McCoy and gives the reader/star trek fan a greater appreciation for the stubborn doctor. You will see Bones in a different light after reading this book.

Star Trek: Shadows on the Sun written by Michael Jaan Friedman is a flashback novel with the primary character being Dr. Leonard McCoy. McCoy confronts his past in order to save the future, also we read of McCoy's past and why he left a wife behind.

It is refreshing to read a Star Trek book that kicks the James T. Kirk character to the back burner and highlights someone else as the lead character, is the case of "Shadows on the Sun" is just such a book.

We read about the successful young doctor McCoy with a storybook family, but McCoy is in for a betrayal from the woman he loves. Now, McCoy leaves everything he had on Earth and heads for outer space and a career in Starfleet. Everything is fine for forty years as McCoy makes a career in Starfleet, now a crises has developed on the planet of Ssan.

The Ssani have a long history of being assassins and the U.S.S. Enterprise and her crew are sent to negotiate a settlement with a group of mediators aboard. As the Enterprise is on the way McCoy meets his ex-wife after forty years as she is one of the negotiaters.

Of course nothing is going right with the Ssani as a matter of course, they use assassination as a matter of fact and a way of life."Shadow of the Sun" is a Ssani saying that means Sun is the image of viewing the life cycle and Shadow is the individual life. The individual casts a shadow on the the Sun of all life.

The mediators and Captain Kirk are now taken hostage as a Civil War rages and it is upto McCoy to draw from his past to save the negotiations and save the day. The narrative moves very quickly and the prose are true to the characters and McCoy is the stand out hero of the book. If you are a Dr. Leonard McCoy fan this is your book to read as the character of McCoy get fleshed out early in McCoys career through flashbacks.