It’s just not possible for us to see and review every movie while it’s hot. So one of our readers had a great suggestion: an open thread where those who have seen the new Star Trek can tell us what they thought.

This is it. Tell us what you thought about the female characters and any gender issues or politics the movie raised. And feel free to talk spoilers.

This comment thread WILL CONTAIN SPOILERS.

Mary Janice Davidson’s mermaid series Sleeping with the Fishes (Fred the Mermaid, Book 1) is fantastic. It’s set in Boston (SQUEE!) and features the New England Aquarium quite prominently.Her delightfully snarky half-human protagonist Fred is a marine biologist utterly resistant to the charms of Thomas, the water fellow at the NEA, and Artur, the mer-prince who’s come to woo her. These delightfully silly three must combine forces to save the Harbor from becoming a poo-filled wasteland. Dude. Most romance novels … READ MORE

I’m still on a big YA kick, and went ahead through the first volume of Smith’s Night World collection. Again, Smith’s prose is gorgeously lucid, and the plots are quite fun. My one hesitation is that Smith’s got an on-going motif re: female archetypes that’s kinda making me twitch. The whole DID YOU NOTICE XXX IS SO WILD MAGIK IT MAKES YOUR TEETH HURT? THIS IS WHY THEY’RE IEXPLICABLY SEXY!!! as a means of characterization is making me a leeeeeeeetle … READ MORE

Okay, here’s a quick run through of what I’ve been reading..

Magic Study is the sequel to Poison Study, once again following the adventures of Yelena as she continues to encounter political power plays and navigates her new-found magical powers. Interestingly, she discovers that she’s not at all a super-powered demi-goddess. She’s got some neato powers, sure, but she can’t start fires, which is a pretty common magic, and her insistent desire to be independent still gets her into trouble. She’s def … READ MORE

Spiral Hunt (Evie Scelan) is a brand new 2009 entry into the urban fantasy field. Even the cover is different from the usual leather clad, weapon-totin’, tattooed monster fighting chick on just about every other cover I see on the book shelves. Score one.

See? See? It’s an Irish green, framing Boston on the top of the cover, and the primary motif of the book below that, along with a hint of the main character (or is it?) in there, too.

Boston, … READ MORE

As The World Dies: The First Days

(part one in a zombie trilogy)

I’m an apocalypse junkie. I adore the genre. It doesn’t matter what the cause is—nuclear war and winter, plague, engineered viruses, whatever (okay, I do draw the line at Left Behind) –I enjoy how everyone survives or not in a damaged or empty world.  But it’s not exactly easy to find apocalyptic fiction that stars female protagonists. You know. As the main characters.

Rhiannon Frater’s self-published entry into the zombie … READ MORE

Coraline by Neil Gaiman is a children’s story about a girl who’s ordinary and imperfect, yet cast in the role of a hero on a quest.

This combination is pretty rare. There are a number of good girl characters in literature, but the ones who get to go on adventures tend to be either very very perfect (Nancy Drew, the original Mary Sue) and/or accompanied by boys (Meg, in the A Wrinkle In Time series). I’m not going to spoil Coraline … READ MORE

Righto. Let’s begin with Michael Reaves’ sequel to The Shattered World. In THE BURNING REALM, Reaves takes up with his kooky cast a year later; Amber (symbolic love interest #1) has acquired the rank of Conjuress, Pandrogas has desperately researched a way to prevent the decay of the shattered world’s orbit, and Mirren’s started training as an assassin. Thankfully, Amber, Mirren, and the other female characters emerge as more complete characters. At times, Reaves use of the physical as a … READ MORE

Okay, so Pat Murphy is rapidly becoming my secret author lover. <3* In Nadya, Pat Murphy revitalizes the history of American West through the eyes of young Nadya, a young werewolf woman crossing the Plains with Elizabeth, a proper young woman separated from those she was traveling with, and Jenny, the lone survivor of an Indian attack on her family’s caravan’s.* Murphy uses Nadya to reflect on gender. Because Nadya is a white woman in a world where both of … READ MORE

Falling Woman is, uh, awesome. This oldie but goodie from Pat Murphy features a mother-daughter conflict spanning time and culture. Dr. Elizabeth Butler is a nutty professor focused on the Mayans. She’s a world-renowned archaeologist, and brings a hidden second sight to the profession Indiana Jones made unwarrentedly glamourous. She CAN, in fact, see dead people. However, they generally don’t see her. But then she meets Zuhuy-kak, the dead priestess of a forgotten goddess. Zuhuy wants to see her goddess … READ MORE