A Legacy of Stars

Dark Quest marketing director Ackley-McPhail (the Eternal Cycle trilogy) collects 13 science fiction stories and five poems, most previously published, on a wide range of subjects: first contact between strange aliens and mercenaries in “Building Blocks,” battles with killer robots in “Zinn Mensch,” blood vengeance in “Travellin’ Show,” and underlings struggling with corrupt co-workers in “Carbon Copy,” one of the seven stories linked to the Alliance Archives Adventure sequence. Also included are story introductions by well-known authors such as Jack McDevitt, Brenda Cooper, and Paul Levinson. A foreword from Ackley-McPhail’s husband, Mike McPhail, mostly draws attention to McPhail having initially acquired four of the stories for various Dark Quest anthologies. Ackley-McPhail’s prose is dull; she relies heavily on stock settings, characters, and props; and her plots are stultifyingly banal, feeling more like the first efforts of a talented amateur than the polished work of a prolific author with nearly 20 years’ experience in publishing. (Jan.)