Living Jackson Magazine :: Trinity on Tylos

Trinity on Tylos

A Review by Malcolm R. Campbell

Venice Dylenski dangles precariously over a cliff on a thin cord on Gamma Delta IV while her survey team calls for help in a scene we confront on the first page of Pamela J. Dodd’s adventure novel Trinity on Tylos.

While this climbing accident isn’t the last life-threatening situation the marine major faces on her ship’s deep space mission, it is the last time she’ll helplessly wait for anyone to rescue her—especially her husband, Steve!

At 26, Venice is the youngest member of the executive staff of the colonization ship Excalibur. Under pressure to keep up with the more experienced officers, she often wonders if the Excalibur’s Captain McPherson gave her the assignment to ensure Steve would sign on as the executive officer.

“Major Dylenski,” Captain McPherson tells her, “you are no doubt aware that if the officer in charge of the landing party had not been your husband that you would have been severely reprimanded. You must not only do your job; you must set an example for the crew to follow.”

Venice’s hands were badly cut by the climbing rope during the accident. Swollen and bandaged, they serve in the days that follow as the highly visible reminder of her misjudgment on the surface of the survey planet.

Dodd gives her readers little time to catch their breath and her complex heroine few moments to nurse her damaged ego. Our collective attention is soon diverted by the arrival of the Archeonite III, an alien ship with superior fire power and with Azareel, a captain following an expedient plan.

Venice raises security concerns when the friendly Archeons request a cooperative information exchange. Captain McPherson refuses to listen and soon finds Venice and enlisted crewmember Alathea Duke taken captive, then spirited away aboard the alien ship to parts unknown.

We know from the novel’s back cover blurb that Azareel captures two females for use as surrogate mothers to rebuild an Archeon race decimated by plague. Dodd’s intent, then, isn’t surprising the reader with this event, but weaving a fast-paced story about how a strong, multifarious heroine copes with her abduction.

Venice is a duty-oriented marine with a high degree of skill in martial arts, weapons and tactics. Azareel, from a military tradition where women are viewed as the spoils of war, believes his single-minded mission of creating an Archeon colony on Tylos justifies any means necessary for success.

He tells Venice and Alathea, “whatever roles you played on your old ship were insignificant compared to being the mothers of a new Archeon race.”

While Alathea, who served as an agricultural technician on the Excalibur, shows early signs of adapting to her circumstances, Venice remains openly defiant. In her opinion, her responsibilities are to destroy the Archeonite III, communicate with the Excalibur, and escape—or, if necessary, to die fighting.

Azareel mockingly tells her she’s playing the role of the oppressed captive and Alathea urges her to face facts and not make life needlessly more dangerous.

“With all due respect, Major, we’re stuck,” Alathea tells Venice. “We might as well get used to the idea of staying here for a long time.”

In Trinity on Tylos, Dodd reprises and expands upon the captive woman theme she explored in her first novel. While Angela Donaldson in The Gift Horse comes from a dismal existence of poverty and loss and makes, as Dodd once said, “a deal with her devil” in exchange for a better life, Venice Dylenski sacrifices a rewarding career and a happy marriage to save the lives of others.

When he reprimanded her, McPherson told Venice she had “a vital job to do.” In that job, she’s a natural. But as Azareel’s ship carries her away, Venice knows she has exchanged the rocky precipice of Gamma Delta IV for the emotional precipice of an unfamiliar role in a cloudy future.

In her very readable novel, Dodd gives us a strong female protagonist whose journey to the forbidding planet of Tylos is more than a trip through space. It’s also an inner journey, one in which Venice will learn if she has what it takes to be more than a mere survivor.

Malcolm R. Campbell is the author of The Sun Singer. He and his wife, Lesa, live in Jefferson where they are active with the Historic Preservation Commission, Better Hometown and the Crawford W. Long Museum.

Jefferson native Pamela J. Dodd is a former Jefferson High School teacher, a mother, and a long-time lover of spectacular literature. For more information, visit her Web site at www.pamelajdodd.com