Spoilers TNG: Indistinguishable From Magic by McIntee Review Thread

Re: Star Trek: TNG: Indistinguishable From Magic Review Thread

I'd have just used "Admiral" at that point. Or possibly "General".

 

Re: Star Trek: TNG: Indistinguishable From Magic Review Thread

I shall keep pitching...

 

Re: Star Trek: TNG: Indistinguishable From Magic Review Thread

^And started off in sciences.

 

Re: Star Trek: TNG: Indistinguishable From Magic Review Thread

I finally found a copy of Indistinguishable magic I had no idea it would be so hard to find in bookstores in my town.I can't wait to finally get some time and read this novel what little bit I read I've liked so far.

 

Re: Star Trek: TNG: Indistinguishable From Magic Review Thread

So I've replaced Tomalak and Proconsul Tomalak with the admiral. So when I get to these parts, it should read as you wanted.

 

Re: Star Trek: TNG: Indistinguishable From Magic Review Thread

I finally finished the book and I really enjoyed it. It felt like a real adventure story. Well done and I hope for more.

 

Re: Star Trek: TNG: Indistinguishable From Magic Review Thread

Truth, styles do not work in spoilers. So please stop trying to use them.

 

Re: Star Trek: TNG: Indistinguishable From Magic Review Thread

how old is that post,

 

Re: Star Trek: TNG: Indistinguishable From Magic Review Thread

It isn't about the age of the post I quoted. It is about the fact that the codes do not work and make the spoiler harder to read. I was just trying to let you know so you won't put in formatting codes that do not work.

 

Re: Star Trek: TNG: Indistinguishable From Magic Review Thread

I just startred reading this book I can't wait to to see how the mystery unfolds when comes to what happened to the NX 07 Intrepid and seeing the return of Scotty and Guinan & Nog.

 

Re: Star Trek: TNG: Indistinguishable From Magic Review Thread

I finished the book yesterday, let everything settle a bit, now I'm ready for some comments.

Overall, I enjoyed IFM. The plot was keeping me interested, which is always imported. There was very nice twists and surprises that kept me going. It was awesome to see some old faces again, though at times I thought one or two less would've worked just as well.

I did have a few issues. The pacing was off at times, for example

Spoiler: spoiler

Scotty being told he probably wouldn't make another fitness exame, thinking wether or not he should retire, deciding to retire, promoting Geordi and Geordi accepting all happened in a few pages

Or

Spoiler: spoiler

at the end, was they're rushing through getting home, tensions are kept up high, you keep on reading, things are happening and everywhere...and a few pages later the novel is over. I would've loved to see the impact of everything that happened on the rest of the crew a bit more

Personally, I feel it could've been drawn out a bit more.

The dialogues at times were confusing sometimes, not being clear who was saying what.
And, personally, I was missing a bit more character development perhaps.

Overall though, a very enjoyable read, and it was great to have a Geordi novell after all these times!!

David, keep up the good work, next time you write a Star Trek novel, I'm reading it.

 

Re: Star Trek: TNG: Indistinguishable From Magic Review Thread

I gave it an outstanding. Loved this book, and really enjoyed where it left everyone at the end. Here's hoping for a follow-up.

 

Re: Star Trek: TNG: Indistinguishable From Magic Review Thread

Altogether an excellent book - it seems like the premiere of a rebooted SCE that got cut off before it really got going (I'm not saying it was before certain people jump down my throat, just that it seemed like it) with the Romulan/Hera section stuck on the end as almost an afterthought.

I liked the "new" characters - Vol needs to make a comeback at some point, even if Carolan suddenly lost all of her coolness (imho) in the jump between the two sections of the book, and we never really got the fleshed out character for Kat that we really should have recieved. It's these that make me think that perhaps we were intended to have more adventures with the crew.

Spoiler: Carolan and Hunt

And was it really absolutely necessary to kill Commander Hunt off. With all the personnel shuffling around, I'm sure that a valid in-universe reason could have been found for appointing Geordi as Captain over Hunt ...

Like others, the science was a smidgeon tough to visualise and understand at points, but otherwise enjoyable and, dare I say it, educational. The one thing that really let the book down was the numerous editing faux pas' - punctuation was missing and, at one point, a Benzite became a Bolian in the space of a few sentences. I know that there has been some upheaval in the editing process at PB - but if I can pick it up and let it pull me out of the story then it should have had the same effect on someone who has been paid to read the book and pick up on these things.

So, there we have it. A good book let down by a shoddy editing job and the feeling that this could have been so much more than it achieved. One of the better Trek books in recent months (it took over a month to read Path to Disharmony but under a week to read this) - it would get a 7/10 if I were scoring it and it could've inched up were the editing issues to have been sorted out.

 

Re: Star Trek: TNG: Indistinguishable From Magic Review Thread

I'll keep pitching, though it seems all the 2012 slots are filled...

 

Re: Star Trek: TNG: Indistinguishable From Magic Review Thread

I definitely want to use Kat again in future. No plans for Vol, though anybody else can use him. Carolan... who knows?

Yes. In fact, in the original pitch he was Challenger's Captain (when it was just a Geordi book, with no Scotty et al), and so that was always going to happen. The trick was to think of a way to deal with Scotty being above him...

 

Re: Star Trek: TNG: Indistinguishable From Magic Review Thread

Finished the book this morning, hot on the heels of Christopher's DTI.

All in all, a nice adventure - I agree with many of the observations made throughout the thread - both positive and not-so positive, so I won't write them all down.

I'm not sure if this is good or bad, but IFM made me think of Engines of Destiny - another "guest star-filled" novel heavily featuring Scotty...

 

Re: Star Trek: TNG: Indistinguishable From Magic Review Thread

I think that Spider Robinson describes "reviewers" as those who give gut feelings about books and "critics" as those who can point to some standards when they make judgments. I voted for "above average" because I turned pages quite quickly after starting the book. It did seem to be harder science fiction than usual ST and reminded me a bit of ANALOG. I am halfway through "Watching the Clock" by Christopher L. Bennett which is affecting my memory of the previous book.

"Indistinguishable from Magic" was a book that I bought at the bookstore especially because of the title. I am a reader of both SF and Fantasy. Recognized the reference to A. C. Clarke.

Are ST books getting longer? I am enjoying the longer books. TOS books were originally quite short, TNG books were a bit longer, and, now, books can be well over 400 pages. IMHO this is a good trend.

It would be interesting to see how DAM works with developing new complete characters for the trekverse. Old characters (which are usually fixed) and temporary characters (which cannot easily be developed) are not the same as more focus on character development (perhaps at the expense of some of the hard sciences).

The references to the criminal subcultures was interesting. Also, do ST characters ever die of 'old age' (of course, there must be a cause) -- but it might be interesting to see one of the characters live a nice retirement and die of old age anyway.

The newer books do seem to address questions that arose from reading the earlier books. It still seems to be a multiverse where astronauts and the military rule with some elitist ideas.

I liked reference to Jean Roddenberry in the discussion. I guess he was quite the humanist and not such a militarist (quasi-military?). I shall have to read his authorized biography sometime soon.

IFM was a very good read. It is often our minds that cannot comprehend the advanced reality and not our machines. Is there a limit to how much a young person can learn and what he may achieve in the ST universe? Do people in the ST universe have eight stages of life as in Erik Erikson's stages?

Anyway, thanks very much for a good read.

 

Re: Star Trek: TNG: Indistinguishable From Magic Review Thread

Sorry about the phonetic error. That is obviously Gene Roddenberry and the book is "Star Trek Creator" by David Alexander (1994) or some such. Perhaps it was an orthographic error too.

 

Re: Star Trek: TNG: Indistinguishable From Magic Review Thread

I think they have been getting longer over the past 5 or 6 years...

I'd definitely like to give that a go!

yeah, that's one of the issues that I wondered about myself, before writing the book...

Glad you liked it

 

Re: Star Trek: TNG: Indistinguishable From Magic Review Thread

It just seems that way because the series focuses so heavily on Starfleet and thus on the things that Starfleet has jurisdiction over. If all you knew of America came from Black Sheep Squadron, M*A*S*H, and JAG, you might think it was a country ruled by the military.

That's why I tried to offer a different, more civilian perspective on things in Watching the Clock, a story told from the perspective of a government agency that has a somewhat adversarial relationship with Starfleet. Keith DeCandido's Articles of the Federation also focuses on the civilian government of the UFP.