So What Are you Reading?: Generations

[Admiral_Young]

Finally started reading Plagues of Night and am going through The Dark Knight Manual, which is incredibly awesome!

[BritishSeaPower]

Still only about 2/3 of the way through The Assassination Game, a busy week threw me off. But I'm starting IDW's Star Trek: Volume 2. I actually read the "Operation: Annihilate!" adaptation in issues, but decided to jump to trade-waiting on it. Wish IDW packaged these in groups of 6, though.

As going to start Batman: Earth One. I've heard mixed things, but we'll see.

[Allyn Gibson]

BritishSeaPower wrote:

---

As going to start Batman: Earth One. I've heard mixed things, but we'll see.

I had to read it twice. The first time I was annoyed with it, the second time I "got" it.

I think it's okay. It's a very complete, even radical, reboot of Batman, which was the root cause of my annoyance -- things that I've taken for granted for twenty years or more were either slightly off or totally wrong. It's the polar opposite of Grant Morrison's approach to Batman, basically. Morrison assumes everything is true and makes it work. Johns doesn't assume anything and builds his story, his characters, and his universe from the ground up with no preconceptions.

The second time, the time I "got" it, I thought it worked. It read like what I think a Geoff Johns blueprint for a Batman movie reboot would be.

[Reanok]

I just finished Startrek Raise the dawn and started reading the novel Night Circus.

[Smellincoffee]

Christopher wrote:

---

The episode certainly wasn't based on the book. The makers of the show were too busy making the show to pay much attention to the books, and if they had based it on a book, they surely would have credited the original author, otherwise it would've been plagiarism.

It's very, very common for different writers to come up with similar ideas, especially when working on the same series.

That's a fair point. And I suppose if Cardassians are involved, including Garak at some point is almost unavoidable.


While I'm still finishing Station Rage, I intend to buy a few books this weekend...Plagues of Night, Forgotten History, and perhaps a Vanguard novel.

[BritishSeaPower]

Finished Starfleet Academy: The Assassination Game tonight. Really enjoyed it. Best of those YA books, hands down. I hope Mr. Gratz gets to write some more of them or he gets brought up to the "Big Leagues" of Trek books. I think I'll talk about the book some more over in its dedicated thread.

I also finished Star Trek: Volume 2. The adaptation was pretty good, but as has been my complaint since the IDW series started, I think 2-issue adaptations make the stories rushed and quite a bit happens "off-screen" which can be odd. The "Operation: Annihilate!" art was good, but many of the characters never opened their mouths, which is disorienting with a speech bubble pointing right at their mouths. The "Vulcan's Vengeance" story was all right. Rushed, a lot of bits that didn't go anywhere, a lot of convenient turns. And the art was very loose. Sometimes you had spot on characters, then you have a panel where Kirk's eyes are crossed and his mouth is contorted as if he were having a stroke. As well, Security chief Zhara completely changes over the course of three issues. In the first half of "O:A!" she's got dark, closely cropped hair. In the second issue she calls in an alert from the transporter room but Janice Rand is drawn into the scene instead of her. And then "VV" she's got brown hair and the Rand-Beehive." It's weird, especially since Uhura doesn't do much over the two stories, that they couldn't be consistent with the only other talking female in the book.

Allyn, thanks for the advice on Batman: Earth One. I haven't started it, but hope to get to it tonight. Much of what I've heard is that it at times feels very in-reference-y or that Johns throws a wink to readers familiar with the character and they don't always land well. We'll see, though! I didn't really care for JMS's Superman: Earth One so I'm being a little more trepidatious with this one.

As for reading, I think I'm going to go back and read Starfleet Academy: The Gemini Agent.I skipped over it when it came out and feel like I should just read now. This way I've technically read everything to come out of the NuTOS universe.

[Paris]

I just finished Geoff Johns & Gary Frank's first volume of Batman: Earth One and have picked up David Mack's Rise Like Lions. I read the novella of Sorrows of Empire and really liked it, so I've picked up the sequel. Maybe even read the full Sorrow novel after i'm done...

[Cap'n Crunch]

I finished The Quiet Place the other day. I also read the first volume of Eureka comics the last few days. I'm now reading Typhon Pact: Plagues of Night.

[Kertrats47]

Just wrote my review of Star Trek #78: The Rings of Tautee by Dean Wesley Smith and Kristine Kathryn Rusch.

Currently reading Star Trek #21: Uhura's Song by Janet Kagen. I'm really enjoying the world-building in this novel, but I'm getting a strong "Mary-Sue" vibe in the form of Evan Wilson...

[Christopher]

Kertrats47 wrote:

---

Currently reading Star Trek #21: Uhura's Song by Janet Kagen. I'm really enjoying the world-building in this novel, but I'm getting a strong "Mary-Sue" vibe in the form of Evan Wilson...

A lot of people say that about her, but I think she's more in the vein of a type of story that was common in '60s and '70s television, an episode that was built around a character study of a featured guest star. Since anthologies were the epitome of classy drama in the '50s and '60s, even continuing shows aspired to an anthology flavor, and so they often had episodes that centered on the guest stars with the regulars in more of a supporting role. Wagon Train, the series that Roddenberry presented to network execs as his model for Star Trek, made that its trademark; most of its episodes were actually titled "The [Guest Character of the Week] Story." And you can see it to an extent in TOS episodes like "The Corbomite Maneuver" (largely Dave Bailey's story), "Mudd's Women" (mostly centered on Eve), "Charlie X," "Metamorphosis" (about Cochrane and the Companion), etc.

Since that type of guest-focused storytelling is less common these days, people tend to forget that a Mary Sue is not just a guest character who steals the attention from the leads -- it's a guest character who's badly written and doesn't deserve to be the center of attention, a character who's asserted to be impossibly wonderful and worshipped by all the other characters but isn't actually interesting or smart or appealing at all. Evan Wilson is portrayed as a pretty gifted and fascinating person, but she's well-enough written to earn that portrayal, because she really is intriguing to the reader (IMHO, at least), not just alleged to be intriguing to the other characters.

[Kertrats47]

Hmm, thanks Christopher, that puts it in perspective a bit. I'll try to read it in that context a bit more from here on out.

[Sho]

I forgot who it was, but one of the regulars on this board is a really big fan of Uhura's Song and mentioned trying to convince the author to pen another novel. Therin maybe? I think it was brought up in that thread about past authors I opened ... *steps away to dig it up* ... ah, here: http://www.trekbbs.com/showpost.php?...90&postcount=4

[Greg Cox]

Sho wrote:

---

I forgot who it was, but one of the regulars on this board is a really big fan of Uhura's Song and mentioned trying to convince the author to pen another novel. Therin maybe? I think it was brought up in that thread about past authors I opened ... *steps away to dig it up* ... ah, here: http://www.trekbbs.com/showpost.php?...90&postcount=4

Sadly, Janet Kagan passed away a few years ago, but her non-Trek novel, Mirabile, is worth reading.

[WarsTrek1993]

Finished Raise The Dawn, it was impressive!

Now I'm reading Darth Maul: Shadow Hunter. Maul was a total throwaway character in TPM, so it was good to finally see him get some extra showtime in this book.

[BritishSeaPower]

Finished Starfleet Academy: Gemini Agent over the past few days. Fastest I read one of the SA books. Plot's paper thin and at times makes no sense. There are some things that should be setting people off right away that are glossed over. Barba does throw in some nice TrekLit references, such as having an Andorian Zhen show up and actually bridging Enterprise's and DS9's Section 31s in a way. But since the book was spot on with continuity in the main universe, my eyebrow quirked when Kirk and a security officer are talking about the SF Giants. Baseball's extinct! (That's not an actual ding against the book, just a cute little thing I noticed.) It's probably the second best book for characters, but one of the worst for plotting. The book just sort of ends. There easily could have been another 30 or so pages about the War Games.

Hoping to start A Time to Kill tonight. I've been told these next three books are some of the best in TrekLit, so I'm quite excited.