TTN: Fallen Gods by Michael A. Martin Review Thread (Spoilers!)

[rfmcdpei]

tomswift2002 wrote:

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With the Andorian warship I kept expecting someone too say that it was one that the Andorians had pulled out of mothballs from over 200 years earlier and just upgraded, but no one said anything (just how long were the Andorians planning on seceding from the Federation). And I don't get how the Andorians could've built new warships without Starfleet knowing about it. The Historians note says that the story starts two weeks after the secession, but the Andorians have fully constructed warships, even though Starfleet would've had a bases and starships in the Andorian system upto the withdrawal; I doubt that the Andorians would've needed a space fleet when they had Starfleet. And the book takes place over the course of no more than to weeks.

The Andorians did have a defense fleet when they were in the Federation. Paths of Disharmony said that half the fleet was destroyed in combat against the Borg, the Therin presumably belonging to the half of the fleet that survived.

[VDCNI]

Just finished this, not massively impressed. The most positive thing I can really say about it is that it was better than STF.

The first chapter was really discouraging and I almost gave up there and then and at the end of the day what was the point of exploring the alien culture initially and then abandoning that plot thread so quickly to the point where the Titan crew don't interact with any of the aliens really and the one character who we spend any time with mostly just gets brutally beaten and then killed off. They matter so little to the plot that it didn't even seem that odd we don't find out what happened to them once the crew have left the planet. That whole strand could easily have been avoided by telling the initial plot set up from the point of view of the AI. As it is it seemed to be there just to tell us how stupid and violent religious people are which even as an atheist felt ever so slightly heavy handed to me!

Then again at least it was a plot unlike the confused mess of the Andorian transporter nonsense which presumably was going for mystery but failed badly. The whole transporter duplicate plot line in Second Chances was always silly but at least the TV episode used it to tell an interesting story - no such luck here. Also if you start a book making clear how far Titan was from Federation space - hence a transwarp ship being sent out to find them then give us some explanation as to how the Andorians got to them so quickly.

Other than that yes Therin was a cartoon villain for the most part, none of the characters have moved on - to be honest it feels like no one has done much with Xin but surely he should have left the Luna incident behind by now or at least not had the hysterical fit he had here, same with Melora and the hologram stuff and yet another book where Tuvok gets into a bad way because of his telepathy, really!? There were also minor irritations - is Vale being 'poached' really something intelligent professional people would worry about a few years on and wasn't the Tholian scarf just a bit clumsy as a plot device!

And yes I'm another person who would like a break from the Titan's doom and gloom - this planet/culture will be destroyed for all time unless we do something now. I'm not quite sure why they needed to make it Titan's fault this time, apart from an extra page or two of woe is me from the crew it didn't seem to make much difference to the main story.

And yet despite that it was better than STF, wow that book was really bad!

[tomswift2002]

rfmcdpei wrote:

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The Andorians did have a defense fleet when they were in the Federation. Paths of Disharmony said that half the fleet was destroyed in combat against the Borg, the Therin presumably belonging to the half of the fleet that survived.

Wasn't that a Strafleet defense fleet?

And don't forget that at one point in FG Riker does say that it appears the Andorians are basing their military stuff on their pre-Federation days. So it doesn't sound like Andor had a separate space fleet during its Federation days.

[rfmcdpei]

tomswift2002 wrote:

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Wasn't that a Strafleet defense fleet?

No.

At the very least, the Andorian defense fleet was described as being separate from Starfleet--it wasn't a Starfleet detachment.

And don't forget that at one point in FG Riker does say that it appears the Andorians are basing their military stuff on their pre-Federation days. So it doesn't sound like Andor had a separate space fleet during its Federation days.

Paths of Disharmony, to the best of my recollection, did state that Andor had a defense fleet during the Federation period, in much the same way that Vulcan does ("Reunification").

There are things Martin can be fairly criticized for, and then there are things that Martin can't be fairly criticized for. Describing the existence of an Andorian fleet that's described in another recent novel as a fault belongs to the second category, IMHO.

[JoeZhang]

VDCNI wrote:

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Then again at least it was a plot unlike the confused mess of the Andorian transporter nonsense which presumably was going for mystery but failed badly.

How can you create mystery with something so obvious? If he telegraphed it anymore than he did, he might as well have called it "Fallen Gods and Andorians who are duplicated via transporter".

[Deranged Nasat]

rfmcdpei wrote:

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No.

At the very least, the Andorian defense fleet was described as being separate from Starfleet--it wasn't a Starfleet detachment.

Paths of Disharmony, to the best of my recollection, did state that Andor had a defense fleet during the Federation period, in much the same way that Vulcan does ("Reunification").

There are things Martin can be fairly criticized for, and then there are things that Martin can't be fairly criticized for. Describing the existence of an Andorian fleet that's described in another recent novel as a fault belongs to the second category, IMHO.

For what it's worth, other novels have shown Federation member worlds with their own ships. In A Time To Be Born, for instance, there are Vulcan, Alpha Centaurian and Benzite ships at the Rashanar Battle Site. Presumably in the later days of the war member worlds were sending their home fleets out to support Starfleet on the front lines.

[Sci]

Deranged Nasat wrote:

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For what it's worth, other novels have shown Federation member worlds with their own ships. In A Time To Be Born, for instance, there are Vulcan, Alpha Centaurian and Benzite ships at the Rashanar Battle Site. Presumably in the later days of the war member worlds were sending their home fleets out to support Starfleet on the front lines.

Which makes sense. If the Governor of the State of Ohio can deploy the Ohio Army National Guard to Cincinnati, and then the President can call that Ohio Army National Guard unit into federal service and deploy it to support U.S. Army troops in Afghanistan, then there's no reason why the Presider of the Andorian Empire couldn't retain the Andorian Imperial Guard under Federation Membership, with the Federation President being able to call Imperial Guard ships into Federation service in times of war.

Also, I wouldn't be too suprised if there were Shran-class starships serving in Starfleet, too. No reason the ship class couldn't have been built for both the Federation Starfleet and the Andorian Imperial Guard during Andor's Federation Membership.

[Christopher]

^Going by Mike Sussman's Archer bio, it appears the Imperial Guard was renamed simply the Andorian Guard after the UFP was founded. Which makes sense, since it wasn't part of an empire anymore.

[Sci]

Christopher wrote:

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^Going by Mike Sussman's Archer bio, it appears the Imperial Guard was renamed simply the Andorian Guard after the UFP was founded. Which makes sense, since it wasn't part of an empire anymore.

Well, Andor: Paradigm established that the Imperial Guard still existed in 2376 -- though, of course, that was 215 years after the founding of the Federation, so there was plenty of time for a name reversion.

And it's questionable how much of an empire Andor's was in any but the most ceremonial, in-name-only sense of the word. Andor: Paradigm established that Andor had been united under a single constitutional monarchy whose throne legally still existed but was left deliberately empty (with the Parliament Andoria and Presider governing in the Empty Throne's name), and there's no indication of any conquered populations prior to the founding of the Federation -- the Andorians didn't even govern the Aenar on their own world, according to ENT's "The Aenar." So I can easily see the Andorian polity's name staying "Andorian Empire" even during Federation Membership, since it seems to be an empire in name only.

[Christopher]

Some of the gaming material says that the Arkenites were subjects of the Andorian Empire before the UFP came along, and that the Andorians sponsored their UFP membership.

[hbquikcomjamesl]

Firstly, I put it as "average." If you want to know "bad," then I commend to your attention some works from near the end of the Bantam era, when every other novel was, well, think of a Yiddish word that rhymes with "trek." Novels like The Starless World, World Without End, and the ever-popular Devil World. For that matter, while I'm perhaps a bit more charitable than most where the works of Marshak and Culbreath are concerned, this opus positively shines in comparison to their "Phoenix" novels.

Second, I definitely agree about Martin telegraphing

transporter twinning.

It wouldn't have been easy to avoid telegraphing it, but I picked up on it almost from the beginning.

Third, is it just me, or did others see an awful lot of really obvious allegory here? The two factions among the locals paralleling a good chunk of current U.S. politics, and the racial profiling being applied to Andorians?

[Nerys Ghemor]

Enterpriserules wrote:

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And lastly, here we get another bashing of those who have faith and glorifying those who have science. The best Trek (DS9) showed us how faith can live alongside science and here those with faith are bigoted and fear-mongers, the complete cliche.

While I couldn't stand the A-plot of Sword of Damocles, THAT was a story that did an excellent job of avoiding that false dichotomy. The portrayal of Jaza--a man who showed us the best of both worlds, so to speak--was superb.

What you describe in THIS book absolutely spits upon the series' prior precedents.

I'm very sorry to hear the series was dragged down by something like this, and it only validates the decision I made a while back that on the whole, modern Treklit just isn't worth the investment in time or money anymore.

[JD]

Honestly, I wouldn't judge TrekLit by a Martin novel. That's kind of like judging TOS by Spock's Brain, or Voyager by Threshold.

[tomswift2002]

Nerys Ghemor wrote:

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What you describe in THIS book absolutely spits upon the series' prior precedents.

I'm very sorry to hear the series was dragged down by something like this

Not too mention that the TNG episode Who Watches the Watchers covered the same thing, but on the science side, while Voyager's Sacred Ground also looked at the subject, but from the religious side.

[MatthiasRussell]

Nerys Ghemor wrote:

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I'm very sorry to hear the series was dragged down by something like this, and it only validates the decision I made a while back that on the whole, modern Treklit just isn't worth the investment in time or money anymore.

It isn't fair to judge all of trek lit based upon one book or even this one author. Though I'm not reading Martin books anymore, I find the quality of the books and authors on the whole is the best it has ever been. That said, I feel Martin shouldn't be writing Trek lit anymore because his books do bring down the quality of the whole and might discourage readers.

If you just don't want to read new books, you are missing out on quality Trek.