TP: Raise the Dawn by DRGIII Review Thread (Spoilers!)

[MatthiasRussell]

People in Starfleet had been secretly developing cloaking devices illegally. Though Starfleet officially condemned this, I have a hard time believing the heads of Starfleet and the UFP REALLY felt they shouldn't be developing and carefully using cloaking tech. Of course, even IF this was the case, they wouldn't have used such a device on the second Defiant.

I can believe the Romulans gave them a new device for the new Defiant but I would think they would take it back at the end of the War since they had no further need of Starfleet intelligence on the Gamma Quadrant.

[JD]

What about the Klingons? Do you think they'd be willing to share their cloaks?

[Paper Moon]

The issue, as I recall, isn't so much whether or not the Klingons were willing to share their cloaks, but whether or not the Treaty of Algeron with the Romulans permitted the Federation to use any sort of cloaking device.

Maybe the Romulans violated some technical part of the treaty, and the UFP is like, "Well, if they give us crap about the cloaks, we'll give them crap about x."

[MatthiasRussell]

We know the Treaty of Algeron outlines that Starflet is not to develop cloaking technolgy but are more terms of the treaty outlined? With the typhon pact treaty, Romulus is sharing cloaking tech with its allies. You'd think the UFP would agree to the Algeron Treaty under tems that Romulus doesn't share cloaking tech with potentially hostile nations.
http://memory-beta.wikia.com/wiki/Treaty_of_Algeron

[Angstromdweller]

Why couldn't the Defiant contact anyone in the Alpha Quadrant when it was inside the wormhole, even those just outside the wormhole, when the subspace array on the Gamma Quadrant side was destroyed? That seems very counter intuitive.

Anyway, it was a great novel!

[Cap'n Crunch]

^ Yeah, that seemed odd to me as well.

[lvsxy808]

Finally finished these, so I'm going to give my thoughts without reading the rest of the thread first. Apologies if some points are repeats of earlier posts.

So, my overall opinion of these two books was "Yeah... that was fine I guess."

I have no major complaints, everything made sense and was well written for what it was. But I just didn’t seem to be emotionally engaged or invested in anything. I wasn’t especially excited by the action sequences, or hurt by the destruction of the station, or elated by the return of familiar faces. It all just... happened. It was good, but it didn’t blow me away.

I enjoyed it, don’t get me wrong. It’s always nice to see my favourite characters back again. And as is surely obvious, DS9 is by far my favourite of the ST series. While they may not have been exclusively or officially DS9 books, they were certainly effectively DS9 books, even with the heavy guest appearances of the Enterprise and all the other threads. Everyone felt mostly in character despite the massive changes in their circumstances.

But I still have some problems. And I guess this is mostly a problem with the entire Typhon Pact series than with these books specifically. Perhaps I’m not emotionally invested because we spend so little time with the characters in order to get invested in them. Massive, massive events happen, and yet I feel nothing. Is it my fault? Do I just not care anymore?

Looking back at the DS9 relaunch, back when it began with Avatar, it felt like DS9. It really did. We knew everything that happened on that station from one day to the next. It took an astonishing 18 separate novels (not including the side-stories in various collections and crossovers) to fill just one year of time. One book took place entirely in just one day. Although personally I didn’t really see the need to cram everything in quite so tightly, which is why I prefer to think of it as taking two years from Avatar to The Soul Key.

Regardless, we now seem to have gone to the opposite extreme. It took only four books (five if you count Disharmony, which is only peripherally connected IMO) to cover an entire two-and-a-half years (plus yet another year for the very last scene). After feeling like we missed so much in the intervening years, surely I shouldn’t be feeling like I’m still missing so much even within these novels.

DRG3 obviously had a specific story he wanted to tell, and he told it well. I don’t argue with that for a second. It makes sense (in the real world at least) that such large geo-political changes as have happened since Destiny take time to happen. Although, the original DS9 show had geo-political upheavals at least twice annually, so it’s not unprecedented for things to go a bit quicker.

But there still seemed to be so much missing from it. Not plot holes, but rather story holes – parts where we seemed to have taken shortcuts over important events. Look at Bashir’s story, for example. We skipped over what would have seemed to me to be vitally important moments for his character. After only finding out in the last moments of Zero Sum Game that Sarina was an S31 agent, and him having no idea during the whole course of Plagues of Night, how can we possibly find out in internal dialogue after the fact that she told him all about it “off screen”? How can we have not seen that conversation happen?

That should have been a core moment in Bashir’s development – that the woman he loves admits to being an agent of the organisation that has plagued his life for years and he is supposedly dedicated to bringing down. How that can possibly not have been an important thing to see? Likewise his conversation with Ro later on, when she admitted to him she was using Sarina to flush out the real villain – did no-one else think we should have seen that conversation happen, rather than only hearing about it after the fact? Such storytelling choices astound me.

And the business with the True Way guy. We hear – again in internal dialogue, again after the fact – about why he’s doing what he’s doing. Wouldn’t have it been better to see these events take place? Isn’t “show, don’t tell” a basic storytelling principle? Would some sense of life on Cardassia – of how the people are living now, of how they react to Cardassia’s decision to join the Khitomer Accords, of the varying factions – not have given some depth to that character? Why did we not see Morad’s attack on the industrial replicator, his trial, his recruitment into the True Way by Makbar?

And even the station itself. When some kind soul spoiled the destruction of DS9 in a thread title on this very board (for whom my undying hatred, btw), I basically sighed and sagged a little. I have never been a histrionic apocalypse-decrier. I did not threaten bloody vengeance when Janeway was killed, or when any of the various Enterprises were destroyed, or when Sisko filed for divorce. But with this series being my favourite, I would have expected myself to be able to generate a little more feeling. But the most I got was mild disappointment.

Why? Because we didn’t spend any time on the station, or get to know any of the people there, or care about them at all. Ro, Bashir, Prynn and Quark are the only regulars still aboard. Quark got one scene per book. Prynn moped about her father. Bashir I already talked about above. Ro was good, especially in the first book. But all the other former regular characters already left the station years ago, and everyone else was basically a bit-part player. Blackmer disappeared for the entire second book (during which he could have been, oh I don’t know, investigating the destruction of the station). Stinson got one scene, in which he got chewed out for being a jerk. The final “everything’s-going-to-be-alright” seen as Ro shows them the new DS9 seemed unearned, since nobody seemed to give a shit when the old one went up. When the biggest loss is that Jeanette Chao died, that’s not a good state of affairs.

And there’s another hole – where was the outpouring of grief from the survivors? Where were the people devastated by the loss? Where was the official memorial service, in which Asarem and Bacco might have waxed poetic about the momentous galactic events that had taken place at that station, about how it had literally changed the galaxy, about how it would never be forgotten? Again, are those not scenes that should have been depicted? I might have cared more if the characters had seemed to care more, but they basically shrugged, said “Oh, that’s a shame” and got on with their jobs. Even Sisko only seemed to be upset about possibly losing Kasidy, not about the station. Hell, Bacco was angrier about it than he was.

Now, I don’t expect all of this to happen in just one or even two books. Like I said, DRG3 had his story that he wanted to tell. But that brings me back to the duration thing. Why did this one arc – the “slipstream/Sisko” arc one might call it – have to be squeezed into only four books? The “Federation/parasites” arc took 10 books. The “WoDS9/Iliana/MU” arc took 10 books. When Kira finally rejoined the church in Unity, it felt like a victory, a catharsis, because she had struggled so long and we had seen every step of the way. When Sisko went back to Kasidy in Raise the Dawn, it felt like, “Okay, so that storyline’s finished now.”

I can understand that these novels focused on repeated attempts by the Typhon Pact to acquire slipstream drive. And that, had that been extended out into a greater number of novels, there might have been a danger of each successive novel becoming “They try again, Starfleet foils them. They try again, Starfleet foils them. They try again, Starfleet foils them.”

But were there not other interesting things we could have done in the meantime? Were there not adventures to be had on the exploratory missions into the Gamma Quadrant? Was there not more story potential to be mined out of the Section 31 thread? Or about events surrounding Spock or the Tzenkethi, both of whom disappeared from Dawn? Or events on Cardassia? Or getting to know the new characters on the station, so that I might care when they are put in jeopardy? There was more story here, but we seem to have ignored so many other potentially interesting things just so that we can barrel on and get to the core of this particular story.

Anyway, after all of that outrageous rant (Word tells me I’m already at 1500 words), it probably sounds like I didn’t enjoy these books. You might not believe me now, but I promise I did. I enjoyed them for what they were. I’m just disappointed that they weren’t more than that.

And now I shall go and read the rest of the thread.

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[lvsxy808]

Okay, so apparently I'm in the minority.

Again, I want to clarify that I did enjoy the books. I just didn't get the rapture and ecstasy that so many of the rest of you did. Don't want to take away from your experience at all, just saying that I didn't share it. And frankly, I wish I had. Your version sounds a lot more fun than mine!

I'm very open to being persuaded, though. This thread has already reminded me of several things I enjoyed about the books and didn't take time to mention above. It was just that their perceived failings were foremost in my mind.

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[Paper Moon]

I think it's partly a matter of expectations. I was hoping for/expecting/desiring a resolution to Sisko's arc at the end of RBoE, a follow-up to the Bashir cliff-hanger at the end of ZSG, and a general idea of what the hell my favorite characters from DS9 were up to these days. And these books basically gave me that. It wasn't so important to me that I get new episodes of DS9 in novel form. I don't really expect that from my TrekLit nowadays, actually. Wouldn't mind seeing it, but I don't expect it. And I would have been disappointed, actually, had that been the case here. DS9 was coming back from the dead, novel series wise. I wanted a BOOM (though not that kind of boom necessarily) and I got one.

Also, just throwing this out there: RBoE was depressing as hell. It set up a great storyline, but when these novels are so few and far between, and not even a sure thing sometimes (*cough* Rise Like Lions *cough*), I was a little unhappy with Sisko being in such a bad place narratively for so much real-world time. And stretching this arc out over several novels would not have been good in that respect. (And the TrekBBS basically would've exploded too.)

For what it's worth, I agree with many of your points, especially the ones about internal monologues. The narrative requirement that some things be told and not shown was one of the few major flaws with these books, imo. (One of the others was the Bashir storyline. As I said in my original review, Bashir talked about all the wheels-within-wheels plotting, but his whole storyline felt like wheels spinning to me. Also, no mention of Spock in RtD; I understand he was unnecessary, but DRGIII couldn't spare half a sentence to tie his story up?) But the drawbacks just weren't big enough to take away from the whole thing for me. Sorry to hear it didn't work as well for you though.

[Deranged Nasat]

Ivsxy808, I understand where you're coming from. While I loved both Plagues of Night and Raise the Dawn, I did feel a twinge of disappointment that so much was being covered over so relatively few novels. That it couldn't have formed the basis for another eight/nine book arc, like in the early relaunch days (greedy of me, yes?). Given that one of the strengths of the DS9 relaunch was its remarkable success at drawing multiple interconnecting plotlines out over multiple books - without becoming tiresome - and given that, as you note, the story arcs and characters in this duology are rich in potential for closer, more intricate investigation...it can't help but disappoint a bit that we don't get the same exhaustive coverage here. Again, there was potentially room for six or seven novels using the basic framework in these ones, were they following the model of the early relaunch.

We were spoiled with that relaunch series.

I sort of agree, then, that if I'm looking to identify a "weakness" in this duology it's that its scope doesn't rest entirely comfortably with what became the familiar post-series approach to DS9. It covers a greater expanse of time and so features a less tightly focused coverage of characters' personal journeys. I think it can't help but feel like we should have had more; that there are holes of a sort in the story, accustomed as we are to a more comprehensive coverage. The DS9 relaunch was remarkable, really, and I think it can't help but colour our perceptions of these latest DS9-centred stories. I wasn't as troubled by the issue as I think you're saying you were (and of course you yourself stress that you quite liked the duology and what you're identifying here isn't necessarily a complaint), but I acknowledge the potential awkwardness of having our latest major fix of DS9 offer a very different "in-universe time covered" to "novel time spent on it" ratio.

I guess we can look upon RBoE, PoN and RTD as serving two major purposes regarding the DS9 story - the first is giving us a self-contained arc involving Sisko, and his knowledge that spending his life with Kasidy will bring nothing but sorrow, so closing the door on one of the remaining plot threads left over from the show (What You Leave Behind implies, or so I've always assumed, that being separated from his wife and new child is to be the sorrow, but the relaunch had him return after nine months - and very well done it was too, I must say - so it was sort of unresolved again). The second purpose is to complete the process of bringing DS9 the series "up to date" with the Novel Verse leading edge and firmly embedding it in the post-Destiny status quo, while setting up the potential for new stories. Which we have with the new station and its "third generation" crew. So it's both a self-contained story and a platform for new stories, which is certainly different from the "let's run with these multiple plots and arcs and tie them in and out of each other over multiple novels" approach to the early relaunch. I guess it's a bit jarring in some respects, so, as I say, I think I understand where you're coming from.

[lvsxy808]

Glad to see people are holding off on the torches and pitchforks. Still, the day is young.

I guess my problem is with what wasn't there, which led me to overlook what was there. And that's unfair to the work itself. Maybe if I were to re-read the series I would come to a deeper appreciation. I don't want to be unhappy with anything DS9-related, that's for sure.

I mean, Bacco and Kamemor are indeed awesome, and it's wonderful to see someone with a sensible head on their shoudlers in charge on Romulus, while not minimizing the resistance such a person would inevitably face from the hardliners.

And while I badmouthed the Prynn/Vaughn storyline above, its conclusion was delightful and mysterious and touching and just... right. All along we had this sense that Vaughn was hanging on for some reason, even if he wasn't actually there, as such. And he clung on to disembodied life for more than two years, so that he could save Kira in some way when she needed it. Some things don't need explaining, and I'm perfectly content to let this be one of them. It really makes me feel the connection between Kira and Vaughn.

As for the conclusion of Sisko's storyline, what I got from it was basically that he had misinterpreted events (which is pretty much inevitable when dealing with any prophecy-based storyline). He saw the Prophets' lack of communication with him as one of the bad things that would befall him. But Kira saw it as them telling him they didn't need him anymore, that he was released from their service with thanks (presumably they were satisfied with the role he played in the Ascendant business, and they didn't need him anymore after that). He saw it as "we're abandoning you," when he should have seen it as "we're letting you go."

But another interpretation that occurred to me as the novel concluded, was that the lack of communication by the Prophets could have been caused by the closing of the wormhole. That what happened at the end of the trilogy resulted in the state of affairs at the beginning of the trilogy, in a wibbly-wobbly way. They are after all Not Linear. And, with the irony usually inherent in these premises, it was the lack of contact with the Prophets that led Sisko onto the path that took him to the events of the end of the trilogy. Circular logic makes perfect sense when you're dealing with the Prophets.

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[starri]

And there’s another hole – where was the outpouring of grief from the survivors? Where were the people devastated by the loss? Where was the official memorial service, in which Asarem and Bacco might have waxed poetic about the momentous galactic events that had taken place at that station, about how it had literally changed the galaxy, about how it would never be forgotten? Again, are those not scenes that should have been depicted?

Chalk this up to personal preference, but the small scene where Asarem told Ro the station's loss wasn't her fault meant a lot more to me than a few didactic pages of grand speeches.

Don't get me wrong, I understand that those kinds of things have their place; Bacco's big speech at the end of Destiny was necessary. But doing that over the loss of the station would have come near the beginning of the narrative, and done nothing to advance the story. This duology was ultimately plot-driven with some nice character moments. Interrupting that, no matter how moving the prose, probably wasn't worth it.

[lvsxy808]

Well, I guess I'm saying that I don't see why they couldn't have had both. If they're going to make such a massive paradigm-altering move as to destroy Deep Space Nine itself - the physical basis of where this show is set and the characters' home for 15 years - I feel like they should have given it the time and attention that such a development deserves. And I didn't feel like they did, either from an in-universe (character reactions) or an out-of-universe (writing time spent on it) perspective. Obviously YMMV, that's just how I reacted to it.

And the Bashir thing still boggles my mind. Finding out that she told him months ago and we didn't get to see it? WTF?

.

[Relayer1]

I'm including Rough Beasts and calling this a trilogy. Allowing for a reservation or two regarding the 'selective' focus shunting some things off screen, and the amount of ground covered quite quickly, I have to say I loved it. DRGIII did a great job reconning the entire run of Typhon Pact novels into a coherent story arc !

One question : who is the new Emissary - Kira or Vaughan ?

[lvsxy808]

Relayer1 wrote:

---

One question : who is the new Emissary - Kira or Vaughan ?

Well, I'm kinda guessing that the whole point is that they don't need an Emissary anymore. From the Prophet's POV, Sisko was basically there to save Bajor from the Dominion, the pagh-Wraiths and the Ascendants. Once that was done, they didn't need him anymore. So I don't think Vaughn or Kira are "the new Emissary," because I don't think there is any Emissary at all now. Especially since Vaughn is now full-on flat-out dead.

I do, however, enjoy how Vaughn's storyline ended up tying in so beautifully to developments in my own fan-fiction that I wrote before ever reading these books...

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