Bout 40 or 50 pages in. Happy as a little duckling already. I love James' style, I love Titan. And sofar, this is already a good setup, with a great intro!
What an amazing read! I couldn't put this book (Kindle, rather) down - aside from eating, watching Strictly Come Dancing etc. The main characters voices all came through clearly, there was some good use of supporting and minor characters, interesting new crew, drama, action (that was really breath-holdingly action-y, for want of a better description), intriguing aliens (the Dinac - I want to see more of them in future novels, especially their wooden spaceships!), and.. Spoiler: the evil aliens are the return of the Solanangen-based entities from TNG "Schisms". And, as Laibcoms has already mentioned, the sacrifice of Zurin Dakal had me reeling in disbelief - I kept expecting a last-minute rescue, but it never came. This was a powerfully written bit of drama, particularly Zurin's thoughts leading up to his death, and the reactions of Christine Vale and Ethan Kyzak. Thank you for another great novel, James Swallow! Any chance of my favourite Chandir, Tamen Gibruch, showing up in your next Titan story?
I'm enjoying it so far but another shout out that I may have seen? Spoiler: Spoiler Sariel Rager has an ancestor that flew in WW3 named Vanessa?. I'm guessing that's a shoutout for the role Lanei Chapman played in Space: Above and Beyond - Vanessa Damphousse It was also interesting to see the Schism guys back
This was a fantastic science fiction novel, with the touch of horror of things coming from beyond that Swallow did so well, while still retaining its Trek qualities. Strongly recommended.
That was another home-run for Swallow! That man has written some of my favorite TrekLit of the last few years. Character work, pacing, action, horror, plottwist, everything is spot on!!
An Above Average from me. I liked it quite a bit, but didn't quite get all the way to Outstanding. I'm really glad we've reached about where TrekLit can have queer characters that are introduced nonchalantly. It's clearly something that wouldn't be a big deal anyway, and it's nice that the point doesn't have to be underlined any more. Spoiler: Sacrifice I also appreciated the lack of any last-minute deus ex machina for Dakal. I liked him a lot, but I also prefer that we get reminders that Starfleet can be a dangerous place to work, and that there are real heroes out there. For some reason, I was reminded a bit of the Classic Doctor Who serial "Earthshock." I do have one complaint: It may just have been my Kindle, but the font that was used for the first letter of each section of the book was almost impossible to read. More than once, I'd have to stop and try and puzzle out what was being said from contex.
I think I've seen you say this exact thing in half the review threads this year, Enterpriserules. But this was a great one, yeah; it's nice to get back to the Titan!
I have the same problem with some first characters on my Kindle version. Halfway through and so far better than other Titan stories.
Just finished it - excellent read with a lot of "how the hell are they going to get out of this one" moments. I do wonder about the choice of Spoiler: the main antagonists naming the aliens the Solanae - was that influenced by Star Trek Online?
See! I always get confused with the Greek alphabet/counting Must remember, Federation's quadrant naming is an inverse-Z I know! Haha. But nope. The name "Solanae" has been around before STO, if I remember correctly. That particular subspace (3rd level if I understood it), the universe is based on solanae and not carbon. It just so happen that the dominant species in their universe was nicknamed as a solanae race. But as was shown in this novel, they do have a name for themselves. Which reminded me, it's one of the plus of this novel because there's not a trace of STO Solanae. It's completely different. They're not some servitor of some "superior" race. In fact, they think of themselves as the superior race, I wonder what the STO-Iconians will have to say about that But anyway, that last was off-topic.
^No, they were described in the episode as "solanogen-based life forms." Presumably solanogen is the Federation's name for the substance in question. "Solanae" is STO's coinage as a back-formation from that, though I don't know whether they intended it as the aliens' own name for themselves (which would make no sense) or some sort of nickname.
Actually, we never learned the race's name for themselves, they never bothered to tell us (likely because we were beneath them) and the exiles didn't want to mention their name. We only learned what the exiles called themselves to set themselves apart from the race as a whole.
I can only think that might have been in the recent Atonement tread. But regardless, there have been some great books this year.
Being a long time reader of the books, I feel it's always good to celebrate the truly great books so that the editors and authors know when they have been successful, so we get more of the same quality. I love how hard the authors work and it's great when I feel that connection to the book they wrote
“The Solanae.” Vale supplied the name. “That’s the designation that Starfleet Xenobiology gave to those beings.” Originally I was going to come up with a new name for the solanagen-based aliens, but CBS asked that I use the 'Solanae' name from Star Trek Online to refer to them. The name used by the dissident faction - the Ciari - is a nod to actor Brian Ciari, who played one of the aliens in the episode 'Schisms'.