Yes, it was--by necessity. Ceti Alpha V is a dangerous place and, as we all know, lots of bad stuff went down there during Khan's exile. Probably my grimmest Trek novel, by a long shot.
Also your best. I've never much cared for Khan, except in the pages of that book, where you finally teased out his potential for me.
^ Must read To Reign in Hell... I think A Time to Kill and A Time to Heal are especially visceral in their violence, yet also very effective in how they use the death, torture and maiming within them. In this way they are a precursor to Destiny, I guess. Cast No Shadow is 'grimdark', which fits Swallow's work in Warhammer fiction - and has some interesting depictions of combat (if a bit cartoony).
I'd say Vendetta by Peter David with the Borg attacking alot of planets got destroyed in that book. A lot of people got killed in the different MU stories.
I might not have read enough EU to be all that informed, but I can remember being really taken aback when I was younger by how gory the novelisation for TWOK was. Not the highest body count of Trek books by any means, but it describes quiet a bit of painful death. Evil Alternate-combo-Trelane wiped out the universe (or came very close)in one of the Q books. It got fixed though.
I feel an urge to re-read To Reign in Hell followed by TWOK novelization - more death, violence, torture than all the SAW movies combined
I wouldn't call Destiny violent, though. It's epic, and yes there is swath of destruction as the Borg lay into the Federation proper, but I wouldn't say it's violent. I agree, Fallen Heroes fits that mold better, as does Resistance. The former is brutal as our heroes are cut down by an unrelenting force (20+ years since I read it and Dax's death - and the symbiote's last act - still stuck with me). The latter novel is just brutal in how grim it is. The fate of two new-ish characters who had been set up as new "main" crew members is relentlessly depressing.
Violence in prose to me is about descriptions of bones breaking, blood spurting, heads chopping, skin ripping, teeth smashing, etc... Descriptions of brutality and gore basically. It's not about body count. Just writing "and then the planet inhabited by billions exploded" is not violent to me.
One that hasn't really come up yet is "Body Electric", which qualifies in both aspects, I'd say. The "planet with billions exploding" part is pretty obvious, but it also has the assault on the Body. It's admittedly only one scene, so I can't honestly call it the most violent, but the aftermath of that attempt legitimately horrified me when I read it. Edit: Oh whoops Paul Weaver mentioned it in the very first reply.
I remember the battle against the Hirogen in Destiny seemed more brutal to me than some of the Borg stuff.
I just finished reading a short David Mack Sce story that has a lot of warfare and combat in it Fail Safe. The elements in the story elements sound like what you hear happening on the nightly news. This story has some dark moments for the Davinci crew having to fight for their lives and why the it's important to keep Federation technology out of the hands of warlike dangerous alien cultures.
The Hirogen are on the hunt; they're up close and personal with mighty and wily prey as it battles to survive, and as the hunter demonstrates his predatory mastery. It's all so much more vivid and visceral compared to the Borg's actions, which are somewhere between a major tantrum and a vermin eradication campaign. And the Borg themselves are like a force of nature, wrathful now like in old legends. The scale of the Borg is awesome violence (for the literal meaning of awesome); the Hirogen is a more primal, small-scale, red-in-tooth-and-claw violence, and maybe the more startling for it?
I was never entirely sure of the point of that sequence, or why it was included. It seemed like the trademark Voyager Action Insert where they just have a phaser fight for no reason except that they've spent 14 minutes without one. If the only reason was to get the energy dampers or whatever, I'm sure there were other ways. Or maybe it was 'on top of everything else, now we've got this to deal with as well? FFS.' You mean... like a hot dog? .
I've always seen the Borg more like fire ants -- instinctively, unthinkingly spreading across a territory and using up or eliminating everything in their paths. (I did a paper on fire ants for biology class in high school, and I was struck by a book's description of their effect as "simplifying the ecosystem." An environment that had a lot of different organisms and complex interactions between them would get reduced to pretty much just fire ants.)
Whether it's a bit manipulative is left as an exercise for the reader, but Our Heroes end up using some of the Hirogen tech against the Borg when they seize a ship later on.
Yes, exactly. Even when the Borg are trying to eradicate your species their vengeance feels a bit impersonal. The Hirogen live for it -- they enjoy it. There's no place they'd rather be then on your trail, slowly closing in for the kill. And as for 'why' the Hirogen scene was in there...I get the feeling the Mack had always wanted to 'play' with them in an authorly sense.
I was wondering if anyone would bring that up..... Also both A Gutted World and The Mirror-Scaled Serpent were unusually violent for me (even more so than the Klingon books), but both were alternate realities where I could do things like blow up an entire solar system.......