TOS: Allegiance in Exile by DRGIII Review Thread (Spoilers!)

[BillJ]

Having a real problem motivating myself to continue reading this.

[Ronald Held]

I just finished. Nothing good or bad either way. I found the first contact with the mystery race and their antagonists somewhat interesting.
Where are these colonies located, alpha oe beta quadrant?

[hbquikcomjamesl]

BillJ wrote:

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Having a real problem motivating myself to continue reading this.

I can't recall ever being able to say that about my first reading of a ST novel, although there have been a few re-readings where I've started, but given up.

q.v. my thread in the "Science Fiction and Fantasy" forum, about Moon Hoax. Now with THAT, just about the only thing that kept me reading was the possibility of finding out what would motivate the Chinese to do something so expensive, risky, and generally asinine: no nation-state goes to that much trouble and expense without something a lot bigger to be gained. And I regard the author's failure to provide a believable motivation by the end of the book as a breach of contract.

But I didn't have any trouble maintaining interest in the present DRG opus, although I've already noted places where it feels like it was written for readers who'd never even heard of Star Trek, and thus seems a bit patronizing to the reader.

[rfmcdpei]

Ronald Held wrote:

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I just finished. Nothing good or bad either way. I found the first contact with the mystery race and their antagonists somewhat interesting.
Where are these colonies located, alpha oe beta quadrant?

Presumably, like Bajor, in the Alpha Quadrant.

[Avro Arrow]

I'm still mulling this one over; not sure whether I should throw my opinion out there or not. But apropos of nothing, I'll just mention that I think I preferred Schuster & Mollmann's pick for Rahda's first name over the one presented here, which was just another use of the "use the actor's first name" idea.

[Christopher]

^Yeah, they called her Manjula Rahda. (Although really the surname should be Radha; the original script spelled it wrong.)

[hbquikcomjamesl]

Although "Naomi Rahda" has a certain cross-cultural charm to it. Rather like a news reporter I invented out of thin air (and my own initials) for my unpublished short story, "Interview with Dr. Ambrose Crater, or 'The Salt Vampire Ate my Parents'," whom I named "Javier Lindstrom."

[kirk55555]

I'm about halfway through, and its average. Kirk getting mopey about only having a year left in the journey, and thinking about his mistakes, is annoying and gets on my nerves. Besides that, most of the other stuff isn;t bad, but its not great, either. Its mostly very average.

[JWolf]

Jarrod wrote:

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A note about this book that maybe someone can enlighten me on:

After a couple of weeks of not seeing this title arrive at my local bookstores, I asked the clerk at Barnes and Noble tonight if they were going to be getting any in stock. She told me that it was not going to be carried in the stores, and was only available for home delivery.

Any idea as to why this is?

That clerk is wrong. I just had a look online and the book is available for pickup in 3 of 5 local stores. The other 2 show out of stock.

[OverlordSpock]

Allegiance in Exile was okay, but not great. This, I feel, was DRGIII's weakest Trek effort. Of course, seeing how great all his other efforts were, that isn't necessarily bad.

At any rate, although I liked the exploration aspects of the story (as well as the first contact situation at the end), I found both Sulu's and Kirk's subplots to be greatly annoying, especially Sulu's. I know Sulu isn't just a drone and has his own opinions and feelings, but his entire situation in this book just seemed to come out of nowhere. I literally asked myself "Where did that come from?"

One of the bigger problems with Sulu's subplot is that if this woman truly meant so much to him and her situation truly affected his relationship with Kirk that much for that long, why is the first time we've heard of this? The obvious answer is because the idea never came up before this book was written (one of the problems with trying to provide character development for such previously established characters). I just couldn't get past the idea that I really don't think Sulu would have gotten that bad.

Someone else mentioned that they didn't like Kirk moping around about the end of the 5YM. I agree. To my mind, Kirk knew that the mission was coming to an end, but he fully expected to go out again. Granted, being in a "military" force, he goes where he is ordered to go, but there was really no reason to expect that he wouldn't continue commanding a starship, if not specifically the Enterprise. I don't think he'd be getting so down about the end of the mission, especially since he is the type that is always looking forward.

I will say that the reveal of the identities of the aliens at the end did bring a smile to my face. I can't help but think this is DRGIII throwing a bone to those who are truly unhappy with the way Pocket has handled certain aspects of the Novelverse since the editorial shakeup. Maybe nothing comes of it, but it's nice to think it was on purpose.

Overall, it was okay, but I was disappointed.

[kirk55555]

I finished the book. It was ok, but not great. I did end up liking Sulu's story in the book, but Kirk wasn't done well, and Spock/McCoy and the other main cast members besides Kirk and Sulu were barely involved, and like I've seen mentioned the few Spock/McCoy interactions were very weak (as were most of the parts with people not named Sulu). I just realised that he was the author of Typhon Pact - Plagues of Night and Raise the dawn, which I really enjoyed. This book, however, was mostly average and I doubt I'll read it again.

[Steve Mollmann]

Avro Arrow wrote:

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I'm still mulling this one over; not sure whether I should throw my opinion out there or not. But apropos of nothing, I'll just mention that I think I preferred Schuster & Mollmann's pick for Rahda's first name over the one presented here, which was just another use of the "use the actor's first name" idea.

I picked "Manjula" because I'd recently read the excellent Kleptomania, a collection of short stories by the Indian author Manjula Padmanabhan, when working on the outline.

Christopher wrote:

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^Yeah, they called her Manjula Rahda. (Although really the surname should be Radha; the original script spelled it wrong.)

It's a common surname in Space India.

[Enterpriserules]

We just interview DRGIII on Literary Treks and talked about AiE!

[Procutus]

OverlordSpock wrote:

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I will say that the reveal of the identities of the aliens at the end did bring a smile to my face. I can't help but think this is DRGIII throwing a bone to those who are truly unhappy with the way Pocket has handled certain aspects of the Novelverse since the editorial shakeup. Maybe nothing comes of it, but it's nice to think it was on purpose.

OK, that has me intrigued. I'm currently about a third of the way through, and I find I'm enjoying it. I see that a number of others didn't like Kirk's story arc in this, but I feel his introspection, particularly at this point in the mission, seems natural enough. Who knows, I may feel differently by the time I finish reading it.

[JoeZhang]

Pretty mediocre all round - the casting of two familiar races added nothing to the story and it was mainly because the novel wasn't complete in itself, it sets up a mystery that is 'resolved' in the simplest crudest terms and leaves the reader with a feeling of "is that it?"