Finally got around to this one. It was a nice quick read, an interesting tale. I was afraid it'd be a violent military-thriller sort of thing, but I was pleasantly surprised by the lack of bloodshed and the fact that, despite all the shooting and blowing things up, it was really more about problem-solving and puzzle-cracking than fighting. And I loved the true Federation benevolence toward the end, in things like Riker offering to help the very people who'd made him their puppet, and the reveal of Simus and the Romaine Center. The Center was a nifty idea.
Everybody's saying they thought Bretorius was fun, but I liked Derla better. I imagined her lines delivered with a really jaded, smart-alecky, eye-rolling sort of tone -- I think it was Alicia Witt's voice I heard in my head.
I really want to like this book but the continuity errors put me right off. David Mack, Dayton Ward, Christopher Bennett, Una McCormack et al don't make these mistakes.
Oh, trust me, I've made continuity mistakes. Embarrassingly, I tend to make them about my own creations. I just discovered that I referred to the Vomnin state as the Consortium in
Orion's Hounds and the Confederacy in
Watching the Clock. Fortunately,
Hounds also mentions that the Vomnin species has more than one nation (since I hate the way Trek tends to treat species and political identity as automatically congruent), so it should be easy enough to retcon them as two separate powers.
Then there was my second Hub story in
Analog, where I referred to a returning alien species by the wrong name. Worse, it was a throwaway alien name from one of my Trek novels. I finally fixed that in the e-book collection.
There was just lots of silly little niggles that could have been avoided e.g Counselor Hegol being referred to as Dr. Den, 1) Den is his first name and 2) he's never been referred to as a doctor in any previous story.
Well, "first name" is the wrong term since it's actually second, but yes, Den is his given name, Hegol his surname. He should be Counselor Hegol. Also,
Takedown described him as young, but I conceived him as more middle-aged; when I introduced him in
Greater Than the Sum, I envisioned him along the lines of Stanley Kamel in
Monk.
But it's hard to keep track of all those details. It's up to the editor and proofreaders and such to keep it all straight, but there's just so much Trek Lit continuity now that it must be increasingly hard to remember it all.
I do realise I am being harsh on someone who's only on their second Trek story. Miller was/is one of the better Star Wars tie-in authors and as Disney have dumped the EU and restricted the new content being produced, he obviously need somewhere else to work.
John is working in the new
Star Wars continuity, though, isn't he? When I met him at Shore Leave last month, IIRC, one of the books he had on sale at Meet the Pros was the prequel to
Star Wars Rebels, the one telling the backstory of the Kanan and Hera characters. Rebooting the continuity doesn't require changing the authors. After all, part of the job of tie-in authors is to adapt to what our employers ask of us.
I've been wondering. Does the main story of Takedown take place before or after the main story of The Light Fantastic?
According to the historian's notes on each story The Light Fantastic takes place in November 2385 and Takedown in late November 2385. As Geordi is featured in both stories they obviously can't take place at the same time. There's probably 1 to 2 weeks betwern them as there used to be with TNG episodes.
I figure that Geordi's leave in
The Light Fantastic takes place between the
Enterprise being assigned to an exploration mission at the end of
Peacable Kingdoms (late October) and the
Enterprise attempting to begin that mission at the start of
Takedown (late November). Makes sense that there'd be a bit of downtime to prepare the ship and crew for such an undertaking.
Granted,
Takedown does suggest that the E-E was already some distance out when it was called back to deal with the comm array, but that's easily enough overlooked for the sake of reconciling the timing. Anyway, it's interesting to have three books (these and
The Missing) jammed into November '85. They really are trying to slow down the pace of the novels now, it seems.
I also don't know about naming this a TNG book considering 95% of it takes place on the Aventine. I don't judge a book by its cover, but it seems like a marketing ploy.
It's more about the characters than the ships, I'd say. This is primarily a Riker-Picard story, and it's a followup to a TNG episode. Although it does have a broad focus rivaling books like
Destiny -- also featuring
Enterprise, Titan, and
Aventine -- so it could've easily been just under a general
Star Trek heading.
I like the fact the Aventine crew gets more charcter development in this book. Poor Riker being fed with with boring diplomatic meetings and writing reports to star fleet.I feel sorry for him. Being a Starfleet Admiral sucks sometimes.
