Spoilers ENT: Rise of the Federation: Live by the Code by Christopher L. Bennett Review Thread

"Writers aren't trying to teach you a history lesson, we're trying to entertain you. You're playing along with us as we put on a show. And sometimes we stumble or flub our lines, and we try to fix our mistakes and improve our performance as we go, and we appreciate if you bear with us as we keep going forward as best we can."

Okay, I can understand it when put like that. Since I'm not a person actively creating material for the franchise, and thus don't experience it as method of story-telling that's constantly changing and trying to find the best way to work (I only see the final product and so have already bought into the illusion that this is "real," so I'm naturally resistant to change like that.

I'm not very fond of retcons in general, since the more times a series changes its mind about what really happened, the more suspension of disbelief I lose. It doesn't help that most of my favorite franchises have undergone massive reboots recently and Star Wars is the only one I can say that I like the new stuff -- which I think can be safely said to be canon, since, unlike George Lucas, the Story Group people who're taking his place as the overseer of the franchise are treating it as such (yes, they have time to discuss this in a committee ), but that's a topic for another thread. (Incidentally, your comments that it's hard to discuss Star Wars canon are very hard to have, given that they've used the word in different ways matches up to comments I've heard from the podcasting realm, so, yeah, I guess you got me there.)

I don't tend to mind little changes, like Kirk's middle name changing, and other stuff that can be isolated as characters misspeaking or minor script errors, but once whole stories are thrown out, that's when I tend to say: "Wait a minute." Of course, I'm hardly consistent; given that I'm completely onboard with the idea of adding the NX-01 to list of Enterprises, and other little odds and ends, but wish that the ENT relaunch had followed the spirit of the TV series and not retconned Trip Tucker's death (despite wishing that the show itself had spared him). I guess the thing is, once the franchise can change anything they want, putting everything in a state of limbo, I have trouble caring, since I don't know if the story will be dismissed or not.

But hey, as the Vulcans say, IDIC and as you wrote in your first Rise of the Federation book, different versions of the franchise creates a more interesting mix of stories. I'm hoping for a healthy mix of new Trek material, canon or otherwise, and hope that the new stuff goes places that the old stuff didn't or couldn't.

P.S. In the past, you've put annotations on your website for your novels. Are there plans to have a set for Live by the Code and if so, is there a time estimate of when they'll be posted? I'm not trying to be a pest, given that I'm sure you have more on your plate then your internet work there and elsewhere (and by the way, thanks for taking time to talk with us readers on this forum), but I really enjoy reading those annotations after finishing the novel. I get a kick out of seeing a bit of the behind the scenes process and finding the easter eggs I missed the first time round, etc.

 

Hmm. Denobulans have hallucinatoriums? An orbital battle that makes use of orbital mechanics -- perhaps worthy even of Buzz "Dr. Rendezvous" Aldrin? Denobulan hate groups?

Not quite 40% into it, and still wondering how it will sort itself out.

Spoiler: But . . .

Phlox's "black sheep" son was a fairly obvious "Chekhov's Gun": the way he was talked about, you pretty much knew that he would be crashing the wedding.

 

Sure, it's not ideal. The goal is to keep it to a minimum. But Star Trek is a 50-year-old franchise with over 700 installments. It's very big. So there are bound to be some glitches, even if they're a tiny percentage of the whole. Really, there are plenty of other fictional franchises whose continuity is even sloppier.

I do plan on doing annotations when I can find the time, but I'm busy with another project right now.

Caroline Paris was mentioned in Jeri Taylor's Mosaic as one of several of Tom and Owen Paris's ancestors who had served in Starfleet. So she'd be a paternal ancestor of his, not maternal. But I think maybe you mean she isn't necessarily a direct ancestor, e.g. a great-great-grandmother or something. I think that would probably be correct, since if she got married, her children would probably be known by her husband's surname, given that that custom is still common in the Trek future.

 

It doesn't really specify, no; it just mentions that Admiral Paris has a lot of pictures of other members of the family that served in Starfleet over the centuries, but it doesn't say anything about them beyond their names.

 

The "Why was it never mentioned?" complaint always seems like a strange and weak continuity argument to me--it's not as if I doubt that the Crusades happened just because I don't see them mentioned on CNN.

I don't think that much about Star Trek's version of the Kzinti, but (since they come up elsewhere in TAS and in a few older tie-ins) this is generally how I reconcile it--a minor conflict against an insignificant power early in Earth's era of warp travel (vaguely defined), the equivalent of a sprawling event in comic book history reinterpreted as a quickly-resolved event in its cinematic adaptation(s).

 

I'm looking forward to them. Good luck on that project.

 

Waiting for your annotations, Christopher.....

 

Well, I loved it. I love the way Christopher (and loads of other TrekLit authors) just have LGBT characters be. They simply are, and I love that.
The conclusion to the Ware story line was not completely what I expected, but it was a very satisfying one though.

The Klingons. Loved how you used the Klingons. I know some fans were done with them after DS9, but I've always loved how, especially towards the end of the show, the Klingons themselves had become a parody of what they once were and had truly forgotten the ways of Khaless. Something like that doesn't happen in a few decades. It takes a long, long time. In Vanguard, the Klingons were already quite adapt in using the concept of honor to manipulate others into gaining a political foothold. It's great to now read where that started. And, truly, was already underway somewhat. If anything, I'd love to have a Star Trek novel showing us Klingons 5 or 6 centuries before TOS. But then again, I'm a sucker for Klingons anyway.

Another awesome novel Christopher, can't wait for the next one!

 

The RotF books are all $1.99 right now on Google Play books, and since these kinds of sales usually apply to the other e-book services I'm assuming they are there too.
EDIT: I just checked Amazon and the Kindle versions are on sale too.

 

When Archer is listing the captains he trusts out on the field, he mentioned someone named "Groll". I'm curious, if anyone knows who that is.

 

Just finished it, I quite enjoyed it. I like the nods to ships from other sources like games and other reference material.

 

Pretty sure it's just a name I made up. I hate it when 100% of the references in a book are to people and things that have already been encountered by a couple of ships named Enterprise or whatever. It makes the universe feel unrealistically tiny. There has to be a larger reality beyond the slice of it depicted in TV, movies, and books.

 

*waiting for David R. George III to turn that one-off reference into a full-length novel as with Serpents Among the Ruins.*

 

I agree on this overall, but I did appreciate the reference to O'Neill in that segment; it was nice to see a reference to her doing well for herself in the post-TRW ENT books. At least, I assume that was meant to be D.O.?

 

Pretty much, yeah.

 

I'm interested to see where Akharin goes from here. He's always a character that I've rolled my eyes at during most of the times he's included in the novels. I feel like he is the living embodiment of small universe syndrome; "YOU get to meet Akharin and YOU get to meet Akharin and YOU get to meet Akharin..."Plus, he's one of the flashier, brassier characters we ever saw on TOS ("He's Da Vinci, he's Solomon, he's all the important people!"), which is a turn off when it comes to his inclusion in seemingly more "realistic" ST stories like this one.
However, I did find his inclusion to be pretty engaging here and necessary what with the Ware and his AI expertise, so I'm hopeful that his inclusion in the "Let's kill 31!" arc that seems to be coming will be equally as engaging.

I've always wondered about other Trek fans thoughts on Akharin though; it seems like his immortality is always a matter of interest, but never enough for somebody to hardcore investigate and see what makes him keep coming back. And I know Morgan Primus was immortal, and so was her friend, but are there more immortals out there? Romulan immortals and Vulcan immortals and Klingon immortals and Cardassian immortals? Do they have a kryptonite, or does Akharin go on living until time ends? Is this an evolutionary trait? If so, why haven't older races like the Vulcans or Cardassians seen a rise in infants born with the mutant gene of immortality? Did someone or something bestow these powers onto Akharin without his knowledge? Section 31 tried to get immortality from the Ba'ku, but they've known that there's an immortal human out there and they just leave that alone? Or is an act on his life from 31 what drives him to exile in TOS?

He's a character that inspires so many questions, and I'd love to see some kind of retrospective novel or something at least from his POV, from being a chariot driver to being interrogated by Jena Noi and Daniels in the farthest future we've seen of Trek yet.

 

His story just seems like the most epic story possible and he might literally be the key to immortality in the galaxy, yet every time we meet him, everyone is like, "Let's leave and never return--this immortal who has been everyone ever likes his privacy. Delete the logs."