Spoilers DS9: Force and Motion by Jeffrey Lang Review Thread

I've read the first 3 chapters and I like what I've read so far. I like the scenes with Miles O'Brien and Nog.

 

I voted outstanding.

Here's my list of the book's many highlights.

Ben Maxwell

Spoiler: Don't call me Captain

The breakout star of this novel is easily the former Captain Ben Maxwell. Jeffrey Lang took a character who had one canonical appearance with a small amount of screen time and made him into an incredibly complex individual. Bob Gunton imbued the role with a certain charm but Lang gave him gravitas and charisma in spades.

If I had the power, I would greenlight an entire series of Ben Maxwell stories.

O'Brien and Nog

Spoiler: the New Old Friends

Great character interactions are a hallmark of Lang's work and these two are no exception. Much humor was mined from Nog's puzzling out Chief O'Brien's unique communication style. Both characters are pragmatic and problem solvers; they don't let obstacles deter them. They just push on through and deal with the next issue that arises. Their personalities really drive the narrative and keep everything in a positive focus.

One of the big themes of the novel is friendship and these two represent something very relatable to everyone as they get older: drifting away from old friendships and drifting into new ones.

The friendships between Nog and Jake, O'Brien and Bashir are some of the most well-done relationships in the history of the franchise. But time marches on. Jake has a wife and a child; responsibilities that keep him from spending time with Nog who's feeling lonely and isolated. Bashir is removed from O'Brien's life and the Chief misses his old drinking buddy. Now, Nog and O'Brien are in the same boat. Their best friends have moved on to other things and places, so now they're making do with one another.

The friendship that's developing here should be familiar to any of us that have grown apart from dear acquaintances -- whether from distance or diverging life paths -- and become sociable with unlikely people by the simple virtue of being in close proximity to them. To paraphrase the old song, "If you can't be with the ones you love, love the ones you're with."

By the end, they realize that this prospect may not be the worst idea in the universe.

The Flashbacks

Spoiler: Little things

This novel jumps all over the place and that's not a bad thing. We see Maxwell's rehabilitation, unseen moments from "The Wounded," O'Brien's time aboard the Rutledge, and scenes during the run of DS9. And most of them are wonderfully done.

Jake and Nog discussing their worst day gave me insight into the characters that I never realized before. Being the only young characters on the show was obviously why the writers paired them off as friends, but Lang's scene here shines a light on something else they had in common aside from their youth: they were both being raised by single fathers. The contrast between them regarding losing their mothers was also fascinating to read. Just a fantastic story beat, all around.

Nog observing Julian and Miles after a particular night in the holosuite was a surprisingly touching scene.

The giant robotic legs were highly memorable, but the best Maxwell flashback is definitely his gerbil story. Lang's strength as a writer has never been better displayed than in Maxwell recounting to Clark a childhood memory of his classroom's gerbil. The story itself is moving, but its real power comes in how it mirrors the events of "The Wounded." The gerbil story illustrates how, even at a young age, Ben thought that full knowledge of a subject would mean that his decisions and actions would be correct and justified. In both cases, his knowledge wasn't enough to spare innocent lives from being lost because of his actions.

The Pets

Spoiler: Horrible the dog

Horrible the dog and Ginger & Honey -- I grew to love all three of these creatures.

Horrible's story was a nice moment and his exit provided an extremely poignant bit at the end. The note, while short, was sweet and gave me a large lump in my throat.

Like Nog, I fell in love with the arachnoforms. Lang gave these two so much heart and personality that it became impossible to resist their multi-eyed charm. They had an impressive arc in the book and were just as much the heroes as Ben, Miles, or Nog. The image of the two girls giving Nita a hug at the end has stayed with me long after finishing the novel.

Finch

Spoiler: The rogue

Finch was a great rogue, cut from the same cloth as Harry Mudd. A character you love to hate (and see punched or kicked as much as possible).

The Good Wife connection

Spoiler: Style

Reading this book, I was struck by how much Jeffrey Lang's writing reminds me of the Good Wife. From the witty dialogue to the well-developed characters, this comparison is an compliment to Lang's talent and style.

Two scenes that really brought this to mind are the extraneous (but entertaining) meeting between the two attorneys for Maxwell's court-martial and the two office workers assigned to listen and take notes from Starfleet recordings. The latter really reminded me of the NSA employees that listen to wire taps with a recurring basis on the Good Wife. Some fine banter in those scenes.

Misc.

Spoiler: Misc.

As a fan of Neal Stephenson's Baroque Cycle, I appreciated (maybe better than others) the frequent allusions to Newton and the starbase's namesake, Hooke.

Nita was a great character. She and the arachnoforms would also star in any Ben Maxwell series of stories (hypothetically approved by me). Everything I wrote about Nita applies to Clark as well.

Cretak, the ironic Romulan, was an interesting choice for secret benefactor. Though he dipped briefly into ruthlessness as the station was crumbling, his pragmatic agenda was a nice twist in the story. My grandfather was a farmer and Cretak felt like an authentic depiction of that type of individual.

I applaud the combination of Charlotte's Web and "Devil in the Dark." Great climax.

Jeffrey Lang was in top form with this novel. It was full of humor and heart and some of the finest dialogue found in a Star Trek story. I eagerly await his next book, be it Trek or other.

 

Thank you, sir. I am honored by your comments. Candidly, my favorite observation was the one about Cretak, who reminded you of your grandfather. He was very much based on my paternal grandfather, also a farmer, so there's a thing. I don't think we're cousins (are we?), so what does that mean?

 

Nope, no relation.

I guess Cretak must come from the same mold as farmers anywhere, whether it's Nebraska or a Romulan colony world. I love his attitude of, "Look, I don't care about all of this zaniness going on -- just give me what I ordered, okay?" He shares my grandfather's low tolerance for shenanigans.

 

Because I was waiting for the price to lower a bit, I completely forgot to order this. So, should be here this weekend. Can't wait.

 

Is this Cretak related to the female Sen. Kimara Cretak from DS9?

 

Not to my knowledge.

 

^ Perhaps it's a common Romulan surname ...

 

It wasn't the character's surname even, was it? I thought it was their personal name, since it's what they referred to themselves as in the bit from their viewpoint.

 

I don't think it was made clear either way.

 

Just finished reading it. Loved every minute of it. Can't add much to what has already been said by others. Like the O'Brien/Nog interaction and the rehabilitation of Ben Maxwell.
Finch is a nice addition to the 'loveable rouges' gallery. For some reason I kept picturing John Goodman as Lawrence Woolsey from 'Matinee' and I just couldn't get that image out of my head; and unless I skipped over it while reading, I wonder who gave him the information on the Shedai genome? It appears the cat's out of the bag and that's going to cause further problems.
I had to laugh at Nog and O'Brien's Bashir references and wondering what he was doing as this story takes place concurrently with David Mack's 'Disavowed', so Dr. Bashir is in the 'Mirror Universe' while Nog and O'Brien believe he's on Andoria.
Liked the reference to the 'Self Defence Against Fresh Fruit' sketch from 'Monty Python. Couldn't help but picture Eric Idle's voice when I heard 'pointed stick'.
And, just out of curiosity, was Brody a reference to Sheriff Brody from 'Jaws'? I kinda like thinking that Brody's descendants are still protecting the people of Amity Island and Nantucket after all these years.
One minor nitpick: Chapter 7 is set twenty years ago in Ben Sisko's quarters on Deep Space Nine. Unfortunately that would place it in 2366, three years before 'Deep Space Nine' began. It should be 17 years.

 

Yes, Brody is a nod to Chief Martin Brody, one of my all-time favorite fictional characters. Sorry we blew a date reference. Can't tell you how many times we all went back over those to make sure we got them right... We'll fix it later.

 

Oh - And, for what it's worth, I hadn't thought of Goodman for Finch, though that's really good. I imagined him more as a middle-aged Orson Welles -- not the young man in "Citizen Kane" and not the old, bearded fellow, but more like in "The Stranger" or as Harry Lime in "The Third Man." If nothing else, the voice is Welles'.

 

I can't speak to Force and Motion because I haven't read it yet, but the Senator from DS9 definitely had 'Cretak' as her surname.

 

For some reason, I kept picturing the late John Carradine (about the same age as he was when he did his guest appearances on Kung Fu) as Finch.

Spoiler

All in all, I liked it. Liked the "Devil in the Dark" and Charlotte's Web allusions (and was surprised that the latter took so long to show up). Seems to me that a reference to the Hamalki would have also been welcome. But I'm left wondering where Maxwell has ended up. Maybe Section 31?

 

Very disappointed in this book. The only tie it had to DS9 was Miles and Nog. They only stepped on the station at the end and most of that was a narrative and this book was mostly about a character that had nothing to do with DS9.

 

A lovely book. The jumping around in time never felt gratuitous. Also it was nice to see Miles treated as if he had a fully realized existence before TNG. Often even in the novels his background always felt kind of sketched out but never fully painted in.

As for easter eggs would I be correct in assuming that Danny and Rusty are nods to the Soderbergh Ocean's ... trilogy?

 

The mention of Rusty & Danny was a compromise suggested by editor Margaret Clark. Originally, the scene used Vic Fontaine, but MC told me that Vic wasn't available because of events in DRG's books. Also, I love those Ocean movies. Even 12 (sort of).

 

I finished this book and I really liked this story a lot. It was nice to have the story being about the characters and I thought Ben Maxwell's story was very intriguing. I liked how Miles O'Brien and Nog worked as a a team to help the scientists on the station. I liked the Jake and Nog scenes in the book. I thought Nita and the Arcachnids she created were interesting characters. Finch reminded me of Harry Mudd. I really liked thiss tory a lot. I voted Above average.

 

I guess I’m in the minority here in that while I found the book enjoyable while I was reading it, in the end I was disappointed. As I was nearing the end of the book, I was contemplating rating it “below average.” I liked the ending enough that I bumped it back up to “average.” While most of the pieces of the story were quite enjoyable to me, the pieces just didn’t seem to come together in the end.

So, here’s the stuff I liked:

- I really like Lang’s somewhat whimsical take on characters and background elements of Star Trek. Here, the arachnoids, Finch, Nita Bharad, and Maxwell’s dog were particularly nice touches.

- It was great to see Maxwell again, and I’m glad to see his character fleshed out more.

Spoiler: end of story

I was delighted to discover that he survived after all.

- O’Brien and Nog make a good pairing, especially in the last parts of the story. It’s always nice to see some of the supporting characters take center stage. (I know O’Brien was a lead on the series, but it feels like he’s been mostly neglected in the relaunch books.)

And here’s the stuff that didn’t work for me:

- The thing that gave me the most trouble was the structure of the story and the flashbacks. It just felt too fragmented for me. This was especially true with Maxwell’s backstory, even though I really liked learning more of it. A lot of the bits just seemed too small and out of context – for example there are several bits that are just small pieces of conversation, a couple with his therapists, and one with Worf. Overall, I think I might have enjoyed it more if Lang had chosen to put Maxwell’s story all together in one section of the book – kind of like David Mack did with Soong’s narrative in the first Cold Equations book.

- Some things just didn’t seem to get developed enough. I would have liked to learn more about Finch and a bit more about who all the people were on his station and why they were there. I feel like we never did get a clear sense of exactly what the Mother was. For much of the book she seemed just to be a monster, but

Spoiler: end of story

towards the end we found out she had intelligence and was making some kind of effort to communicate. It would have been great if that had been discovered earlier and explored more.

- The book itself felt like it took a little long to get started. I felt like I was waiting for pages for O’Brien and Nog to get to Hooke, for Ben the janitor to show up, and for Ben, O’Brien and Nog to meet up. Then when things did get moving, it felt like there was too much running about the station from place to place, when I was hoping to see some of the elements I mentioned above explored a little more.

As I said, I did enjoy the book, and I’m glad that others here seem to have enjoyed more than I did. Although I was disappointed in this one, I am looking forward to Lang’s next book. (Hopefully that Data story we’ve heard rumors about!)