Spoilers Star Trek: Prey Trilogy - general discussion thread

[Extrocomp]

I want to thank you for mentioning the name Kruge sutai-Vastal. I really like it when obscure, forgotten names from obsolete continuities get mentioned in new novels, and a name from FASA's Star Trek III Starship Combat Game is about as obscure as it gets. But I've been wondering how to reconcile Klingon linenames with the modern presentation of Klingon society. Lines are basically the same thing as Houses and Kruge's house is always called the House of Kruge rather than the House of Vastal.

I've also been thinking about Kyzak and his species. Did we ever find out anything about the Skagaran homeworld? I figure something really bad must've happened to it if they never sent reinforcements to put down the slave revolt on North Star.

 

[Idran]

But I've been wondering how to reconcile Klingon linenames with the modern presentation of Klingon society. Lines are basically the same thing as Houses and Kruge's house is always called the House of Kruge rather than the House of Vastal.

No planet's really a monoculture, even in the Trek era; maybe that's all it comes down to?

 

[Leto_II]

I want to thank you for mentioning the name Kruge sutai-Vastal. I really like it when obscure, forgotten names from obsolete continuities get mentioned in new novels, and a name from FASA's Star Trek III Starship Combat Game is about as obscure as it gets.

Same here. Got a huge kick out of seeing that name, and love seeing all of this '80s era continuity getting reinserted into the "modern day" Litverse. It just makes everything that much richer and deeper. Now, I think the next big project's gonna be updating Kruge's Memory Beta entry with all the new information John's given us in this trilogy...

 

[JJMiller]

I like it when I can bring in older material, in whatever the franchise. I drew on the 1980s West End Star Wars Roleplaying Game liberally in my Star Wars work -- and now scads of elements from the Rebels TV show come from the game as well. And the Planet of the Apes story I have coming out soon plucks some names that haven't been seen since Jerry Pournelle's adaptation of the third movie.

Spoiler: Kruge

I admit I was surprised how little had been done with Kruge's family over the years. There was one heir who turned up in one of the Marvel annuals of the 1990s, which we sort of sideways acknowledged along the way, but not much more. That's what made everything possible. Giving some of the frontier provinces to his house also both made perfect sense, and made the Kersh connection to the family easier, since the station she was defending in Takedown was in that region.

(My regret is that I could not convince Pocket to include a map of the regions in play, as I certainly could have provided one, as I did in Lost Tribe of the Sith. Maybe if we ever do a collected edition.)

As to the Skagarans, I think we just got what was seen in the episode, but maybe something's been done since.

 

[Enterprise1701]

As far as I can recall, nothing has been done with the Skagarans after ENT - "North Star" besides the introduction of Ethan Kyzack in James Swallow's TTN - Sight Unseen. We still know nothing about the Skagaran homeworld.

I seem to recall that Christopher's annotations indicate he wanted to insert a reference to North Star in a Rise of the Federation novel but didn't have the space.

 

[Christopher]

I seem to recall that Christopher's annotations indicate he wanted to insert a reference to North Star in a Rise of the Federation novel but didn't have the space.

Not so much space, more that it would've been a gratuitous distraction from the main subject of that paragraph. I try not to include continuity references unless they're relevant to the story I'm telling, and that one wasn't.

I did mention the Skagaran abductions from Earth in The Buried Age, as I recall. But I didn't establish anything about the Skagarans themselves beyond the fact that their abductions had been halted at some point in the 19th century.

 

[Extrocomp]

No planet's really a monoculture, even in the Trek era; maybe that's all it comes down to?

But if Kruge's house calls itself the House of Kruge, rather than the Vastal line, doesn't it mean that Kruge is part of the dominant Klingon culture?

 

[JJMiller]

Spoiler: Kruge

I was looking for a way to make both correct, though I did not ultimately get into it. The sutai-Vastal name is only seen by Picard when he's looking at the Federation's 23rd century intel files, so that could well be the first name Starfleet had on his file. But clearly at some point before his death Commander Kruge (or, more likely, the chancellor) renamed the house after himself -- which is why we already see reference to the House of Kruge in 2286 when Korgh is thinking about it.

In effect, there could be an explanation where both the Vastal name and that form of address lost currency somewhere in between, meaning both forms are correct in the context of their times. I could see that happening.

 

[Christopher]

But if Kruge's house calls itself the House of Kruge, rather than the Vastal line, doesn't it mean that Kruge is part of the dominant Klingon culture?

Not necessarily. Lots of people who are part of minority cultures engage in what's called "code-switching" -- using the dominant culture's language, dialect, behavior, etc. when they're in a public or formal setting, but switching to their own subculture's language, dialect, etc. when with their friends or family. It can apply to names as well. For instance, a lot of Asian-Americans or Asian immigrants have a Western name that they go by in public in addition to their Asian birth name -- like Star Trek Discovery's Michelle Yeoh, whose real name is Yeoh Choo-Kheng. Or my college friend from Vietnam who was baptized as Theresa when she emigrated to the US.

I touched on this with the Andorians in Rise of the Federation. To reconcile the various different Andorian naming conventions seen in the past with the uniform convention used in the novelverse, I posited that the novels' name style represents a standardized "Imperial name" system based on the dominant language and culture, and that people from other Andorian cultures have both a name in their own language and an Imperial version of their name -- for instance, Thanien Cherev's Imperial name is Aranthanien ch'Revash.

 

[tomswift2002]

I just picked up "The Hall Of Heroes" today. I can't wait to finish the trilogy. And is that Korgh on the cover with Worf behind? If it is, all I can say is "Finally!" It's been ages since we saw a book-only character on the cover.

 

[JJMiller]

That's correct. I'll have more to say on the cover once more people have read it.

 

[Titus Andronicus]

Was lucky enough to get my hands on Book 3 yesterday--digging in and really liking it so far.

 

[JJMiller]

Cool!

I will note a fun and intentional dynamic that only folks reading the series now will really be able to experience: the trilogy release schedule matches up with its duration in the timeline, so the story time that's passed since Book 1 started is the literal time since the book's release. Events have unfolded generally at the speed they would have in-universe.

 

[JWolf]

This thread has some open spoilers and the topic does not mention spoilers. So can some staff member please read the thread and add spoiler code where appropriate?

 

[JJMiller]

I've gone back and tagged everything in my answers that I can imagine might give away anything. My practice these days is not to respond in review threads, so I had adopted this one for answering questions about the series in general; if it'd be better done in a dedicated thread for it, I can start one. But I think one for the entire series would be best.

 

[ronny]

Finished the first book a few days ago and liked it a lot. I picked up the third book today so I'll be finishing the series in a couple of weeks.

 

[DimesDan]

This thread has some open spoilers and the topic does not mention spoilers. So can some staff member please read the thread and add spoiler code where appropriate?

Did you hit notify or message @trampledamage about your concerns?

I've gone back and tagged everything in my answers that I can imagine might give away anything. My practice these days is not to respond in review threads, so I had adopted this one for answering questions about the series in general; if it'd be better done in a dedicated thread for it, I can start one. But I think one for the entire series would be best.

Well all the discussion seems to be here, if you want to create one for a general spoiler discussion, it's your call, I personally don't see any need to transfer what has been discussed here and going back and retroactively tagging spoilers as @JWolf suggested seems too time concerning, what could be done is just adding the "spoiler" prefix into the title of the thread as then the spoiler rules that occur in Trek Lit will apply.

Anyway, just finished Book Two and thought it was good and I am really enjoying these books.

 

[trampledamage]

Good call, @Dimesdan - thanks for the heads up. I'll add a spoiler warning to the thread.

Please, everyone, if you have a concern - either notify on the post or send me a message or just flag me by name like Dimesdan did - it'll send me an alert.

I'll see and react to those much quicker than waiting for me to read a post in a thread.

 

[JJMiller]

That works, thanks. A warning will also be at the front the next Literary Treks podcast I'm guesting on in December, which is to cover the whole trilogy.

 

[Mage]

Should have part 3 in later this week or early next week. Quite curious about the ending, and I am mostly curious if the events of this trilogy will have a lasting effect.