So, spoilers and all that:
It, um….It didn’t work for me. Didn’t work for me at all.
The book’s well put together, it flows right along, and it’s a propulsive little thriller, as Mack’s work pretty much always is. It was really nice to see Data and Lal again, and a decent continuity bandage put on the conflict between Data’s position on Orion at the end of Cold Equations and where they were when The Light Fantastic started up. I absolutely loved the chapter told explicitly from Uraei’s point of view, largely in code. That was a nice POV shakeup in the book. I quite liked the idea of the backbone of 31’s surveillance and omniscient viewpoint being a code base that continually re-wrote and updated itself into the omnipresent LCARS system (and others) that we see in every 24th century episode.
The biggest problem, though, is that it took every erg of gray out of Section 31. There is no questioning of the morality of what 31 does in this book. It is simply assumed to be bad. Based on the actions we saw Uraei and its operatives take in this book, that’s understandable, and that’s part of what kills the story for me. Section 31 always worked for me as a cautionary tale. How a group of people could talk themselves into doing horrible things in order to preserve a way of life for a culture. How the things we do in the shadows look to those who live their lives largely in the light, and how you can’t always condemn people who do despicable things to serve a larger purpose. That we can question the motives for these actions, but that sometimes the ultimate result is a greater good. Section 31 works incredibly well as a storytelling device that way.
But this book destroys that.
The reason S31 does things the way it does is because a security AI decided that was the best way to do things. Simple, easy, done. No conscience, no questioning of itself or of its authority. The people who work for 31 may have questions and conundrums, but the orders always come from a source that wouldn’t regard these questions as valid. The people who created the AI made a mistake, and we can look at them as having their best efforts corrupted, but 31 itself is just evil.
The book paints 31 as essentially omnipotent, predicting just about every action of every person, pulling every string of everything that’s happened in the Federation for two centuries. The Romulans never having their genetic link to the Vulcans revealed after the war? 31 did that. The peace with the Klingon empire in 2293? That wasn’t due to the heroic actions of Kirk and Spock, or of a man questioning his own deep-seated hatred of certain people, coming out of a long dark tunnel into the light. Turns out 31 arranged all that. It even seems to be attempting to take credit for the Caeliar’s destruction/transformation of the Borg Collective.
There’s never anything but lip service paid to the fact that Graniv’s expose of 31 could do far more harm than good. I mean, we get what, a couple of sentences at the end of the book saying the Typhon Pact and the Romulans are kinda pissed? I guess we’re meant to accept “Well, the truth is always good” and just go with it. Because, again, the book removes the shades of grey that the best of the 31 stories always showcased so well.
And, of course, in the end, nothing matters anyway. Because all of Bashir’s work is pointless, because 31 is in the background, petting a cat, and saying “No, you see, Mister Bond, I had this planned all along…” and just continues on with its plans.
It bugged me, and I feel like the book is destined to be largely forgotten, because it has to be. Apparently nothing of any consequence happened in the 23rd or 24th Century without 31 knowing about it ahead of time. If anything is happening to the characters in the Federation, we can basically assume that it only occurred because Control let it, and will continue to let things happen depending on whether it allows it. These revelations probably should’ve started a quadrant-wide war within days. The Federation has planted malicious code in the systems of its enemies and allies alike. And not a couple of backdoors, a full on surveillance state. The Klingons should’ve been bombing Earth by the end of the day. But that won’t happen (Or at least I assume it won’t) because that’s not the way the books are trending right now. Probably the only major fallout for this will be that Bashir, who was already basically a background character due to the Andorian thing, will be even more so for a while.
No disrespect to Mack. I’ve always liked his books, and I’ll be there for the next one. But the concept behind this one was fatally flawed.
