Spoilers TTN: Fortune Of War by David Mack Review Thread

Not Star Trek online, but an early 2000s FPS shooter based on Voyager.


I’m curious as to why those Breen commandos surrender.

Seems really suspicious

 

Just finished it, thoroughly enjoyed. Super bummed we're maybe not going to see a sequel to this book for a year, if not years?

 

Finished today, thought it was pretty great.

One thing that I bumped up against was Batanides making an issue about where the lone Husnock ship was that Sarai spared. A year away at maximum warp, sure, but that’s a cake walk for a slipstream-enabled ship to make, and I wouldn’t think that someone with Batanides authority would have any problem getting a ship out there somewhat quickly.

 

I don't know how to feel about Batanides as a character. I don't see the motivation for her to be a 'badmiral' and trying to dig up dirt on Riker. I don't know if a writer will give any substantial background for her acting this way, or if she's just going to be written as the current badmiral thorn, and thus be an empty mustache twirling villain. So far she's more of the latter and that makes her kind of boring (and a shame! I liked her in Tapestry). But I guess I can live with it if she is merely a plot device for Sarai's journey, and we get something awesome out of Sarai.

 

There's a concept in writing. "Hitler's Whistle" was the usual term used in the writing classes I've taken: the idea that nobody (not even Adolf Hitler) could possibly be so uniformly bad as to be utterly devoid of at least one humanizing characteristic, and that giving an antagonist such a characteristic (such as declaring that Hitler liked to whistle) makes the character (and therefore the story) more belivable.

Of course, back in the real world, there's a certain fellow who is currently living in an employer-provided colorless domicile, and who shares initials with a symptom of ethanol withdrawal, who might actually be uniformly bad, and devoid of any endearing trait.

 

Lord Voldemort?

 

Crap, I only just realized that Batanides is Picard's friend Marta from "Tapestry." Seems she's made a number of appearances without me realizing it.

I often have trouble remembering what happens from book to book, so I kept wondering why she has it out for Riker and Vale. Does anyone know if this was covered somewhere and I've just forgot?

 

^ From what I've been gathering, she's randomly on his case as of yet. She might just be a jerk. And I only knew it was her because I quite literally look up every new name I come across in at Memory Beta. It's a bit of a curse though, because it takes me out of the book to go looking up who's whom, but on the other side of that I get to picture an actual face sometimes.

 

Ah, gotcha. So there's a mystery there to figure out.

 

I, too, didn't realize who she was until I looked her up, to figure out where she came from, that she would be such a hawkish <defecatory orifice of a donkey>

 

Just finished it this morning. Pretty damn good. Posting without reading the rest of the thread...

Thrilled to see Keru get some action of both the vertical and horizontal kind. I like to think that is a direct response to my thread after the last Titan book complaining about his lack of either.

Loved how it followed up on so many previous stories - not just Sight Unseen but also DM's own continuing thread about the Breen trying to acquire advanced tech (Zero Sum Game, Silent Weapons, Ceremony of Losses, understandable that these characters wouldn't know about Disavowed), Ferengi stories like Reservoir Ferengi and Rules of Accusation, plus even things like Warpath and the Vanguard series.

Sarai is a great addition to the cast, no problems with her at all. Also some good work with Ra-Havreii, who has been an asshole since Taking Wing and remains an asshole a decade later. Wasn't a lot of character stuff for anybody else though, apart from Vale. I guess that would be my one complaint - that this is an action thriller (which is of course Mack's forte) and not the strange-new-worlds story that Titan was designed to be.

Mildly confused at what Batanides is up to - I never took her to be a badmiral so why would she have a grudge against Riker? Also, weren't she and Vaughn supposed to have had some role in the fight against Section 31, according to Rogue and Abyss? I suppose that was taken out of your hands by DRG3.

Also mildly confused as to how all of this is only happening now. I mean, all the various interested parties surely would have wanted this badass Husnock tech in the midst of the Dominion War or the Borg Invasion. I suppose it just took them this long to find anything, and they were rather distracted in the meantime?

Nitpick corner: On the Husnock planet, Sethe accidentally showed his comm-sheet to Vale when he should have been showing it to Sarai. Also I'm still convinced that Y'Lira Modan's name should be the other way round (ie, Ensign Y'Lira, given name Modan) but I suppose Geoffrey Thorne would be the authority on that.

EDIT: Ah, I see mostly everyone is thinking the same as me. Well, great minds etc.

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Ha! Just jumping in here to say - true enough, your comments and something borgboy first brought up after Sight Unseen made me realize that we hadn't given Keru much dimension outside his job - so when when Dave and I got together to discuss how Fortune of War would pick up where Sight Unseen left off, that was on our list of stuff to address. We also talked a lot about Tuvok, Sarai, Xin and Riker, to make sure their ongoing plot threads moved forward in realistic ways...

 

Power to the people! Yes we can! etc.

A further thought. It was nice to see just about every thuggish, violent, tough guy race in the Star Trek universe represented somewhere in the novel. But I'm not sure how we're meant to take the Orion ship's Denobulan engineer.

Obviously he was working for the Breen. He did call himself a Denobulan in internal dialogue, so that's how he thinks of himself. But he also said 'long live the confederacy', suggesting he is a true believer in their cause. (Unless he said it sarcastically I suppose.)

So is he a Breen in disguise as a Denobulan? Is he a Denobulan hired to work for the Breen? Or - throwing it out there - are we saying that the Denobulans are actually one of the Breen races under those helmets?

Or am I thinking too hard?

 

We saw in prior novels that the Breen provided for "immigration" from races who were outside the Confederacy. I think it was the "Prey" trilogy? There probably aren't a lot of oddball minority Breen but, then, who would know? That's their whole deal.

 

Gave it a 5/5. Great trek book. So good.

 

Or political/ethical consequences from the public revelations of Section 31: Control as discussed in TNG: Hearts and Minds?

 

There is a opportunity for a spinoff within the pages of this book.

The Gorn and Chalnoth are removed from time just before their deaths by act of Q. They are given the opportunity to eat various sentient beings throughout the galaxy.

I'm sure they would appreciate the pungent aroma of grilled Klingon and Kelpians would be delicious.

Their cookbook would be a smash hit and their onscreen chemistry would be too.

 

I really enjoyed the book, and I understand that the story has to logically go where Federation politics take it, but I wish they could get back to their original mission, which would mean original stories rather than rehashing and retconning these TNG episodes.

 

He appeared in a Bobby Brown music video...which wouldn’t be redeeming...but...it was for ghostbusters 2.