The Way to the Stars kind of reads like a young adult novel, but that's no complaint. It might be more accurate, though, to say that this is a bildungsroman, or at least part of one; this is how Sylvia Tilly struggles to fit herself into society but then discovers the place where she belongs. Tilly is harangued by her mother, goes to space boarding school, tries to succeed in academics and extracurriculars, struggles to make friends, and eventually makes a momentous decision. That's the point where the book-- which had always been good-- becomes great. The Way to the Stars takes Tilly further than she's ever gone before, as she meets a variety of people who accept her and shape her and help her to grow. It's really heart-warming without being saccharine, optimistic without being blinkered. It's just a really good book about growing up and finding your place.
It's also successful as a prequel. I mean, there are obvious ways for it to be so: Tilly mentions her mother on screen in one Discovery episode, and she appears briefly in Short Treks, and Tilly's mother is a good extrapolation of those bits. But there's a deeper, better way for a prequel to work, which is when you're watching the original again, you experience resonances in things that worked fine on their own the first time around. Like, Tilly's father tells her there's something of her mother Siobhan in her, in the way Siobhan can command a room. Tilly doesn't believe him. But she must have realized he was right when she had to pretend to be her mirror counterpart. After reading The Way to the Stars, it's easy to imagine that she's drawing on her mother in those scenes, even if she herself doesn't realize. It's moments like that that make a good prequel into a great one, and this is the most enjoyable Discovery novel thus far.
More thoughts here: https://lessaccurategrandmother.blogspot.com/2019/01/review-star-trek-discovery-way-to-stars.html
(What class do we figure for the Dorothy Garrod? Oberth is my inclination.)
It's also successful as a prequel. I mean, there are obvious ways for it to be so: Tilly mentions her mother on screen in one Discovery episode, and she appears briefly in Short Treks, and Tilly's mother is a good extrapolation of those bits. But there's a deeper, better way for a prequel to work, which is when you're watching the original again, you experience resonances in things that worked fine on their own the first time around. Like, Tilly's father tells her there's something of her mother Siobhan in her, in the way Siobhan can command a room. Tilly doesn't believe him. But she must have realized he was right when she had to pretend to be her mirror counterpart. After reading The Way to the Stars, it's easy to imagine that she's drawing on her mother in those scenes, even if she herself doesn't realize. It's moments like that that make a good prequel into a great one, and this is the most enjoyable Discovery novel thus far.
More thoughts here: https://lessaccurategrandmother.blogspot.com/2019/01/review-star-trek-discovery-way-to-stars.html
(What class do we figure for the Dorothy Garrod? Oberth is my inclination.)