Spoilers DSC: Dead Endless by Dave Galanter Review Thread

Just finished. I think this story was not for me, as the First Contact section was the most interesting part.

 

That’s fair. Not every story is for every person. Sorry this one didn’t tick your boxes.

 

What Trek novel do you have planned next?

 

I have nothing planned at the moment. I am back to working on an original sci-fi novel, albeit slowly. I have a fulfilling day job and a busy family life.

 

To coin a phrase,

Seriously, though, I enjoyed it. Kind of a slow start (and that's saying something, coming from an Alan Dean Foster fan like me!), but worth it in the end.

 

Honestly I don't know if I will get around to this one for a long time, if ever. I've not been impressed with the Discovery novels, and I'm on a 24th century binge right now, trying to get caught up with the TNG and DS9 novels. But I do want to keep my website in good shape, and I know there is at least some reference in this novel to the Stamets comic. Can anyone let me know what references they noticed to any other Trek books and comics in this novel? Especially if they are references to other books or concepts from the wider Litverse. Thanks in advance!

 

If ever?

I referenced some episodes of DSC for sure, some Easter eggs about some TOS locations and references, and some flashbacks to things seen in the Discovery Annual Comic that had Stamets and Culber in it. As for references to other Trek books, I mention Garth of Izar's ship from the Garth of Izar novel.

Still hope you read it. It's a Discovery book about Discovery characters set on the Discovery.

 

No offense, Dave! Thank so much for your answer! That helps a lot. Honestly, there are just so many Trek books on my ‘to-read’ pile, I don’t know when I’ll ever get around to everything I really want to read.

 

I took no offense. Reading is supposed to be leisure, not a chore. I hope you get to it eventually, because I think it helps flesh out some of the characters, which was the goal. But, yeah, there's a lot out there in Trek and out.

 

Still waiting for the price to drop just a bit on this one. I usually try to get them for under $12 or $13. On Amazon it's listed at 15.99 (unless someone knows somewhere a bit cheaper).

Not that I don't think this book will be worth it of course . Just reluctant to spend more than $12 on a book (unless it's hardcover like the upcoming Picard novel). I've liked all the Discovery novels so far (with a special mention to "Drastic Measures" and "The Enterprise War" which I thought were excellent). Oh and last year's Tilly book was a pleasant surprise as well. I was still ambivalent about Tilly at the time but it was a great read and I have to admit Tilly has grown on me.

It seems most of the reviews are good on this one as well. Glad to see that most people seem to like it.

 

OT,but maybe Dave will appear at Trekonderoga this year.

 

I always love going, but it depends on what my schedule at my day job and normal life are. But that tour is like family to me.

 

I hope you are invited and can attend.

 

It was a fun book. I really like it. I will admit, I started to share Dr. Culber's sentiment and wanted to punch Ephraim every time he went into that "you will and you wont and you did and you didn't" thing. He's alive in every universe and hasn't yet understood the dangers of the catchphrase. I like the idea of an almost-mirror universe where things in general have turned out better for most people.

 

To be fair, I don't think Ephraim actually talks to very many people. Culber is probably on a very short list of people Ephraim's had an actual conversation with, and could be the only one who's expressed frustration with the "you will and you won't, you can and you can't" thing.

 

Yay, I finally got my copy of Dead Endless. I already started my Voyager novel by Greg Cox (which is getting good BTW) so this is next on my list to read. Can't wait

 

I think in the universe where he's in Starfleet, people find it quirky. Culber in the network was too frustrated and muddled to find it so. It bothered him less in the "clearings." But I did want to annoy the reader a bit with it so they could feel what Culber was feeling. Probably not great to annoy the reader, but writing Ephraim was very unique. Here's an entity, likely with offspring and siblings all connected to one another as forms of the same "being" who doesn't quite get how Culber and Stamets et al aren't also this, and is trying so hard to wrap his multi-verse head around it all.... and at the same time trying to help Culber because he seems to be a unique one-time-entity who is part network and part not, and he helped create him, but that also is difficult for Ephraim to "get." He knows so much, but also lacks so much perspective as we see it. And we lack his. But he's trying. And we're trying.

 

I thought the metaphor about Ephraim living in Plato’s Heaven of Forms really helped me get an handle on what sort of perspective living immersed a multitude of alternate universes and timelines would give a being. There’s Culber as a concept, and then there’s this specific Culber in front of you, which might be any specific Culber, and it can easy to lose track of which Culber is which.

 

Just started reading "Dead Endless" and I find it a bit eerie in the early going with the whole COVID-19 pandemic going on and some parallels with the Symbalene blood burn outbreak in the Federation.

Knowing that David Galanter couldn't have possibly known anything about the coronavirus outbreak when he wrote it gives me a bit of a chill

 

I finally completed this novel. Long story short my office closed and I've been teleworking, but left the book at the office and was only able to get it from my office when I had to go get some other supplied a few weeks back.

Ok. I won't belabor the major plot points since that's largely been covered to some extent and I'll skip to my review.

I feel bad about saying this because Dave Galanter seems like a nice guy based on his comments at least, but I really didn't care for this novel too much. I was confused for a time and eventually figured out we were in a parallel universe before the 'big reveal'. I can be slow, but I eventually put 2 and 2 together and figured that out. He was clever in the beginning, not giving it all away at the start but planting clues.

Like the other Discovery books, this one focuses on a particular character, or characters in this case. We've had books on Burnham, Saru, Lorka, Tilly and now Stamets/Dr Culber (which makes sense since both are intertwined characters). However, Culber is the only one from the 'prime universe', though this universe is similar to our own as I gather. So I guess you could say this is our Stamets, but it's not our Stamets, and it will be, but won't be (if you read the novel you'll get it).

It does reveal what Culber was doing after his 'death' and before his resurrection.

Overall I'll give it an 'average' rating. It did accomplish what the other Discovery novels did, give us some backstory on some characters. That's always welcome. While this Stamets may not necessarily be our Stamets in every regard, I get the impression this Stamets is pretty close. And Galanter also gives some 'screen time' to other 'also starring' characters like Airiam, Nilsson (my new favorite--pretty blondes and all ), Rhys and even a still living Landry. And we also get to see a USS Glenn that was not destroyed. Usually I like alternate universe stories but this book doesn't really explore that a whole lot. Culber is obviously a bit nonplussed when seeing some of his non-dead crew mates. But it's more a story about getting Discovery out of its predicament. I liked the alien species as well, a truly alien alien. And the tardigrade from the start of the show has a feature role and we find it's an intelligent creature and wants to help Culber.

What I didn't like was it took a long time to build up to the story. At the beginning I was having a tough time following the dialogue between the tardigrade, Ephraim, and Culber. It took me a while to just get interested in the story. I liked the character building elements of the story. That helps it. The plot sort of dragged it down for me. I would have liked to have explored this 'other' universe a bit more though. And I guess that's the other thing--as far as the 'prime' universe goes, this was mostly just a Dr Culber story. Every thing else never happened in our universe. So how impactful is it on this universe, except for Dr Culber (though it does provide a potential explanation for his coldness toward prime-Stamets after his return, like Spock's after 'The Enterprise War').