Prey: The Jackal's Trick
I enjoyed this much more than the prior entry. The first third or so was fairly generic setup, and this flashback was much less interesting than the one about Spock, but the main storyline here was delightfully chaotic and twisty from the H’atorian Conference with no clear winners or losers and many mistakes on both sides to the space battle at the end with a similarly ambiguous outcome. With Cross and Korgh not quite getting along, there is a thread all along of various villains working at cross purposes, and this is much expanded at the end with the reveal of Shift’s true allegiance. I always enjoy these stories where no one has complete information and everyone is trying to promote their own interests. Timothy Zahn, I think, writes them the best, and this isn't quite up to the Zahn standard, but Miller does use the extant continuity regarding the Typhon Pact to grand effect (the Kinshaya, in particular, are great despite blunting a bit of Christopher’s development with them) and produces villains with convincing motivations.
If anything, the problem with this book is that it goes too far in that direction – we spend a lot of time with Korgh, Cross, Valandris, and Zokar. We learn a whole complex backstory of these illusionists operating from the time of Sulu on the Excelsior through TNG and to the present day. We fill in even more of how Korgh went from a dumb kid to a master manipulator (helpfully, as that felt like a bit of a problem last book). We learn of Korgh’s long relationship to his engineer Odrok, and how she always loved Kruge and did this for Kruge but is disappointed in Korgh. We see Valandris’s conflict between following Kruge and her conscience. We see the daughter of the fellow Worf killed at the end of book one, and give him time to reconcile with her. While we’re at it, we also learn a lot about Kahless and how he feels about himself and his relationship to the Empire and his alcoholism. What we don’t get much of is any actual development or characterization of the ongoing main characters on Enterprise and Titan. Aside from Worf once again being abducted by the Unsung and once again having his conceptions of honor theoretically challenged but not really examining his ideas in response, we get LaForge and Tuvok finding the illusion ship and chasing down Blackstone and we get Kyzak and Xaatix figuring out the bomb. And that’s it? Riker and Picard are commanding people to attack and raise shields and follow their leads, etc, but they’re just moving pieces; no one aside from the few mentioned above really gets to have new thoughts or be uniquely themselves or make an impact on the story that Generic Officer/Captain/Admiral couldn’t make.
While this is a weird choice for such a climactic trilogy, it's not necessarily an invalid one. Destiny also introduced a bunch of new characters and ended up centering on Hernandez more than anyone else, for instance (though it must be said that Destiny featured strong character arcs for Picard, LaForge, Riker, Troi, and Dax, among others). But after sitting with this story for two books, I am interested in the guest stars (particularly in Shift now that she’s killed Cross and we know her real motivation), and so that’s success enough. It’s weird that this has so many characteristics of one of these ongoing-continuity-anchor-series but still mostly feels like an old numbered book in style – expanding some corner of the universe and focusing on that as our main characters just generally are competent and good at their jobs over top of the developing story. Back then, it was because they weren’t really allowed to develop the characters much (or, at least, it seemed that way until you read the standout novels, like Peter David's first few); now, it’s hard to figure out why he’s made this choice.
So from that perspective this still feels like a bit of a missed opportunity. But while this passes over any real development for our leads, it does give some pretty fascinating tales in their place, and we did get Kyzak and Xaatix in a section that felt very Titan specifically (as opposed to generically Star Trek) and that fun trip with the Nausicaan engineer, both of which had a specificity and a whimsy that were a lot of fun and missing from the first book. So I’m happy with this. It isn't quite what I was expecting or looking for, but I’m enjoying reading it for what it is, and the third book has a lot of potential.
I enjoyed this much more than the prior entry. The first third or so was fairly generic setup, and this flashback was much less interesting than the one about Spock, but the main storyline here was delightfully chaotic and twisty from the H’atorian Conference with no clear winners or losers and many mistakes on both sides to the space battle at the end with a similarly ambiguous outcome. With Cross and Korgh not quite getting along, there is a thread all along of various villains working at cross purposes, and this is much expanded at the end with the reveal of Shift’s true allegiance. I always enjoy these stories where no one has complete information and everyone is trying to promote their own interests. Timothy Zahn, I think, writes them the best, and this isn't quite up to the Zahn standard, but Miller does use the extant continuity regarding the Typhon Pact to grand effect (the Kinshaya, in particular, are great despite blunting a bit of Christopher’s development with them) and produces villains with convincing motivations.
If anything, the problem with this book is that it goes too far in that direction – we spend a lot of time with Korgh, Cross, Valandris, and Zokar. We learn a whole complex backstory of these illusionists operating from the time of Sulu on the Excelsior through TNG and to the present day. We fill in even more of how Korgh went from a dumb kid to a master manipulator (helpfully, as that felt like a bit of a problem last book). We learn of Korgh’s long relationship to his engineer Odrok, and how she always loved Kruge and did this for Kruge but is disappointed in Korgh. We see Valandris’s conflict between following Kruge and her conscience. We see the daughter of the fellow Worf killed at the end of book one, and give him time to reconcile with her. While we’re at it, we also learn a lot about Kahless and how he feels about himself and his relationship to the Empire and his alcoholism. What we don’t get much of is any actual development or characterization of the ongoing main characters on Enterprise and Titan. Aside from Worf once again being abducted by the Unsung and once again having his conceptions of honor theoretically challenged but not really examining his ideas in response, we get LaForge and Tuvok finding the illusion ship and chasing down Blackstone and we get Kyzak and Xaatix figuring out the bomb. And that’s it? Riker and Picard are commanding people to attack and raise shields and follow their leads, etc, but they’re just moving pieces; no one aside from the few mentioned above really gets to have new thoughts or be uniquely themselves or make an impact on the story that Generic Officer/Captain/Admiral couldn’t make.
While this is a weird choice for such a climactic trilogy, it's not necessarily an invalid one. Destiny also introduced a bunch of new characters and ended up centering on Hernandez more than anyone else, for instance (though it must be said that Destiny featured strong character arcs for Picard, LaForge, Riker, Troi, and Dax, among others). But after sitting with this story for two books, I am interested in the guest stars (particularly in Shift now that she’s killed Cross and we know her real motivation), and so that’s success enough. It’s weird that this has so many characteristics of one of these ongoing-continuity-anchor-series but still mostly feels like an old numbered book in style – expanding some corner of the universe and focusing on that as our main characters just generally are competent and good at their jobs over top of the developing story. Back then, it was because they weren’t really allowed to develop the characters much (or, at least, it seemed that way until you read the standout novels, like Peter David's first few); now, it’s hard to figure out why he’s made this choice.
So from that perspective this still feels like a bit of a missed opportunity. But while this passes over any real development for our leads, it does give some pretty fascinating tales in their place, and we did get Kyzak and Xaatix in a section that felt very Titan specifically (as opposed to generically Star Trek) and that fun trip with the Nausicaan engineer, both of which had a specificity and a whimsy that were a lot of fun and missing from the first book. So I’m happy with this. It isn't quite what I was expecting or looking for, but I’m enjoying reading it for what it is, and the third book has a lot of potential.
