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Spoilers VOY: To Lose The Earth by Kirsten Beyer Review Thread

Rate VOY: To Lose The Earth

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Just pre-ordered my copy here in the UK, apparently won't be released here until 12th November. I don't mind waiting a bit longer though (or mild spoilers, hence my presence here) and I'll have to reread the last book anyway. I'm tempted to listen to the latest podcast interview - I remember waiting impatiently after finishing Full Circle for what felt like ages, so it's strange to have it out such a long time before I can get my hands on the book.

I'm sad this is the end, for some reason I thought there'd be another book after this. If Kirsten ever reads this I'd want her to know that I first came to Star Trek in general and Voyager at a really rough time, and after finishing the series her books were so wonderful it made everything else in my life manageable. It's been a long time since then, and a lot has changed but I'm still so excited to see how she wraps this up.

It feels weirdly coincidental that it's ending at the same time that I'm hitting a goal that seemed so impossible when I first started reading these books. So I guess I'm just trying to say thank you, Kirsten Beyer.
 
Kertrats47 said:
Bruce and I had a really fun and interesting discussion with Kirsten Beyer about To Lose the Earth on the most recent episode of the Positively Trek Book Club. Check it out, and let us know your thoughts!

Click to expand...

Thanks for posting this, I enjoyed it.

She confirmed my suspicion about
the Krenim
.

I liked that she said the authors know how important the novelverse has been to us.

I really really want to know the answer to the question you asked her after the recording stopped! But I guess I'll find out soon enough.
 
hbquikcomjamesl said:
With regard to the Sagittarius Dwarf and the Canis Major Overdensity, boy am I out of date: the last I heard, the Large Magellanic Cloud was the closest. Science marches on.

I found the whole subplot of
Gwyn bonding with Nancy and Harry's embryo before it's sufficiently developed to be sentient
to smell of an anti-choice political statement.
Click to expand...

Having now read this and the previous novel recently - I feel the same - that I got two books of anti-abortion propaganda. Just to be clear, I'm not actually saying that the writer intended that, I have no way of knowing but that is what I took from it.

It was six weeks old right? This book would have been finished during the same period there were surges in attempt to limit abortions to six weeks - which could mean something or nothing...
 
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JoeZhang said:
Having now read this and the previous novel recently - I feel the same - that I got two books of anti-abortion propaganda.
Click to expand...
"The previous novel"? Do you mean More Beautiful than Death or Architects of Infinity? While I do have a tendency to forget plots and details of ST novels unless they rate multiple re-readings, More Beautiful was only August, and I'd think I'd remember a plot thread involving abortion. And Architects was published two and a half years ago.

Be that as it may, I must point out that there is a difference between "anti-abortion" and "anti-choice," a difference best discussed in terms of their antitheses. To be pro-abortion is to believe abortion should be a birth control method of first choice, rather than of last resort, and that it should replace contraception and good old fashioned self-control. And I would personally regard such a belief as a symptom of insanity.

To be pro-choice, on the other hand, is to be in favor of abortion rights: the right of a pregnant woman to choose, without unreasonable restrictions, whether to carry a pregnancy to term, or terminate it. And the key word is unreasonable: nobody should be permitted to abort a pregnancy for the sake of malice or vindictiveness; nobody should be permitted to do so if aborting the pregnancy carries a greater risk to the woman than carrying it to term; nobody should be permitted to abort a fetus that is fully viable ex-utero, and nobody should be permitted to use abortion -- or any other means -- to predetermine the gender of offspring. But that right is founded on three incontrovertible fact: First, pregnancy is not a voluntary condition. Second, pregnancy, even if entirely free of complications, is a life-threatening condition. And third, while it is currently unknowable at what point a fetus becomes a sentient being who can be killed, much less murdered, it is an absolute certainty that the woman carrying that fetus is a sentient being.

And it is abortion rights, rather than abortion as a thing in itself, that fires up the anti-choice extremists. I could go on for paragraph after paragraph here, but no.

And to carry this back to the present opus, we have a character establishing an empathic bond with an embryo -- not yet a fetus -- approximately the size of a kidney bean, not yet sufficiently developed to have a central nervous system, and yet we don't break with the established ST precedent of abortion rights being near-absolute. That seeming contradiction implies a total disregard for any individual being's right to life.
 
hbquikcomjamesl said:
Be that as it may, I must point out that there is a difference between "anti-abortion" and "anti-choice," a difference best discussed in terms of their antitheses.
Click to expand...

just a minor point - I'm british and the terminology we use and the discourse is not a 1 to 1 mirror to US discourse - we don't meaningfully separated out the two by and large here (although american groups trying to influence the discourse have tried to introduce this idea).
 
hbquikcomjamesl said:
I, too, was waiting for an existential threat to Earth. Or maybe some Matthew 16:26 riff, like Dickinson's line in 1776, "What is a man profited, if he shall gain Maryland and lose the entire South?"
Click to expand...
It seemed like it was merely the title due to the quote in the front. If anything, this book should have been titled "Architects of Infinity," and the last one, I dunno, something like "Garden of the Gods" maybe, describing DK-1116?

Also, not a fan of how Beyer, seemingly in a rush to finish, suddenly at the end of the book, turned Nancy into one of the most selfish people in the world. And yes, I know she didn't want the baby and circumstances took that out of her hands, and she's free to not want to be a mother. But to string Harry along simply because she was dying, only to be cured and be all "Yeah, we're done, have fun with our kid I didn't want! Kthxbye!" That's pretty damn cold. If Hugh hadn't seen through her BS, she probably could have gotten away with the whole "memories got lost in the transfer" lie.
 
FedEx_Pope said:
But to string Harry along simply because she was dying, only to be cured and be all "Yeah, we're done, have fun with our kid I didn't want! Kthxbye!" That's pretty damn cold. If Hugh hadn't seen through her BS, she probably could have gotten away with the whole "memories got lost in the transfer" lie.
Click to expand...
Good point, and I completely agree. Yet another reason why I refuse to give it more than an "Above Average."
 
Just finished - loved it. The Galen story was awesome. I feel really satisfied with the ending in both the book and the entire VOY relaunch as a whole. This is a masterclass on how to end a long running book series yet still keep it open for more potential stories. Hopefully we find out what the authors have planned for the litverse soon since they’ve been teasing something for quite a while. I’ll deeply miss reading Kirsten Beyer’s books though :(
 
Gave it a below average but stopped reading at page 50. I've read her previous books and found I always skipped or glazed over a lot of the stuff and found myself doing it again with this book. It's slow and plodding with a lot of character internalization which sacrifices the storys pace. I know it's supposed to be pulp fiction and not high literature but damn, can it at least be entertaining.
 
Should be coming any day now. I’ll read it once I’ve got to the others.
Hopefully it’s better than that Picard episode she wrote.
 
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