Could someone please answer my questions. Is there something about the Remans in the novel and did starfleet evacuate them and the other romulan subject people too? And are Tuvok and his wife also part of the Titan crew in the new continuity?
I think it lost its character focus toward the end and became too much the kind of big action-adventure show we were told it would not be. A lot of the ideas that were featured in the first half of the season were sidelined or glossed over in favor of the big action/danger thing, then swept away casually at the end, like the synth ban.
I just finished this enjoyed this a lot, so have whatever thoughts my brain can come up with after being in reading trance for three hours. (Spoilers to follow) I loved Medaka, it was great to see a genuinely nice Romulan with good motivations, especially in this late state of the Empire. I hope he and his family manage to get out of the danger zone. It was also interesting that his crew had more non-Romulan crewmembers than probably any other Romulan starship we've seen, and I liked how "captain's preference" basically explains the absence of aliens on Romulan ships in the TV shows. And of course a Romulan ship with a high diversity in species is very appropriate for a Titan adventure. The Jazari are a lovely addition to Trek's synthetic life forms. I'd love to see more of them. I was somewhat surprised to see the Zhat Vash in this, but it obviously worked well with the story. I also can't help but notice that Helek's fate wasn't entirely set in stone at the end, so maybe we'll see her again? Could be interesting to see a former Zhat Vash member as, well, anything else. Is it just me, or was Vardrel at least somewhat hinted to be at fault for the Romulan nova? Also, I'm assuming that Thad's repair at the hands of the Jazari is going to be connected to his death. Really, seeing Thad in this, all the time was rather tragic. One thing that surprised me about the Picard tie-ins, as opposed to the Discovery ones is just how cohesive a narrative they spin, whereas the Discovery novels are basically "random adventure with [main character] in the past". I'm not saying that's bad at all, it makes sense for Discovery, I'm just really enjoying this post-Nemesis, pre-Picard world that is being created here, and I hope the next novel is again set after this one and continues this trend. Has there been anything announced yet? Litverse references I could find: Vale and Keru are from the Titan novels. Tezwans are mentioned. While not technically exclusive to the Litverse, the Lembatta Cluster was most prominently features in the Prometheus books. There's a Starfleet ship called Robinson, but honestly that's such a vague name, it could be a coincidence. Also nice: Medaka replying "It's a fake!" to the faked holo of him and Riker.
I forgot the most important thing: Early on the shuttle Holiday gets destroyed, which makes The Dark Veil the second time that James Swallow has destroyed the Holiday. I don't know if that means anything, but I found it amusing. It really wasn't depressing at all. Quite positive, in fact. There's a Reman engineer on the Romulan ship, but IIRC nothing about Remus being evacuated. Nope. I presume they didn't want to use TV characters (other than those established to be on Titan of course), for fear of being contradicted. And Tuvok being there, without the context of the rest of the Litverse just feels like a lot of baggage to me. Due to corona all of my written exams have been delayed, so I suddenly had a lot more time during winter break this year. I like to think I used it well!
I’m retired, single and housebound so I have a lot of free time. At the moment I’m reading a book a day.
It's still in 2387 that hasn't changed. Picard explained it fine, it meshed with ST09 fine. It didn't with the background comics, but those weren't canon in the first place so they didn't need to Did you even watch the show?
I did but I trying to forget it now. I just don’t see how Spock’s plan would have worked in the new take in the nova. It doesn’t make sense
On the contrary, it makes far more sense, for the most part. The movie implied that the supernova happened first, that the radiation was somehow expanding FTL toward Romulus, that Spock and the Vulcans expected to have a certain amount of time before it hit, and that it somehow magically got faster and destroyed Romulus before he could get there, which makes no damn sense on any level. Picard's version is immensely more coherent -- it's Romulus's own sun, they had advance warning that the supernova was coming, but it went off sooner than expected. The only implausible thing there is that a star with habitable planets shouldn't be capable of supernova, but that ship sailed back in TOS with Minara, Fabrina, and Beta Niobe. The one part that still doesn't make sense is that dropping the Red Matter after the supernova happened wouldn't do any good, so there's no reason why Spock would've gone ahead and done it anyway. But that was nonsensical to begin with. Picard's version doesn't make it any worse, and it makes just about everything else enormously more sensible.
The end of the novel also has Spock ask Riker to put him into contact with La Forge, hopefully setting up a future novel about those two trying to deal with the nova. Maybe, in the end, these three Picard novels will be the Romulan super nova trilogy that some Litverse fans have been asking for.
If you mean the part in my second paragraph, Picard did not create that problem. The movie created that problem; Picard simply left it unaddressed, because Spock's fate was outside the purview of the story it was telling. So it makes no sense whatsoever to blame Picard for it.
Which is no excuse to blame it for something it has no part of. Fair, honest criticism is okay; unfair, dishonest criticism is just being a jerk.
“It’s a fake!” he snarled. Was that a Vreenak reference? Yes I know it's a common term, but having a Romulan exclaim it? Edit: Huh I guess this is a reference to how the Narada was modified in ST09 Countdown? And maybe the Tal'shiar ships in STO which were similarly modified?