Spoilers KEL: More Beautiful Than Death by David Mack Review Thread

Not a whole lot darker than she did in Spock's World.

 

I don't know about that. As I recall, in SW, her antagonism was more political, manipulating events from behind the scenes. That's rather different from actively attacking people and attempting multiple murders.

 

There is that.

 

T'Pring went completely off the rails in this novel. In "Amok Time" and Spock's World, she was both cunning and brutally logical. In this novel, she just went Criminal Minds-level insane, probably because she lost both her world and Stonn at the same time.

 

Life's been busy so it took be forever to finish, but I liked this one better than The Unsettling Stars. The characterizations and action were spot-on except for Sarek who came across much more like Disco Sarek rather than Kelvin Sarek.

I was surprised by the T'twist and can totally buy T'Pring going psycho following the death of her love and destruction of her world. It addressed the "issue" of the Spockhura relationship vs. Spock's TOS-established commitments well.

More Kelvinverse novels, please. And don't make me wait another decade.

 

I'd like to see more Kelvinverse books. This book has a really great story I really thought it was well written and holds your attention T'Pring was absolutely ruthless trying to get what she wanted and almost got away with it. I like how the Spock/Uhura Relationship was dealt with too.

 

Quick question. If @David Mack can answer, awesome. If not, it won't bother me.

Does MBTD take place before or after TUS? Just curious since I will eventually do a read of the six Kelvin novels someday and would like to do so in order.

 

I'm honestly not sure, since ADF and I didn't coordinate our efforts. My best guess would be that the events of my book take place after those of his.

 

Wait, there are six of them? Or are you counting the Starfleet Academy books?

 

It's not very scientific but it 'felt' like MBTD occurred after TUS, it might just be as simple as TUS came out first, but TUS felt like a novel that was not long after Star Trek (2009) ended, while MBTD just felt like the crew had a bit more experience under their belt.

I'm curious, though 6 Kelvin Verse novels. I only count 4 (the 2 novelizations that were done and then TUS and MBTD--I'm not aware of any others unless you're counting the other 2 novels that were loosely adapted as regular original series novels later on)

 

Oh, you know what, that's possible. I didn't read the Academy novels. Were there 2 of those?

 

Yep, counting the four Academy novels. @Damian Probably will include the '09 and STID novelizations as well for the heck of it, but it would feel a lot more complete, so to speak, with a novelization of Beyond. I'm still annoyed we didn't get that one.

 

Yeah, me too. Being the weird fan that I am Beyond was my favorite of the 3 Abramsverse films . I remember when it came out I was sure I was missing something about the novelization. Was I not looking for it in the right place? Then come to find out that's because there was none.

I'm a bit OCD with my stuff and it drives me crazy I have 12/13 movie novelizations....through no fault of my own

 

I thought the general consensus was that Beyond was the best out of all three of them.

 

I thought it was generally regarded as the weakest, though I could be wrong. Though one thing I have read in a number of places is that it felt like it captured the essence of the original series the best.

 

It was weakest commercial wise but has a better story. The other two are just nonsense when you focus on them. Fun to watch perhaps but they took way too many liberties with the Trek lore.

 

I do find Star Trek (2009) loses some of its luster as the years go by, esp. after watching STID and Beyond. I used to like it quite a bit but each time I've watched it I find I have a harder time staying interested in it.

I liked STID better. It felt more differentiated from Star Wars, which was a positive for me. It felt more like it belonged in the Star Trek universe, but I wasn't fond of bringing Khan back in the picture (though I'll give them points for mostly giving us a different Khan story overall). Beyond, finally, is where I felt like this could have been an original series story. It also featured a mostly original story line (though there were elements of revenge like TWOK involved, it didn't feel like a TWOK-redo overall like Nemesis-Star Trek (2009)-STID did). Also, thankfully, it was basically one of maybe 2 or 3 Trek films where Earth wasn't at risk and was pretty much not even mentioned for the most part. I was starting to think maybe the Federation should move their headquarters elsewhere. Every other movie featured Earth in peril it seemed.

I would have loved to have seen a Beyond novelization. It might have dug a bit deeper into Krall's transformation and history, as well as more information about Kirk's malaise at the beginning. Much like the other movie novelizations it could have fleshed out the backstory more. A shame that never happened (and at this point I doubt it ever will).

 

I felt the same about the novelisations of the Alien prequels and Planet of the Apes trilogy. There weren’t novelisations of the first films but all the others had novels and even prequels.

 

According to @Leto_II in this thread, More Beautiful than Death actually probably goes in the middle of The Unsettling Stars, which has a four-month timejump in the middle.

• Feb. 2258: The Unsettling Stars, ch. 1-9
• Late Spring 2258: More Beautiful than Death
  
• June 2258: The Unsettling Stars, ch. 10-16

 

I'm still holding out hope that we'll eventually get a Franklin novel or even series that covers all of this.