• Welcome! The TrekBBS is the number one place to chat about Star Trek with like-minded fans.
    If you are not already a member then please register an account and join in the discussion!

Spoilers Coda: Book 2: The Ashes of Tomorrow by James Swallow Review Thread

Rate Coda: Book 2: The Ashes of Tomorrow

  • Outstanding

    Votes: 37 54.4%
  • Above Average

    Votes: 18 26.5%
  • Average

    Votes: 11 16.2%
  • Below Average

    Votes: 2 2.9%
  • Poor

    Votes: 0 0.0%

  • Total voters
    68
Both books have some suggestion that the Q and other similars have fled because of the threat.

I really don’t think anything we’ve seen or heard suggests that the Devidians could be a threat to the Q. Is there something else going on and the Devidians are just taking advantages of it?

When the universe was threatened by “Them” Q mounted a resistance with the Q of the Enterprise. But now he’s scared and runs away from something that uses space serpents that can be killed by starfleet ships and need to take out methods of time travel to stop their plans being scuppered?

SSH. No one said pulling some one-off villain from the TV shows and making them super powerful threats is supposed to make actual sense.
(It all started with Khan. XD)
 
42 votes so far, 28 outstanding and 10 above average. Yet, the last 3-4 pages have been filled with criticism that doesn't mesh with the vote totals. So which is it?
 
Voted with my heart, critiqued with brain. Just kinda one of those things I guess? I usually vote by how much I enjoy the book, and the problems that arise with how the novel is put together or it's content can be totally offset by a few good parts that carry the book. Sometimes things can be super enjoyable even though they are definitely not as great as they could be or filled with problems.
 
42 votes so far, 28 outstanding and 10 above average. Yet, the last 3-4 pages have been filled with criticism that doesn't mesh with the vote totals. So which is it?

Well, I’ve enjoyed the two books so far. I said my piece on this entry. early on. I see no need to pontificate on the trilogy much before it’s completed.

(And I just noticed I hadn’t voted.)
 
Both books have some suggestion that the Q and other similars have fled because of the threat.

I'm assuming that they're avoiding using Q since it would raise questions about whether it was the same Q as the post-Nemesis television Q. (Did some/several alternate timelines encounter Q? If so, does the same Q do the same encounter multiple times or are there alternate universe/timeline Qs? Would Q's awareness of the Novelverse conflict with future television series storylines?)

I suppose another possibility is that something the Devidians did isolated the Novelverse from beings aware or existing in multiple timelines.
 
42 votes so far, 28 outstanding and 10 above average. Yet, the last 3-4 pages have been filled with criticism that doesn't mesh with the vote totals. So which is it?

The vote isn't a (balanced) scientific survey, nor is it even the same medium or have the same purposes as actual discussion.
 
42 votes so far, 28 outstanding and 10 above average. Yet, the last 3-4 pages have been filled with criticism that doesn't mesh with the vote totals. So which is it?
It's always those disappointed/unhappy with something who are most vocal about it, rest of us read it, some said their piece and now they've moved on. Hence the term, "vocal minority"
 
The vote isn't a (balanced) scientific survey, nor is it even the same medium or have the same purposes as actual discussion.
I never thought it was. However, I think it's a decent indicator to book quality. Since I have limited time for reading, I often use the polls as a good judge for me on what to read and I usually find it right on. It also meshed well with my personal opinion of books 1 and 2 of Coda.
 
The multiverse itself isn't really being threatened, the Devidians only target weak timelines, of which the Litverse's timeline is one. Wesley is only out to protect the Litverse timeline, his native timeline.

But didn't they conclude that the unending hunger of the Devidians for devouring new timelines could end up undermining the multiverse altogether, even the stable timelines?
 
But didn't they conclude that the unending hunger of the Devidians for devouring new timelines could end up undermining the multiverse altogether, even the stable timelines?
Well yeah, they went from doing secret shit in a cave and killing a few dozen people who were already dying in San Francisco's past to collapsing entire timelines and feeding off the quadrillions of life forms within (although it's another sci-fi writers have no sense of scale thing, since we're talking the life from every galaxy in a universe, whereas the books treat it as a far smaller and more local phenomenon)
 
Wild guess: I think Q would ultimately present JLP with a choice. Allow the "Litverse" timeline to be destroyed in order to save every other timeline in the multiverse (or) let everything be destroyed.

This does present the problem of Q in PIC S2 not mentioning a word of what happened.
 
Well yeah, they went from doing secret shit in a cave and killing a few dozen people who were already dying in San Francisco's past to collapsing entire timelines and feeding off the quadrillions of life forms within (although it's another sci-fi writers have no sense of scale thing, since we're talking the life from every galaxy in a universe, whereas the books treat it as a far smaller and more local phenomenon)
Why would you assume that the entire Devidian species consists of half a dozen individuals in one cave? Or that a species which clearly is capable of moving at will through time and across interstellar distances, and which can be invisible (out of phase) and shape-change (in phase) wouldn’t be innumerable and dispersed across the galaxy?

Talk about no sense of scale.

Picard launches one torpedo into one cave and thinks he's ended the threat forever. That's like firing one missile into one cave and declaring one has defeated Al Qaeda.
 
Last edited:
But didn't they conclude that the unending hunger of the Devidians for devouring new timelines could end up undermining the multiverse altogether, even the stable timelines?
Y'know, I'm reminded of Janeway's arrogance that the crew of Voyager was obligated to stop Species 8472 even as other species were benefiting from the annihilation of the Borg. Or Burnham's arrogance that the crew of Discovery was obligated to solve the mystery of the Burn even when the remnants of the Federation were under active threat from the Emerald Chain.
 
Correct. They're also stocking up for a post-apocalyptic eternity of stone-cold munching. Gotta kill a lot of timelines if you want to live forever and not starve.

Does forever exist if time no longer does?
And, for every timeline where they are stopped, there must be one where they are not, and therefore they always destroy all the timelines, and don’t at the same time. It’s like a Wesley Crusher in a box.
 
If you are not already a member then please register an account and join in the discussion!

Sign up / Register


Back
Top