Reading Marathon: The Typhon Pact... and Beyond!

[DS9Continuing]

Deep Space Nine: The Long Mirage by David R. George III
Published: March 2017
Time Span: late January 2386

The Long Mirage picks up from the last David R. George III Deep Space Nine novel, Ascendance, following up on the stories of Quark, Ro, Nog, Kira, and Odo, most prominently. And this is absolutely going to sound like damning with faint praise, but... it is a book about people with goals trying to accomplish them! After my frustrations with Ascendance ("Can you really write sixty pages of a novel with no clear narrative direction? Apparently so."), this is a blessed relief. Quark wants to find Morn... and sets out to do so. Ro wants to avoid her boyfriend and figure out her relationships with Quark... and sets out to do so. Nog wants to fix Vic Fontaine's program... and sets out to do so. Kira wants to figure out the mystery of the falsework and help with unrest on Bajor... and sets out to do so. Odo wants to find out what's going on with a Dominion ship approaching the station... and sets out to do so! Amazingly competent plotting. I'll tackle each of these in turn, and talk about the extent to which they work.

A long-deferred thread in this series has been what happened to Morn... and to be honest, I don't think what happened to a glorified extra is sufficiently interesting to drag out for years of both publication time and story time. But in this book, instead of getting updates on it from some other character, Quark actually goes to find out for himself, and Ro comes with him. So that's nice, but in the end, the two characters don't really accomplish much themselves; basically, they bump into some other characters also looking for Morn, and those characters tell them everything they want to know, and that's it. So although Quark and Ro are actually taking action, their actions don't really drive the narrative, nor do they really do anything interesting or clever. Their relationship gets a couple good scenes but nothing in it seems to really resolve or develop.

In the Nog plotline, he and Candlewood (DS9's science officer who, like most of the new crew, lacks any kind of personality or character hook) go into Vic's program to unravel its issues once and for all. Okay, so I am glad this has finally happened, but it beggars belief that it took Nog two years to undertake the really obvious action of asking Felix for help. What follows is a fun enough Las Vegas escapade, but like the Quark/Ro plot, it's undermined by someone turning up and explaining everything to Nog rather than Nog piecing anything together himself. On the other hand, Nog does get some good moments of coming up and executing a plan... which does actually work! Of all the book's plots, this is the most successful, though I wish it had felt like something was actually stake for Nog rather than us constantly being told this was the case. I also did appreciate how it turns out that the Morn and Vic plots actually go together.

The Kira plotline is okay. I can't really muster up any enthusiasm for her relationship with Altek Dans, and I refuse to believe there's anyone out there who can. I did like she got a classic Kira moment, in doing the right thing that no one else liked. I didn't find the resolution to the falsework dilemma very compelling; the whole thing about a remembered childhood comet seemed fairly uncompelling and circumstantial.

The Odo plotline is, alas, like the ones from earlier Deep Space Nine books, in that no one is called on to make a choice. The ship of Dominion refugees turns up, they tell Odo what they're doing, the end. There are no interesting decisions or character moments at all. Like, why even do this?

So yes... this is probably the best of the post-Destiny Deep Space Nine novels, in that the characters actually try to do things... but it's still pretty boring and could have been a lot better.

Continuity Notes:

• This does reference The Light Fantastic, but the Nog stuff doesn't have any reference to Force and Motion. We do learn a little bit about what the O'Brien kids are like as teenagers, though, which is nice.

Other Notes:

• Occasionally we get scenes from the third-person limited perspectives of holosuite characters. I don't think this makes any real sense. Surely they do not have interiority?
• Characters in this book are often weirdly skeptical of people's claims to have traveled through time given this is, you know, Star Trek.
  
• Compared to other DS9 books of this era, this one has surprisingly little recapping; indeed, unlike Ascendance, which constantly recapped itself, this one barely recaps previous novels at all. Thank the Prophets!

Seems like we continue to feel much the same about these books. I felt that this one finally got to the point on some long dragged out storylines... and it wasn't really worth the wait once we got there. Some occasional moments of "oh, that was nice" sprinkled among a load of meh. I liked the reveal that the Vic plot line and the Morn plot line were actually the same plot line all along. I liked when Kira went all Cartman and said "Screw you guys, I do what I want!" I liked that the Odo story was set up in metaphor by Kira's vision from Revelation and Dust. I liked that Candlewood finally got some screen time as a senior officer of DS9, I didn't like that he was so utterly bland and indistinct (I characterised him much more distinctly in my own stories). I agree that Altek remains an complete zero after four novels and I don't care about anything he says or does.

As I've said before, I think I just fell out with DRG3's writing style. To my mind he focuses on the wrong things, and serialises far too much. And we can see the downside of that - four books meticulously building up this plot about the falsework, and it all gets wiped away without a resolution by Coda because of real world issues, whereas if he'd just got to the bloody point he could have got his story out in time.

.

 

[DGCatAniSiri]

Yeah, I remember my initial reaction to this was “at last, forward momentum!” And yet in further consideration... Not a lot actually HAPPENS, but it’s just so novel that things actually advance in a manner that isn’t just setting up something for however many books later.

As a reader, I find it so strange that these books end up being so lengthy and yet feeling so devoid of anything memorable, and it really is disappointing how it hit DS9 so hard that I felt more relief at getting a blank slate with the Coda universe reset, rather than actually wanting to see these adventures with this cast continue.

 

[Thrawn]

Spoiler: Coda

I think it's also a legit knock against Coda that no one seemed to take these books into account at all. After all this lead-up, no one could've asked DRG3 where he was heading and tried to at least throw in some of it? I think some of his ominous foreshadowing could've fit into that narrative. Ah well.

As it was, they weren't even consistent with it, errors so obvious that if the authors had read these books at all I think they wouldn't have occurred. (I try not to impugn authors' motives, but it felt very weird to me, like it was hard not to view it as an intentional snub.)

Sorry - I just realized I was talking about Coda in a thread of someone who clearly hasn't read Coda yet. I apologize if I spoiled anything by mistake. I didn't mention any plot events or details, but it still might have been across the line.

 

[David Mack]

(I try not to impugn authors' motives, but it felt very weird to me, like it was hard not to view it as an intentional snub.)

It was not an intentional snub. We simply had a LOT of moving parts with which to contend, and because our plan for multiple lead-up books was rejected by the publisher, there simply wasn't enough time to address everything.

 

[Thrawn]

It was not an intentional snub. We simply had a LOT of moving parts with which to contend, and because our plan for multiple lead-up books was rejected by the publisher, there simply wasn't enough time to address everything.

Spoiler: Coda

Thanks for the reply, that's good to know. Just to clarify - I wasn't trying to make any claims to your thought process. Just, as a reader, reading those books, it didn't feel like a small oversight. It didn't feel like a thread left dangling. Every single one of the stories & arcs DRG3 developed post-Destiny was ignored, and several were flatly contradicted. It felt like I'd slipped into an alternate universe where DRG3 never wrote those books at all. It was bizarre, and completely threw me out of the narrative.

I think you and James Swallow (who wrote the particular book where that ignoring of plotlines occurred) are both excellent authors and I hope you keep writing TrekLit for decades to come. But, with a great deal of respect to a consummate professional, I think this was a bigger whiff than you're owning up to here.

It's also basically your fault I expected it in the first place; Destiny was SO GOOD at this kind of continuity! You taught me to expect better; you can't blame me for it :-)

 

[Stevil2001]

Spoiler: Coda

I think it's also a legit knock against Coda that no one seemed to take these books into account at all. After all this lead-up, no one could've asked DRG3 where he was heading and tried to at least throw in some of it? I think some of his ominous foreshadowing could've fit into that narrative. Ah well.

As it was, they weren't even consistent with it, errors so obvious that if the authors had read these books at all I think they wouldn't have occurred. (I try not to impugn authors' motives, but it felt very weird to me, like it was hard not to view it as an intentional snub.)

Sorry - I just realized I was talking about Coda in a thread of someone who clearly hasn't read Coda yet. I apologize if I spoiled anything by mistake. I didn't mention any plot events or details, but it still might have been across the line.

I was not on the TrekBBS during the day today, so I didn't read any spoilers. (I carefully averted my eyes to write this reply.) Thanks for thinking better of it.

 

[DS9Continuing]

Spoiler: Coda

I think it's also a legit knock against Coda that no one seemed to take these books into account at all. After all this lead-up, no one could've asked DRG3 where he was heading and tried to at least throw in some of it? I think some of his ominous foreshadowing could've fit into that narrative. Ah well.

As it was, they weren't even consistent with it, errors so obvious that if the authors had read these books at all I think they wouldn't have occurred. (I try not to impugn authors' motives, but it felt very weird to me, like it was hard not to view it as an intentional snub.)

Sorry - I just realized I was talking about Coda in a thread of someone who clearly hasn't read Coda yet. I apologize if I spoiled anything by mistake. I didn't mention any plot events or details, but it still might have been across the line.

I was not on the TrekBBS during the day today, so I didn't read any spoilers. (I carefully averted my eyes to write this reply.) Thanks for thinking better of it.

Shit yes sorry, I didn't think of that. Genuine apologies if I messed anything up for you.

.

 

[Stevil2001]

Shit yes sorry, I didn't think of that. Genuine apologies if I messed anything up for you.

.

No, it's fine. I don't mind something mild like "this thread was not resolved." And I skimmed the Coda release threads, so I do know a fair bit about them; I am not much of a spoilerphobe.

 

[Stevil2001]

Deep Space Nine: I, the Constable by Paula M. Block & Terry J. Erdmann
Released: November 2017
Time Span: after The Long Mirage, though supposedly 2385

"But the sun seldom shines above Bowog Bog."

This brings the Block/Erdmann Quark trilogy to a close, though this one has a stronger focus on Odo, especially at first. Quark learns that an uncle of his is dead and he might inherit... except Rom recently made it legal for wives to inherit, and his uncle has three! So Quark goes to Ferenginar to try to woo them, but disappears; Odo, at a loose end waiting for Federation bureaucracy to resolve the issue of the Dominion refugees following the events of The Long Mirage, reluctantly volunteers to go to Ferenginar and find Quark.

It's fun enough, probably my favorite of the three of these enovellas. The humor is a bit broad and sometimes overegged (there's a joke about Rom wearing a hat that's laid on way too thick), but I think the Ferengi work best when there's some kind of cultural contrast, and it's more entertaining to read about Odo trying to navigate Ferengi society than Quark trying to navigate it. I wish the mystery was more of a genuine mystery; once Quark reenters the story, things get a bit less interesting.

But it's fun to see Odo encounter different aspects of Ferengi culture. We get to meet a Ferengi homicide investigator—and we learn there's so little violent crime on Ferenginar they have just one guy who investigates it and he still doesn't have much to do! This is opposed to the huge Ferengi Commerce Authority devoted to combating financial crime. I zipped through it (hard not to, it's so short), and I had a good enough time.

Continuity Notes:

• Some of these DS9 enovellas have slotted into their timeline slots kind of awkwardly, but this one picks up from the end of The Long Mirage fairly well; the status quo for all the characters is pretty much as David R. George III left it.
• Quark insists the Rules of Acquisition can't be amended and haven't been for 10,000 years, but I don't think this holds up, does it?
• Rom designs a communication device and Odo shifts his own comm badge to match the new design. I don't really buy that Odo can successfully imitate comm badge components on the molecular level, but I think my preferred explanation (Odo pins a real comm badge to himself) probably doesn't hold up either.
• Rom also gets excited that he "actually invented something." What about those self-replicating mines?

Other Notes:

• There's a character here named "Quirk"; we learn that both "Quirk" and "Quark" are derived from the "same Ferengi word for 'splattered mud,' but different regions have different mud..."
• "Everybody makes jokes about the 113th Rule: 'Always have sex with the boss.'" Including Quark himself, in Legends of the Ferengi.
• Never thought I would read a clear Virginia Woolf reference in a Quark comedy story.

 

[Christopher]

Quark insists the Rules of Acquisition can't be amended and haven't been for 10,000 years, but I don't think this holds up, does it?

Not at all. There were only 173 rules in 2151 (ENT: "Acquisition"), 285 at the time of DS9, and 289 by Lower Decks. So at least 116 of the rules have been added within just the preceding 230 years, which makes it unlikely that the first 173 were unchanged for nearly 10,000 years.

We know from VGR: "False Profits" that they also include commentaries, major and minor judgments, and considered opinions, so they're clearly subject to interpretation rather than being a rigid dogma.

 

[KRAD]

Yeah, the Rules of Acquisition are constantly revised so they can sell copies of the new editions.....

 

[Thrawn]

That was also my favorite of those little novellas. Though they were all pretty minor, I'll never complain about a story focusing on a well-characterized Odo.

 

[Stevil2001]

Prey, Book 1: Hell's Heart by John Jackson Miller
Published: October 2016
Time Span: February 2386 / Summer 2286

Read enough of an author's work, and you begin to notice what interests them, their recurrent themes and obsessions. LibraryThing tells me I own twenty-six books with contributions by John Jackson Miller, of which I have read seventeen, from 2006's Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic to 2023's Strange New Worlds: The High Country. As a writer, Miller is often interest in cons and grifts, hoodwinking other, misdirections, sleights of hand, these are all things his villains love to do, but also his protagonists. This is so blatant that in the KOTOR comics he has a grifter actually named "Gryph"! There's a lot of illusion and trickery especially in his novel Picard: Rogue Elements, but a fair bit too in the long con of The High Country. (You can see why they got him to write a Section 31–themed Discovery novel, though I didn't read that one)

Book 1 of Prey is all about a long con, one of the longest cons of all. The Enterprise-E is summoned to help transport various members of the House of Kruge to a ceremony to honor them, in order to set up the House's participation in a vital negotiation between the Khitomer and Typhon powers. The House of Kruge has been leaderless since the events of The Search for Spock a century ago, no squabbling family member able to achieve dominance over another. But when the ceremony comes under attack, it turns out that there's an agenda a work, one that's been in action for a full century!

John Jackson Miller has a good grasp of character voices, but the problem with a novel about a con being run on our heroes is that they largely spend it reactive—and for the most part, the reader is ahead of them. It's pretty obvious that Galdor, gin'tak of House Kruge, is up to something and in league with the assassins who attack the summit even before this is explicitly revealed, but it's something our heroes still don't know after 383 pages. This is a long time to read about main characters who continually react to crisis after crisis, making no headway in understanding what's going on. Like his writer, Galdor is moving all the pieces into position for a dramatic payoff in future installments... but that doesn't necessarily make for riveting reading on its own. (And, unfortunately, as can often be the case with stories of deception, who Galdor was pretending to be was kind of more interesting than who he turned out to actually be.)

Like with Takedown, I felt that Miller handled the screen characters well in the sense of capturing their voices, but less so in the sense that it doesn't really feel like the book matters to them. This is even true with Worf, to whom the events of the book ought to matter a lot. What's at stake for his character? Kahless, I guess? Honor? But these stakes come across as more hypothetical than actual. The nonscreen characters, though, are there in name only, if at all. (Though, it's not Miller's fault if Šmrhová doesn't have a personality.) The previous Next Generation novel, Armageddon's Arrow, did a good job of giving the Enterprise crew little bits and bobs, but this pulls back from that, much as it also pulls back from the Enterprise's suppose renewed mission of exploration yet again.

Don't get me wrong, there are a couple good twists, and some strong action. But I wanted Picard, Riker, La Forge, and so on to do something interesting and clever, to figure something out. Hopefully that's what books 2 and 3 are for.

Continuity Notes:

• It feels like a weird thing to complain that I wanted more continuity references in a book that manages to tie the events of Search for Spock to those of DS9's "Captive Pursuit," but I thought it was weird how vague the references to Insurrection were given this takes the Enterprise back to its setting. Picard never thinks, "Oh Anij who I claimed to want to spend hundreds of days with is close by" or anything like that.

Other Notes:

• There's an extended flashback in the middle to the Enterprise-A bumping into the "Unsung" Klingons. I felt like this went on a bit, and again, it seemed like there should be more character stuff at stake, especially for Kirk. Meeting a group of discommoded Klingons who refuses to do anything at all as their ships drift to their doom seems like a good Star Trek Adventures scenario, I'll have to remember that.
  
• When Cross was unmasked, I immediately thought, "Oh, it's The Wizard of Oz." One page later, Cross is quoting the movie and calling its title character a hero. Korgh thinks that he "rather doubted the hero of any children's story would appreciate the worship of a man who had helped engineer the decapitation of one of the great houses of the Klingon Empire." Korgh needs to read The Land of Oz, where we learn the Wizard was willing to hand an innocent baby off to a wicked witch in order to guarantee his own power, ending a royal line.
  
• Cross is a nice lively character among the often dour, honor-obsessed Klingon cast. I hope we get a good amount more from him in books 2 and 3.
• I don't feel that Martok came across as very well; he has to be a bit of a dunce for things to work.
  
• Today I learned that it's spelled "painstik" for reason.

 

[Thrawn]

For what it's worth, I think Prey is a lot more enjoyable if you think about it as a story about all the Klingon characters, with the usual heroes as supporting guest stars. The only dynamic characters are the Klingons. This makes it something unusual for the TrekLit line, but a worthy experiment viewed in that light. It definitely isn't a Major Crossover Event in the sense of Destiny, The Fall, etc in terms of character work.

 

[Stevil2001]

For what it's worth, I think Prey is a lot more enjoyable if you think about it as a story about all the Klingon characters, with the usual heroes as supporting guest stars. The only dynamic characters are the Klingons. This makes it something unusual for the TrekLit line, but a worthy experiment viewed in that light. It definitely isn't a Major Crossover Event in the sense of Destiny, The Fall, etc in terms of character work.

That makes sense. I think the problem I have with that framing is that, in the first book anyway, Korgh is a bit one-note, and he's our main Klingon viewpoint character. Plus, so far at least, there's no clear adversary for him, just an unusually dense Martok.

But I did see some potential in Valandris near the end of book 1; I'll try to reframe the trilogy mentally as I begin book 2 tomorrow.

 

[Stevil2001]

Prey, Book 2: The Jackal's Trick by John Jackson Miller
Published: November 2016
Time Span: March 2386

The Jackal's Trick picks up the plot threads from Hell's Heart, but shifts focus in terms of character somewhat. Whereas Hell's Heart gave us a lot of the Enterprise crew as its main Starfleet characters, this one, especially in its earlier chapters, focuses more on the Titan crew. Hell's Heart had no mention of anything from Titan: Sight Unseen except for Riker's new job; suddenly, here there are recurring characters from Titan like the new XO, Riker's aide, and Ethan Kyzak the North Star cowboy and references to specific scenes in Sight Unseen. (Did James Swallow turn in the manuscript after Miller wrote book 1 before he wrote book 2?) This works to the book's benefit; while Hell's Heart had somewhat bland Enterprise characters reacting to Klingon machinations again and again, The Jackal's Trick has a lot of fun scenes with the Titan crew as they manage to actually deal some setbacks to the Klingon cult.

I enjoyed Worf's strand a fair amount, as he is taken prisoner and tries to teach an Unsung child about honor... only he killed that child's father in honorable combat! Kahless gets some fun moments. Probably the real MVP of the book is Valandris, who is going through a challenging time in terms of values and circumstances. I enjoyed following her narrative, and I look forward to seeing where it—and that of the rest of the Unsung—goes in book 3.

Still, though, if the novel as a form is about characters who grow and change, it feels like Prey is curiously short of them given it's made up of three novels. Surely there's more fun to be gotten from a Tuvok/La Forge team-up than this? A big part of the problem are the two principal villains, Korgh and Cross. Both are very one-note... but feel like with a few tweaks, they could have been more fun and have more depth. Korgh is a wronged man, and one who has used dishonorable methods to reclaim his honor. Surely we could have more sympathy for him, and experience more of his turmoil? But whenever we go to his perspective, he's just cackling manically (inwardly) at a fullproof plan. Whatever interest I saw in Cross from book 1 was undermined almost right away in book 2 when he turned out to be a creepy psychopath. I feel like he could have been the kind of villain you kind of want to win because he's so clever, but again all his scenes feel the same.

This book feels like it's treading water for the people in it, even as the plot is always getting more complicated. I think in those old days, when Star Trek fiction had a lot of three-book series but not much of an ongoing story, you could have a trilogy that told an exciting story but didn't really move much forward. But this book is part of an ongoing tapestry—and yet it feels like no one in it is allowed to change or develop, even the characters original to it. Miller writes in a way that's fun and easy to read, I never dreaded this book or anything, but it doesn't feel like it has enough of a point to be three novels.

Continuity Notes:

• "The Federation has been at peace with the Klingon Empire since Kirk visited Khitomer." Well, you know, except for the war!

Other Notes:

• Perhaps I'm wrong, but I'd guess there's a straight line from Miller enjoying writing Kyzak here to The High Frontier.
• On p. 116, Cross is proud of himself for using a particular Klingon word... is he supposed to be speaking tlhIngan Hol the whole time? Because if so it would be easy to use a particular word! If not, it raises a bunch of questions best left avoided.

 

[Csalem]

Continuity Notes:

• "The Federation has been at peace with the Klingon Empire since Kirk visited Khitomer." Well, you know, except for the war!

The Federation does have a history of forgetting wars. Have lost count the amount of times they refer to great periods of peace only to discover they were also at war with the Cardassians, Tzenkethi, etc at the same time.

 

[DGCatAniSiri]

The Federation does have a history of forgetting wars. Have lost count the amount of times they refer to great periods of peace only to discover they were also at war with the Cardassians, Tzenkethi, etc at the same time.

The retconish nature of several of those aside, I think it's something of the scale involved - it seems like a lot of these conflicts end up being treated less as "war" and more "border conflicts." Probably something that is particularly prone to happen when talking about this significant galactic powers, and in particular when they can compare the "war" with the Klingons in DS9 to the Dominion War - the difference in a war that happens in a few sectors of space and across the known galaxy probably gives people in the Federation a different perspective of what "war" is.

Sure, it's pretty much a semantic difference in practice, but it is the kind of thing that happens.

 

[Christopher]

The retconish nature of several of those aside, I think it's something of the scale involved - it seems like a lot of these conflicts end up being treated less as "war" and more "border conflicts." Probably something that is particularly prone to happen when talking about this significant galactic powers, and in particular when they can compare the "war" with the Klingons in DS9 to the Dominion War - the difference in a war that happens in a few sectors of space and across the known galaxy probably gives people in the Federation a different perspective of what "war" is.

Right. Kind of like how the US waged war in Afghanistan from 2001-21, but it had little effect on most people in the States during that time (except military families, of course).

 

[Stevil2001]

I buy that someone might say "the United States has been at peace since Vietnam [or whatever]" though it seems like a somewhat thoughtless statement; I don't really buy that that would extend to someone saying "the United States and Afghanistan have been at peace for decades"! Like, yes, the Klingon war was apparently a smallish war for the Federation... but it was a very big blip in Federation/Klingon relations!