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

[Markonian]

Me too!

 

[Stevil2001]

Prey, Book 3: The Hall of Heroes by John Jackson Miller
Published: December 2016
Time Span: April 2386

Well, if you've been following my reviews of the Prey trilogy thus far, you'll know it hasn't set my world alight. Me on book 1: "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." On book 2: "This book feels like it's treading water for the people in it, even as the plot is always getting more complicated... 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."

Well, unfortunately, a hundred pages into book 3 and I was dreading it. A hundred pages into this book and it seemed like almost nothing had happened. In the Enterprise plot, the crew scrutinizes a series of astronomical bodies looking for hidden ships; you know you're in trouble when Picard is complaining about how boring this is. Meanwhile, Worf and Kahless seem like they keep having the same conversation with the Unsung again and again; meanwhile meanwhile the Unsung themselves are just sitting in canyons hiding; meanwhile meanwhile meanwhile we keep cutting to what the very one-note Korgh is up to. It was tedious and very little sense of forward momentum.

Eventually the Kinshaya invade, but by this point I was too disengaged to care. And to be honest, whether the Kinshaya invade the Klingon Empire, whether they fall subject to Breen manipulations, I found it difficult to care about. It's all pretty political and pretty abstract in terms of stakes. As I repeatedly commented about the first two books, it never really feels like anything is at stake here for the characters. Why do these events matter to Picard, to Riker, even to Worf? I very rarely felt as if they did. Over one thousand pages is ultimately a lot of time and space to devote to something with no there there.
The shame of it is I felt like there could have been something really substantial to this, especially for Worf. Worf was discommendated himself on screen but I don't think he ever hit the point of actually questining the discommendation system, even if he himself was done an injustice. I think an arc about Worf at first thinking what was done to the Unsung was just, and then coming to reflect on what was done to him, and the limits of Klingon honor, could have been very interesting. But that's not here; even if the book ends with Worf proposing some changes to the system, it doesn't feel like the book does much to lead up to it. Or a book about Worf struggling to convince Kahless of this—now that sounds like an epic struggle. But mostly Worf just seems to chill out with Kahless and the Unsung, and then it all climaxes and ends.

I find it hard to say much about this series. Until this volume, which got pretty boring, I would have said it was competently written. As I've said before, Miller captures the voices of the preexisting characters well, but doesn't really give them interesting, characterful choices to make; his original characters could be interesting (I thought Shift had real potential), but are in practice fairly one note. It's weird, this is a thousand-page story in an era where Star Trek books can in theory do whatever they want... but it feels like the trilogy was written back in the late 1990s, with the goal of making sure all the characters and all the politics had to be end up back where they began so as not to upset anything the tv show might do.

Continuity Notes:

• There are a lot of callbacks here to Typhon Pact: The Struggle Within, which I don't think had ever been referenced in any other books before. I did appreciate Miller folding the political upheaval in those books into a broader narrative about the Kinshaya, though I don't think most Star Trek writers have been capable of handling the Kinshayan theocracy in an interesting or compelling way, and Miller is no exception.

Other Notes:

• There's this whole exchange about the term "Unsung" on pp. 128-29 that makes no sense to me. Kahless asks if in Klingonese "Unsung" is rendered as lilIjpu' bomwI'pu' or ghe'naQDaj qonta' pagh, and then Worf tells him it was actually Hew HutlhwI'pu'. But... how are they having this conversation, if not in Klingon? Like, in what language is Kahless actually saying the word "Unsung"? How can he not know how the Unsung referred to themselves in Klingon if he must be talking to them all in Klingon? Did I miss some kind of reference indicating the Unsung are all speaking some other language? But even if they are, surely Kahless is speaking Klingon and communicating with them via the universal translator?
• As I did after reading Typhon Pact: Zero Sum Game, I continue to think that the Breen are a genuninely clever worldbuilding idea that books have never really done anything clever with, but this book comes the closest so far.
• The last scene where Riker hunts Korgh down is genuinely clever in its final line.
• I think Doug Drexler is very good at what he usually does... but cover art featuring characters is not what he usually does. What is going on with Worf's hair?

 

[Christopher]

There are a lot of callbacks here to Typhon Pact: The Struggle Within, which I don't think had ever been referenced in any other books before.

And indeed was ignored in the next couple of TP volumes, which assumed the Kinshaya theocracy was still in power. I was very grateful to JJM for not only acknowledging my entry, but reconciling the inconsistency.

There's this whole exchange about the term "Unsung" on pp. 128-29 that makes no sense to me. Kahless asks if in Klingonese "Unsung" is rendered as lilIjpu' bomwI'pu' or ghe'naQDaj qonta' pagh, and then Worf tells him it was actually Hew HutlhwI'pu'. But... how are they having this conversation, if not in Klingon? Like, in what language is Kahless actually saying the word "Unsung"? How can he not know how the Unsung referred to themselves in Klingon if he must be talking to them all in Klingon? Did I miss some kind of reference indicating the Unsung are all speaking some other language? But even if they are, surely Kahless is speaking Klingon and communicating with them via the universal translator?

For what it's worth, Marc Okrand's The Klingon Dictionary asserted that upper-class Klingons (at least in the late 23rd century) frequently speak to each other in English as a marker of their superior education (like how Latin was often used in medieval Europe or thenabouts), as a handwave for the scene in The Search for Spock where Kruge and his officers speak about Genesis in English. So maybe Worf and Kahless are having the conversation in English.

 

[KRAD]

I had such plans for the Kinshaya. Sigh.

 

[Stevil2001]

For what it's worth, Marc Okrand's The Klingon Dictionary asserted that upper-class Klingons (at least in the late 23rd century) frequently speak to each other in English as a marker of their superior education (like how Latin was often used in medieval Europe or thenabouts), as a handwave for the scene in The Search for Spock where Kruge and his officers speak about Genesis in English. So maybe Worf and Kahless are having the conversation in English.

There's still not a way the Unsung could be speaking English, though, and thus Kahless wouldn't know their name in English.

(Also it's been at least a decade since I saw ST III, but I always took that scene as just switching into English for the viewers' benefit, not that the characters were suddenly actually speaking English.)

 

[Christopher]

(Also it's been at least a decade since I saw ST III, but I always took that scene as just switching into English for the viewers' benefit, not that the characters were suddenly actually speaking English.)

That's one way of interpreting it, but Okrand chose to interpret it more literally. I'm not saying it has to be that way, just suggesting that one might be able to use it to rationalize the scene here if one so desired.

But I think there's merit to Okrand's suggestion that they were discussing Genesis in English because it was secret and they didn't want their monolingual crewmembers to know what they were saying.

 

[Stevil2001]

That's one way of interpreting it, but Okrand chose to interpret it more literally. I'm not saying it has to be that way, just suggesting that one might be able to use it to rationalize the scene here if one so desired.

But I think there's merit to Okrand's suggestion that they were discussing Genesis in English because it was secret and they didn't want their monolingual crewmembers to know what they were saying.

Yeah, I can see it, I'm just saying that in 35 years of viewing, that interpretation has literally never occurred to me!

 

[David cgc]

I'm actually having the same thought about The Rings of Power recently, where I'm having trouble figuring out sometimes if characters are switching from English to Elvish diegetically or exegetically, and what the reason would be either way (aside from, you know, barking commands in Elvish seeming cooler).

 

[jaime]

I'm actually having the same thought about The Rings of Power recently, where I'm having trouble figuring out sometimes if characters are switching from English to Elvish diegetically or exegetically, and what the reason would be either way (aside from, you know, barking commands in Elvish seeming cooler).

One for the money Glorfindel! Two for the show!

Oh.
Elvish.
Carry on.

 

[Stevil2001]

Life and other reading are crushing me, so I haven't got to Headlong Flight yet, but a question popped into my head.

I seem to recall reading that there was a reference to Prometheus in Prey. Indeed, JJM said:

The one major exception is Prometheus, which was Klingon-heavy: the authors gave me a character to insert into Klingon society and wrote their books to reflect Prey's events.

But I didn't notice the reference! Does anyone know?

 

[JJMiller]

Life and other reading are crushing me, so I haven't got to Headlong Flight yet, but a question popped into my head.

I seem to recall reading that there was a reference to Prometheus in Prey. Indeed, JJM said:

But I didn't notice the reference! Does anyone know?

Bernd Perplies got in touch with me during production to try to add a connection. He was including a Klingon named Grotek in their High Council — I'm not sure if he was intended to be the same character by that name who had been used before — and had me name-drop him as one of Korgh's lesser allies. (Hall of Heroes page 60.)

There was no more than that in Prey — the work was in its latter stages. Grotek does appear in Prometheus in that role, I did see.

 

[Stevil2001]

Bernd Perplies got in touch with me during production to try to add a connection. He was including a Klingon named Grotek in their High Council — I'm not sure if he was intended to be the same character by that name who had been used before — and had me name-drop him as one of Korgh's lesser allies. (Hall of Heroes page 60.)

There was no more than that in Prey — the work was in its latter stages. Grotek does appear in Prometheus in that role, I did see.

Ah, neat! I did not catch that connection, so thanks for spelling it out.

 

[Stevil2001]

The Next Generation: Headlong Flight
Published: February 2017
Time Span: mid-2386

Parallel universes are, of course, an old standby of Star Trek in specific and popular science fiction in general. What can we learn by seeing the road untaken, other universes where people made different choices or things went different ways? This book sees the Enterprise-E returning to its mission of exploration, which eventually brings it into contact with the Enterprise-D from 2367... but an Enterprise-D from a reality where Picard died during the events of "The Best of Both Worlds, Part II" and Riker became captain; other differences include the continued existence of Tasha Yar, Pulaski still serving as CMO, and Wesley working as a civilian specialist on the Enterprise.

The book invites comparisons with any number of parallel universe stories, from TNG's "Parallels" onwards, but the one that jumped out at me was Peter David's Q-Squared, because Dayton Ward performs a similar trick to David. In Q-Squared, some clever work with pronouns makes it unclear during one of the book's earlier scenes that we're in an alternate timeline; we at first thing we're reading about Picard and Beverly Crusher when it turns out to be Picard and a still-living Jack Crusher. In an early E-D scene, Ward has the crew at a card game, and some vague references to "the captain" make you think Picard is the captain when in fact it's Riker.

David deploys the revelation to dramatic effect, dropping it in (if I recall correctly, it's been at least two decades since I read Q-Squared) at the end of a scene, upending the mental image you had built up over the preceding several pages.The problem here is that the next time we go to the alternative Enterprise-D, we're just told that Riker is captain; there's no drama to the reveal. So why defer it?

An inexplicable lack of drama is consistent through all the alternative timeline stuff. It takes absolutely forever before the two crews are even aware of each other; I felt like the first one hundred pages were just people scanning nebulas. And while in Armageddon's Arrow, Ward built in a lot of nice little moments and small arcs for the E-E crew, here I felt I was just reading about them doing their jobs in the most humdrum fashion. T'Ryssa Chen has a boyfriend... and that's it, nothing is at stake for her. Once the two crews meet, they do so without much drama or interest. Does the discovery of this other Enterprise do anything other than make the crew from the future nostalgic about the old LCARS format and bridge layout? Not really. It doesn't raise any questions for Picard about his life, or La Forge, or Worf, or anyone.

The closest we get is that the alternative Riker gets a bit of closure... but to be honest, why do I care if that guy gets some closure? Again, compare Q-Squared, where if nothing else, Jack Crusher undergoes an existential crisis from learning about his fate in the "Prime" timeline. At the end, Picard makes a potentially interesting decision in giving the alternative Enterprise-D metaphasic torpedoes, but this decision entirely happens off-screen, and its consequences seem to be limited to the fact that if he is found out, he will receive a sternly worded letter from a bureaucrat.

Outside of the alternative timeline stuff, there is unfortunately little going on in the novel. The main antagonists are Romulans from a century ago; unsurprisingly, they are little threat, even aside from the fact they mostly seem to sit around talking replaying beats from "Balance of Terror." I was not able to get worked up about the fate of the aliens in any way, shape, or form, and it's all resolved with surprising ease.

In both cases, information is often imparted to the reader in the least dramatic fashion possible. Rather than learn about the alternative Enterprise-D's history along with the Enterprise-E crew, it's simply given to us in exposition. Rather than have the Romulans dramatically decloak to make things worse, they simply pop up in a chapter from their viewpoint where they just sit around watching people. There's no dramatic reveals, no suspese mind from almost anything here. To be honest, I wasn't even sure what the book was going for. The basic premise seems to be "two alternative crews meet each other... and everyone is terribly nice about it." Perhaps it's a realistic take in a Star Trekky sense, but it hardly makes for interesting reading.

Continuity Notes:

• Picard thinks of the Briar Patch as a place that gave the Enterprise trouble years earlier... not months earlier!
• The ship class names for the Romulan ships in this book all come from the FASA RPG sourcebooks.
• Picard recalls that the Enterprise-E was originally called the USS Honorius while under construction, being redesignated after the crash of the Enterprise-D on Veridian III. While the origins of this name are obscure, its first mention in prose fiction came in the S.C.E. novella The Future Begins by... oh, how interesting. (Not, contrary to the claims of Wikipedia, in Diane Carey's Ship of the Line.)

Other Notes:

• In a bit about how Chen seems to do everything on the ship but her job as contact specialist, we're told that what she spends her time doing includes "composing... detailed analysis of whatever new species the Enterprise might encounter, and recommendations for next steps... with respect to a newly discovered civilization" (p. 27). But if composing such materials isn't part of the duties of a contact specialist, what even are the duties of a contact specialist?
• There is for some reason a totally irrelevant two-page recap of the events of "The Pegasus."
• There is also a whole page-long thing that establishes that Christopher L. Bennett is an in-universe professor at Starfleet Academy. He likes to talk a lot about time travel theories, spinning a lot out of very small comments by other people and unable to stop talking. Hard to imagine, to be honest.
• Doug Drexler's cover image is as undramatic and humdrum as the book it illustrates. And doesn't that Enterprise-D look a bit wonky to you?

 

[David cgc]

At the end, Picard makes a potentially interesting decision in giving the alternative Enterprise-D metaphasic torpedoes, but this decision entirely happens off-screen, and its consequences seem to be limited to the fact that if he is found out, he will receive a sternly worded letter from a bureaucrat.

I genuinely thought the "open in case of Borg apocalypse" message was going to be the Caeliar homeworld, which really does seem to be the most critical thing to know in terms of galaxy-saving, and something that was discovered at the right moment by pure luck, so you might want to stack the deck. The "Endgame" torpedos are useful, at least for a while, but you don't really need them to save the galaxy. Well, maybe not: Alt-Riker wouldn't have the benefit of Picard being able to eavesdrop on the Borg's communications, so he wouldn't be able to do stuff like detect the momentary weakness that let them take down the cube in First Contact. Considering that, maybe a bigger torpedo is more important than I thought at the time.

In a bit about how Chen seems to do everything on the ship but her job as contact specialist, we're told that what she spends her time doing includes "composing... detailed analysis of whatever new species the Enterprise might encounter, and recommendations for next steps... with respect to a newly discovered civilization" (p. 27). But if composing such materials isn't part of the duties of a contact specialist, what even are the duties of a contact specialist?

I see where she's coming from. Like, while it's a security chief's job to run drills, physical training, and inspect equipment, if that was all they were doing and never actually meeting anyone potentially threatening from outside the ship (or having trouble amongst the crew inside it), they'd probably feel like they weren't doing what they were hired for.

Doug Drexler's cover image is as undramatic and humdrum as the book it illustrates. And doesn't that Enterprise-D look a bit wonky to you?

Drexler has a bit more fondness for long zoom lenses that flatten perspective than most artists do, especially during the years around this book's release. Looking back over his portfolio, there are even more examples than I remembered of art that's nearly isometric from around that time.

 

[Christopher]

I genuinely thought the "open in case of Borg apocalypse" message was going to be the Caeliar homeworld, which really does seem to be the most critical thing to know in terms of galaxy-saving, and something that was discovered at the right moment by pure luck, so you might want to stack the deck. The "Endgame" torpedos are useful, at least for a while, but you don't really need them to save the galaxy.

"At least for a while" being the key point. The only reason "Endgame"'s transphasic torpedoes and ludicrous Batmobile armor actually worked was because the Borg hadn't seen them before. The Borg adapted to the Batmobile armor within minutes, and would have adapted to the torpedoes in time too, like they adapt to every new weapon. So it's a short-term advantage at best, not a magic bullet to save the day.

 

[Stevil2001]

Titan: Fortune of War by David Mack
Published: December 2017
Time Span: late 2386

A cut scene from David Mack's Fortune of War, exclusive to "The Typhon Pact and Beyond!":

"You know," said Riker, "my life has been very strange recently."
"How so?" asked Deanna.
"This is my fifth adventure in a row that follows up something that happened while we were on the Enterprise-D. First we went into interphase again, then we met the Cytherians again, then we met the Solanae again, then we met Arda's people again, and now we're looking at Husnock artifacts again."
"That's odd," said Deanna.
"The reason I wanted to captain the Titan was to explore strange new worlds, but it seems like we spend most of our time chasing down small lingering plotlines from two decades ago."
"Well," said Deanna, "TNG was a very popular tv show. Even a follow-up to a mediocre episode is going to sell more copies."

I jest, of course, and I cheat by including some stories that aren't Titan ones even if they are Riker ones, but even so, this is the third Titan story in a row to sequelize a TNG episode (in this case, "The Survivors" from season 3). The original selling point of Titan was that it took a diverse group of characters into interesting new sfnal situations; Fortune of War, alas, does not really accomplish this. We have, on the one hand, a character focus mostly on Riker, Vale, and Titan's new XO, Sarai, and an action-adventure plot. Many people seem to think David Mack does these kinds of plots well, but Mack in action mode has never really appealed to me, and in any case, this isn't the kind of thing I come to Titan for.

Even within those confines, though, I didn't find much to enjoy here. I've repeatedly stated that while I think the promotion of Riker to admiral could be interesting, the novels that have followed The Fall haven't really capitalized on it. Fortune of War continues this trend; Titan is part of a fleet action here, which you think would be great for Admiral Riker... but weirdly, the character who does the most with this is Vale. I did appreciate the focus on Sarai, a character I enjoyed in Sight Unseen, but Mack's version reads a bit flatter than Swallow. The rest of the Titan crew don't get much focus that's very memorable or interesting. On top of that, a lot of time is spent on the various factions competing with Titan to get the Husnock artifacts, but I found these characters were almost universally one-dimensional and unpleasant.

Some of these TNG sequels have at least fleshed out the concepts in interesting ways (mostly Sight Unseen, I guess), but there's nothing interesting to be learned about the Husnock here. I find depictions of empire in sf fascinating, but the interminable glimpse we get of them makes them into snarling one-dimensional monsters.

This was a quick read, Mack always is, but other than that, I found this had little to recommend it. Competently done, but not what I want from a Titan book... which is a bit disappointing, as it's the final one. This series peaked back with Sword of Damocles, in my opinion; the post-Destiny run was too inconsistent and largely failed to tap into the series's original potential, installments by James Swallow aside.

Continuity Notes:

• Vale claims that "[t]here is no precedent in interstellar law for your claim of annex to a territory not contiguous with your own." But surely this must happen all the time in the three-dimensional, mostly empty environment of space, and indeed, there are a lot of discontiguous nodes of the Federation itself according to Star Charts.

Other Notes:

• I complain a lot about how all the captains in the Destiny-era fiction are parents; I think what makes it particularly grating is very few of the writers are. You can tell, because no one whose five-year-old had actually done ballet would ever write a sentence like "she had tears of joy in her eyes while she watched their daughter float like a sylph in time with a melody stolen from a dream." My (currently six-year-old) kid is very enthusiastic about ballet, but them and their classmates are lucky if they remember what they are supposed to be doing when they perform in a recital.
• Having Pakleds and Nausicaans, two different alien species who apparently never discovered the article, in the same book ends up being a bit grating.
• Admiral Batanides threatens Sarai with internment in a Starfleet Intelligence "black site." I just really hate this idea, which is part of a generally unpleasant way that Starfleet is depicted in Mack's fiction. Section 31 having "black sites" they deport unwanted people to, sure, I guess. But regular Starfleet? Ugh, no, I don't buy this at all, and I don't want to read Star Trek books where it can happen.

 

[Thrawn]

Yeah I think towards the end of the LitVerse continuity Mack was channeling a lot of cynicism about contemporary American politics into the writing. Which isn’t necessarily a bad thing, as that sort of commentary has been a part of Trek’s DNA from the beginning, but it got to the point where I came away from his books thinking that he didn’t believe the Federation was possible to exist without evil at its core, which starts to undermine the whole point of Trek in the first place.

 

[Stevil2001]

Yeah I think towards the end of the LitVerse continuity Mack was channeling a lot of cynicism about contemporary American politics into the writing. Which isn’t necessarily a bad thing, as that sort of commentary has been a part of Trek’s DNA from the beginning, but it got to the point where I came away from his books thinking that he didn’t believe the Federation was possible to exist without evil at its core, which starts to undermine the whole point of Trek in the first place.

When I write up my review of Control (probably tomorrow), I will have a lot more to say about that!

 

[Thrawn]

When I write up my review of Control (probably tomorrow), I will have a lot more to say about that!

Yes, I imagine so.

 

[jaime]

When I write up my review of Control (probably tomorrow), I will have a lot more to say about that!

That’s the one that really started souring me on the whole lit-verse. I should have stopped there tbh.