My own reading Marathon, Fall through Coda

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Lust's Latinum Lost (and Found) by Paula M. Block and Terry J. Erdmann
In-Universe Date: 2385
Publish Date: September 1, 2014

This is a short and sweet novella that details quark on an adventure to find the true publisher of Vulcan Love Slave IV.
It feels like it very much could have been an episode of Deep Space Nine, and the eventual publisher is revealed to be Pel, the Ferengi with the prosthetic ears from Season 2's "Rules of Acquisition". In reading up on Pel, apparently the actress had claustrophobia from the make-up she discovered on set, so couldn't reasonably return on-screen.

I don't have much to say about the novella. I enjoyed it, it was short, had a bit of what I can only assume is lived experience from the authors about trade shows, and had some Quark hijinks. From the acknowledgements, it sounds like this was their first fiction work (together at least), as they tend to be guidebook writers. I hope they enjoyed it and it seems like they've got a few more Ferengi adventures to come.

Next up is "the missing".

 

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The Missing by Una McCormack

In-Universe Date: Late November 2385
Publish Date: December 30, 2014

According to the acknowledgements, this was pitched as a/the Katherine Pulaski novel. We certainly do get a lot of her, and a focus on her as a character being quite grating (and she knows it). I felt it was interesting to see the interaction between her and a lot of characters, old and new. I'm not sure if any other books have paired her up with crusher/have any comments on her brief tenure as CMO of the Enterprise, but it was definitely interesting to read.

This felt like a good example of episodic storytelling to me. It had a encounter-of-the-week with the People of the Open Sky/The Chain, and additional developments with the relationship to the Tzenkethi. I love seeing some attempts at peaceful relations, as Bacco was working towards.
The one downside of this type of story, is that we can be given an influx of new characters, and this group had a lot of very similar names (in particular, "Oioli, Ioile, and Ailoi") such that I wasn't sure which one of them was killed, being killed, accused of killing, etc.

The other thing about trek literature, or at least McCormacks, is that we often have multiple plots going on at once and converging. This is decidedly less linear than the last two books I read, which I enjoyed, but it does make describing all the plots going on without taking over an hour to write up much more difficult. I don't think I should bother writing out all the plots going on, if you want that, you can read a wiki summary or a better review than mine. Suffice to say, the main plot is that a group of refugees from poverty is fleeing an oppressive government, and the conclusion is that they are let go by an understanding commander of the oppressive government. There is a lot more going on to make it a lot more complex, particularly with some spying all around, but that's the crux/theme. It's a nice, hopeful, very trek theme.

We get follow-up of the Tzenkethi who left Ab-Tzenketh in Brinkmanship, and it was interesting to see how she interacts with a society so different from her own. I think her journey of self-discovery and freedom is supposed to parallel people of the open sky having left the oppressive culture of the chain. Thinking about it now, the 3rd plot we have here, of Ro and Odo working to return some Cardassian prisoners of war from the Romulan government, is also to some degree about working around a more rigid social structure for decency.


I enjoyed this book, and somewhat hope that we'll get to see the side characters again. It's very interesting to see Crusher with a different crew, although she's going back to the enterprise after this one. I'm making note of that for when I attempt to come up with my own, clearly superior to everyone else's, reading order after I get through all of this. It also seems like Odo is going to be around to stay on DS9, not as a constable (and hopefully not as CMO, which might have been a joke from Ro or just a segue that could have implied the possibility).

Next up is the second Novella from the previous pair, The Rules of Accusation, then jumping into Sacraments of Fire and Ascendance. It sounds like sacraments is supposed to fill in a lot of gaps, and It's also from David R. George III, so I'm hoping it follows up on mysterious man from the past, and maybe we get Kira back. I also particularly enjoyed his narration that something strange was going on with Rebecca, and I'm interested for that to be flushed out more.

Sorry I'm jumping around in my thoughts, but I don't want to spend a ton of time editing this. Towards the start of the novel, it seemed there was a lot of personified narration going on, stuff like

Corazame—but let us call her Cory, the name she has been using since coming to the Federation, and as we are prying into her private thoughts, we should at least show her the courtesy of using the name she is using—Cory [did stuff]

As the book goes on, there's seemingly less and less of that, however. Perhaps it's just that there's more plot going on and so less need for it. My wife has been reading "The String of Pearls" (what Sweeny Todd was based off of) and that style of narration was much more common then, or perhaps it varies by genre. I'd be interested in knowing more. If only there was someone with a Ph.D. in English literature, with a specialization in Victorian literature and science in this forum.

 

[Christopher]

This felt like a good example of episodic storytelling to me. It had a encounter-of-the-week with the People of the Open Sky/The Chain, and additional developments with the relationship to the Tzenkethi.

As I recall, that was the one where McCormack avoided using any gendered pronouns for the alien characters, yet many readers and Memory Beta editors assumed they were male.

 

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Rules of Accusation by Terry J. Erdmann and Paula M. Block
In-Universe Date: 2385 (Between The Missing and Sacraments of Fire, with a prologue set 14 years before.
Publish Date: July 4, 2016 (half a year or so after Sacraments and Ascendance)

The second of the Erdmann and Block e-book novellas, I liked this one more (and it had 20 more pages). Namely, because it's a big family spectacular of the, well, I suppose there's not a term for collective Ferengi families I'm familiar with, so I'll just refer to it as the House of Ishka.
It's a big, jolly romp, with many cutaways to everyone's favorite Mourn. If I had to criticize it, I'd say that the main characters aren't particularly involved with the resolution to the plot, but the mourn sub-plot makes up for that, as he's the one who resolves it. I enjoyed how they described mourn, and the in-joke continues of everyone saying he's quite the talker, but us never getting a line of dialogue from him. It helps that he's so expressive in the show, and the authors make his descriptions quite expressive as well. I don't know that you could make Mourn work as such a central character in a comic, and even in a show while continuing the in-joke, as they do allude to him having dialogue in his scenes, but it's glossed over.

It seems like the authors make allusions to the plot of Sacraments, though it could be an assumption on my part. There's mention of Sisko having to decline the invitation to Quarks due to a priority message from Starfleet, and I thought Odo was similarly not going to appear due to something about a changeling artifact, but he has a decent presence through the second half of the novel that I enjoyed. Perhaps foreshadowing good things for the authorial duo's third novella, I, Constable.

As I recall, that was the one where McCormack avoided using any gendered pronouns for the alien characters, yet many readers and Memory Beta editors assumed they were male.

Very interesting. I don't know that I thought of them as a particular gender, but I pictured them as ewoks at first, particularly with all the children around. Somewhat of a cheribic a-genderness, though from what I remember of the descriptions of the adults, they're probably roughly human height and fleshy with tattoo-like stripes that change colors based on their mood? I hope they appear again, but looking at memory beta it doesn't seem they do.

I know many pre-2010s books are trying, but aren't super great about neopronouns, with a lot of characters defaulting to male, except for Burgyone in Peter David's series, and at least part of that was so he could make the joke about how they identify as he/she/it but they went with 's/he' because terrans laughed about 's/he/it'. It was at least nice that the president was referred to as Zha President instead of Madam President. Too bad they're not going to pick up the Andorian gender thing on screen, as it's quite interesting to explore. This reddit thread, in particular, I thought was interesting.



Next up, I'm on to Sacraments of Fire, though I'm also almost done re-reading Avatar Book 1 and will post my thoughts on that as well.

 

[Stevil2001]

As the book goes on, there's seemingly less and less of that, however. Perhaps it's just that there's more plot going on and so less need for it. My wife has been reading "The String of Pearls" (what Sweeny Todd was based off of) and that style of narration was much more common then, or perhaps it varies by genre. I'd be interested in knowing more. If only there was someone with a Ph.D. in English literature, with a specialization in Victorian literature and science in this forum.

Hm, that's an interesting question. Most media tie-in fiction goes for this kind of tight, personality-less third person. But early novels usually had some kind of explicit narrator, and even once novels move away from that into the "free indirect discourse" that really makes the modern novel what it is, you still get narrators with their own personalities throughout the Victorian period. Dickens can have pretty lively third-person narrators: "I don’t mean to say that I know, of my own knowledge, what there is particularly dead about a door-nail. I might have been inclined, myself, to regard a coffin-nail as the deadest piece of ironmongery in the trade. But the wisdom of our ancestors is in the simile; and my unhallowed hands shall not disturb it, or the Country’s done for. You will therefore permit me to repeat, emphatically, that Marley was as dead as a door-nail." I'm a big fan of George Eliot's Adam Bede, where the narrator actually pauses to defend the story they are telling! But I do think you still see contemporary fiction with interesting third-person narrators, just not in tie-ins.

 

[NStephenH]

But I do think you still see contemporary fiction with interesting third-person narrators, just not in tie-ins.

Hmmm, perhaps I just need to read more non-tie-in contemporary fiction!

Plenty more tie-ins to go first though. And then some books I got my wife for the holidays. And the "Strange Novel Worlds" essays.

I've started Sacrament the other day and I forgot what Dukat did to Ghemor, since it's been a while since I read the last ds9 novel. It's awful, though basically inline with him as a character.