So, I liked Before Dishonor...

[phrog]

Okay, so moving beyond the perceived overuse of the Borg...

I honestly don't get the hatred I've seen around these parts for Before Dishonor.

Addressing first the idea of Borg overexposure... I'm one who hated the way they were portrayed in Voyager and feel like Before Dishonor actually goes the other direction back towards menace and creepiness. For the first time in awhile, it felt like all of their tricks and tactics weren't known, weren't dead tired and hadn't already been hammered into the ground. I liked the references to Vendetta, the use of the doomsday machine... and I thought things kept a good clip.

The insurrection was a bit frustrating, with so many people on the senior staff of Picard's ship being equal parts short-sighted and apparently ignorant of his track record. Still, I *loved* the portrayal of Worf as loyal and damn dangerous when need be. I hate T'Lana as a character and as a plot device, and have since her introduction. And that's what she feels like, a plot device meant to provide some level of difficulty for Picard. Everything he does, everything he says is wrong. Same thing for Zelik Leybenzon. He comes off as a self-righteous meathead asshole.. and I've found precious little to like in his character.

One nitpick is Miranda Kadohata not only going along with those two completely unlikeable irritants, but basically leading it. Was I not to understand that she has been on the Enterprise since it had a D after it's name? I don't buy it and I ended up far colder towards the character than I had after KRAD's work in Q&A to make me care about her. She ended up a mixture of weak and again, ignorant of history.

I also found it hard to believe that the entire security force would go along with locking up the Captain too, not to mention all the other crewmembers on board. If there were other crewmembers. It still feels like the ship is empty, aside from the bridge... something I've felt in every TNG-R book thus far.

Spock's portrayal in the TNG-era is generally hit or miss, but I thought he was done subtly and intelligently... providing a likeable Vulcan counterpart to T'Lana's frankly Enterprise seasons 1-3 era Vulcan contrarian arrogance.

I've read several places about the overly villianous Borg Queen, so I was dreading that... and found it curious that I really didn't find her in the book. Instead, to me, she read as calculating, menacing and cruel. Nothing terrbily over the top or moustache-twirling... certainly nothing reaching the personal, petty and ridiculously over the top way that she always came off on Voyager. Some more directed violence and shows of force made sense in the context of the situation.

Using the Q as a harbinger for Janeway worked well for me, especially given the reasoning behind it... namely, Q's affection or whatever it is towards her. In the end, I felt a bit underwhelmed by Janeway's "death"... I thought the mental battle between Seven and the Janeway Queen was too abstract and confusingly written to be effective. The funeral was simple, but far more effectively portrayed. It was also nice to see Calhoun, and I got a good chuckle out of the interactions between he and Picard.

Clearly, there's a good bit of room for Janeway to pop back up and I imagine she will sooner than later. (How many times did the word DESTINY appear at the end of this book? Lots.) But for now, I thought things were handled well enough.

Certainly far better than I expected from the absolute vitriol tossed towards this book I'd seen in other threads.

What exactly did I miss here? I thought Resistance was absolutely ridiculous and horribly written, Death in Winter was dull... but found Q&A and Before Dishonor to both be steps in the right direction for the TNG-R.

The action was good, the seasoned characters were well-handled, the plot was interesting and carried some weight, the Borg felt dangerous and it had lots of good little nuggets of continuity. I liked it, by and large. I found it hard to put down, unlike much of the rest of the TNGR.

 

[Brendan Moody]

There were some interesting ideas in the mix, but I thought the execution of them ranged from mediocre to dreadful. The concept of Borg absorption is interesting, if a bit comic-book, but the way it's used lets out all the tension. They keep absorbing larger and larger targets, but it's difficult to make that have the collective effect it should in prose, and Peter David simply isn't enough of a prose stylist to carry it off. The Borg eating Pluto sounds impressive, but it has no impact on the storyline and isn't presented with any skill- it just happens, like there was a perceived need for something "epic" but no idea how to carry it off. Even if the Borg were scary, the potential for drama has long been drained out of scenarios where the Borg are invading and no one trusts Picard.

I found the book to be devoid of interesting characterization. There's been a lot of talk about the new crew and their consistency, but even setting that aside I had lots of issues. None of the TNG regulars feel well-realized. Worf has serious impulse control problems that would have been hard to take in early TNG, never mind now, when he has several years as an ambassador behind him. And once the crisis starts, no one on either side of the mutiny acts like a grown-up. If the intent was to suggest that the depth of the danger has unhinged them, then that's both inconsistent with previous crises and poorly communicated. The sheer smugness of the "old crew" during the brig confrontation is embarrassing. Janeway is a generic stupid admiral. Seven of Nine and Spock come across all right, though there's not a lot of depth to either one of them. The Han Solo knockoff who rescues Seven gives "one-dimensional" a bad name.

As usual in a Peter David book his slanted sense of humor results in absurd behavior from familiar characters. At least in other books, the humor is funny, but lately his Trek work has been hit and miss in this regard, and Before Dishonor comes up a miss. I mean, "My foot is asleep"?

The bottom line for me is that the book was a big pile of been there, done that. It's rife with Trek cliches, and the days when Peter David wrote with enough skill to enliven such a bare-bones plot appear to be behind us. There's enough basic competence at work that it's a mediocre book rather than a terrible one- the prose was sufficiently lean to make it an involving read even as I was amazed at its limitations- but that's still a disappointment when dealing with the combination of a great Trek villain and a great Trek writer.

 

[Dancing Doctor]

Before Dishonor was just bad. Not "misbehaving child" bad, but more like "ZOMFGWTF DID BUSH JUST SAY" bad. And that's pretty damn bad.

The Borg weren't "scary" in BD, they were "kicked up a notch", only not really. The Borg stopped being scary a long time ago, and they just became overused and a shadow of themselves. "Oooh, cybernetic creatures out for revenge against the Federation, but mostly humans and more specifically Earth!!!111!!!. And just to show that they mean business, we'll have "Teh Ubercube". Oh, and Janeway will get assimilated or something. Everyone knows that the Borg won't win, because Captain Picard, even after not being trusted by Command and even after dealing with a mutiny that *surprise* ends when it turns out that Picard happens to have the upper hand and did we mention the fact that the mutineers need him for their survival?, will stop them.

And the mutineers sucked. There's the bitchy Vulcan counselor who "came to the Enterprise to act as a logical counterbalance against the illogic and passion of the captain and crew", ie one with a superiority complex. Then we have the sadistic, psychopathic security chief who should have been caught a whole helluva lot sooner if he's willing to torture his own crewmates simply to help "his side" or whatever. And then we have the stereotypical "torn loyalties" character, who served with Picard since Farpoint and who was specifically chosen by her deceased boss to replace her and who has Picard's trust and who probably saw all the times Picard defied orders and saved the day...and decided that "Hey, even though Picard's been right in the past, Jellico and Nechayev are admirals! They obviously know what they're doing! They're his superiors!" Yeah, okay. Stereotypes. What's really sad is that the only consistent characterization is T'Lana's, and that's not good.

And I love PAD's work, I really do. New Frontier is one of my favorite Trek Lit series. However, he's not exactly the first choice of authors when you want a consistent story with continuity, simply because that's not his style. I'm sorry, but betting on the survival of Earth?! What the fuck! And as much as I love New Frontier, having Mackenzie Calhoun pop up all the time in his non NF works gets annoying. And isn't it sad that Calhoun was able to find what, 12 other ships who were willing to fly under Picard's command, but key members of Picard's own senior staff weren't?

The sort of wittiness from NF doesn't really go with this sort of story.

Most of my complaints go back to the way the post-Nemesis TNG have been handled. How many times has it been sad that Starfleet "just got back on an exploration footing" or some similar phrase? Yet we'll toss the Enterprise into yet another Borg storyline, have Picard deal with a crappy mutiny, and maintain his image as an action hero. "Can anyone remember when we used to be explorers?" Um...I *think* it was the seventh season of TNG, although to be fair Q&A does involve exploration.

 

[Dancing Doctor]

Before Dishonor was just bad. Not "misbehaving child" bad, but more like "ZOMFGWTF DID BUSH JUST SAY" bad. And that's pretty damn bad.

The Borg weren't "scary" in BD, they were "kicked up a notch", only not really. The Borg stopped being scary a long time ago, and they just became overused and a shadow of themselves. "Oooh, cybernetic creatures out for revenge against the Federation, but mostly humans and more specifically Earth!!!111!!!. And just to show that they mean business, we'll have "Teh Ubercube". Oh, and Janeway will get assimilated or something. Everyone knows that the Borg won't win, because Captain Picard, even after not being trusted by Command and even after dealing with a mutiny that *surprise* ends when it turns out that Picard happens to have the upper hand and did we mention the fact that the mutineers need him for their survival?, will stop them.

And the mutineers sucked. There's the bitchy Vulcan counselor who "came to the Enterprise to act as a logical counterbalance against the illogic and passion of the captain and crew", ie one with a superiority complex. Then we have the sadistic, psychopathic security chief who should have been caught a whole helluva lot sooner if he's willing to torture his own crewmates simply to help "his side" or whatever. And then we have the stereotypical "torn loyalties" character, who served with Picard since Farpoint and who was specifically chosen by her deceased boss to replace her and who has Picard's trust and who probably saw all the times Picard defied orders and saved the day...and decided that "Hey, even though Picard's been right in the past, Jellico and Nechayev are admirals! They obviously know what they're doing! They're his superiors!" Yeah, okay. Stereotypes. What's really sad is that the only consistent characterization is T'Lana's, and that's not good.

And I love PAD's work, I really do. New Frontier is one of my favorite Trek Lit series. However, he's not exactly the first choice of authors when you want a consistent story with continuity, simply because that's not his style. I'm sorry, but betting on the survival of Earth?! What the fuck! And as much as I love New Frontier, having Mackenzie Calhoun pop up all the time in his non NF works gets annoying. And isn't it sad that Calhoun was able to find what, 12 other ships who were willing to fly under Picard's command, but key members of Picard's own senior staff weren't?

The sort of wittiness from NF doesn't really go with this sort of story.

Most of my complaints go back to the way the post-Nemesis TNG have been handled. How many times has it been sad that Starfleet "just got back on an exploration footing" or some similar phrase? Yet we'll toss the Enterprise into yet another Borg storyline, have Picard deal with a crappy mutiny, and maintain his image as an action hero. "Can anyone remember when we used to be explorers?" Um...I *think* it was the seventh season of TNG, although to be fair Q&A does involve exploration.

 

[phrog]

There were some interesting ideas in the mix, but I thought the execution of them ranged from mediocre to dreadful. The concept of Borg absorption is interesting, if a bit comic-book, but the way it's used lets out all the tension.

Well, interestingly, I really felt like the Borg had evolved into something very like the Phalanx from the X-books from Marvel... a techno-organic living, crawling mechanism sucking up everything in it's path. I wasn't put off by the similarities and I think that giving them some new tactics was a good move, even if their motivations haven't exactly evolved. The "THE BORG KILL PEOPLE" crap from Resistance was an example of giving them new motivations and tactics and it being ridiculous, pointless and without any level of tension, menace or sense.

They keep absorbing larger and larger targets, but it's difficult to make that have the collective effect it should in prose, and Peter David simply isn't enough of a prose stylist to carry it off. The Borg eating Pluto sounds impressive, but it has no impact on the storyline and isn't presented with any skill- it just happens, like there was a perceived need for something "epic" but no idea how to carry it off.

The Borg eating Pluto was silly and fairly useless in the larger scope. I'll agree that it was fairly unnecessary and having the Borg destroy something that anybody, characters or readers, gave a hoot in hell about, might've been more dramatically effective. I'll disagree that the growing cube as it absorbed targets wasn't portrayed strongly... I got a growing sense of menace as it progressed, to the point that I wasn't surprised when the doomsday machine wasn't even able to defeat it without being consumed. Could it have been done better? Maybe. It played well for me, and was a welcome variation on the same ol' assimilation bit.

Worf has serious impulse control problems that would have been hard to take in early TNG, never mind now, when he has several years as an ambassador behind him.

See, I didn't feel this way. If anything, I saw his behavior and attitude as a symptom of growing frustration with half the bridge crew being disloyal and annoying. He doesn't particularly act on anything until the crew takes up what he sees as an armed mutiny against his Captain in a time of dire crisis. And the only guy he does any particular damage to is the guy he recommended for the job. I didn't see anything wrong with his portrayal. At that point, I was in the mood to stomp them too though, so maybe I was doing a bit of roleplaying. Hard to say.

And once the crisis starts, no one on either side of the mutiny acts like a grown-up. If the intent was to suggest that the depth of the danger has unhinged them, then that's both inconsistent with previous crises and poorly communicated. The sheer smugness of the "old crew" during the brig confrontation is embarrassing.

I read the situation as the new staff getting unhinged and not trusting the seasoned staff who knew better. Heck, Kadohata even recalls at one point that Picard's writings on the Borg are required reading @ the Academy. So, you're in a situation you're not too terribly unfamiliar with and a bunch of upstarts who think they know better are supplanting you, then finding that they can't even turn the navigational systems off, much less defeat the Borg... and have to keep coming down and offering to sort of let you help... Smugness might be a bit in order? Now, I'll agree that perhaps the "old crew" being basically totally right and the "new crew" being totally wrong isn't terribly original or inventive.. but I didn't feel like any of it was particularly out of character. And as for out of character, Janeway's such an inconsistent character most of the time (let me take another whack at this dead horse here) that her being inquisitve to a fault... I didn't see as being outside of her scope. It's less dumb admiral to me and more Janeway as usual. Hell, "Hey, that looks dangerous... let's have a look!" was the Voyager motto.

I'm also of the opinion that either you like Peter David's humor or don't. I haven't read New Frontier or much else of his in ages, but I did follow NF for awhile so I knew what to expect a bit. The foot being asleep was bizarre and out of character. It seemed very silly, and I'll grant was a bad choice to come out of Worf's mouth.

In the end, I still think that TNG needs to drop the Borg and move the hell on, but also that David took the concepts and made them into something interesting and very readable. If I didn't know it was Peter David, I definetly would've figured it out, even without the Calhoun appearance, just by his style... which I know is hit or miss for a lot of folks. He's definetly got a knack for writing characters to hate (the new crew) and I feel like the familiars at least got some good moments in.

I don't feel like TNG-R has anything on the level that the DS9-R consistently puts out yet, but again, I felt like this was a much better book than I had heard.

 

[Brendan Moody]

If anything, I saw his behavior and attitude as a symptom of growing frustration with half the bridge crew being disloyal and annoying.

That's exactly what it is; I just don't believe that (even) Worf would lose it to that extent. I'm all for acknowledging the limitations of Trek characters and having them act inappropriately from time to time, but I thought this overstepped the bounds of logic and made him downright unsympathetic.

So, you're in a situation you're not too terribly unfamiliar with and a bunch of upstarts who think they know better are supplanting you, then finding that they can't even turn the navigational systems off, much less defeat the Borg... and have to keep coming down and offering to sort of let you help... Smugness might be a bit in order?

When billions of lives are at stake? No. There's a lightheartedness to the whole scenario that is very Peter David but massively inappropriate to the seriousness of the crisis. If, as the book reminds us by having the "old crew" be absolutely right about everything, Picard's staff are some of Starfleet's best, they shouldn't act like pissy teenagers about it. I thought the mutineers were stupid and eminently mockable too- because it was all made up and I didn't have to take the situation seriously.

And as for out of character, Janeway's such an inconsistent character most of the time (let me take another whack at this dead horse here) that her being inquisitve to a fault... I didn't see as being outside of her scope. It's less dumb admiral to me and more Janeway as usual. Hell, "Hey, that looks dangerous... let's have a look!" was the Voyager motto.

Whether or not that's fair (I've repressed most of my memories of Voyager), "it's copying the TV show's flaws" isn't much of an excuse. If PAD had made any effort to give Janeway's behavior logic or nuance, I'd be less inclined to complain, but as with everything else in Before Dishonor it's unrelentingly flat.

I'm also of the opinion that either you like Peter David's humor or don't.

Not so. I like it when I find it funny and not when I don't. (Hello, tautology!) Imzadi II had some riotous stuff that I could quote to you today despite not having read the book in years, as did early New Frontier. If it's amusing enough, I give it a pass even if it's out-of-character, but I thought the humor in Before Dishonor was quite limp even by recent standards. Like everything else we've discussed, though, this is subjective, so it's not terribly surprising that you don't agree.

 

[T'Leisha]

I love Peter David. NF makes Trek something different. That kind of whimsical feel works incredibly well for NF, that is NF. Its not TNG.
The thing for me; I like BD, i do, i think i noted it as one of the most entertaining books i've ever read somewhere on here. I like it for its wit, and the portrayal of the Borg- Which really did creep me out. I like it for its innate Peter-Davidness. There are quite a few things i like, but...

..The whole mutiny thing was infurtiating. The whole time i just kept thinking that if they are going to behave like that, then they're really not fit to serve in Starfleet, never mind on the flagship. That was not befitting behaviour for the crew of the Enterprise.
That part, should not have been written, it would not happen. It should not happen, especially not in the manner that it did. It felt somewhat like a pointless excuse for some barely passable, dull drama. I now hate Leybenzon and Kadohata, and i'm having to try really hard to like them- I just feel like i couldn't stand to read about them again.

The only other thing, Peter David cannot write Picard, it just doesn't feel like him. Remarkably this book improved on that somewhat.

I still really like BD. I do truly love what he did with the Borg, it made them fresh again. That would be the most interesting challange for a Trek writer- Making the Borg scary again. In my head, Peter David accomplished that part.

As long as i ignore the whole mutiny fiasco, BD is one of the best books i've read in a while. But then i love Peter David's style, and many find it hard to swallow. I guess its a kind of love/hate thing really.

I think i got through it in a night, thats the thing about Peter David's works, they're so alive, you don't even notice the time passing.

 

[XwarlokX]

I can't go into extreme detail, but like most of PAD's other stuff, this book was generally pretty good. I dig that the Borg are back, and are a bit more menacing and not so predictable.

The only thing that made me have a WTF moment is when the Borg Cube ate Pluto... I mean that just felt absolutely comical to me... Just didn't seem to fit in with the rest of the novel. The Borg ship consuming other starships, etc... that i can see as a possibility... But a planet? C'mon.

 

[Kopernikus]

The only thing that made me have a WTF moment is when the Borg Cube ate Pluto... I mean that just felt absolutely comical to me... Just didn't seem to fit in with the rest of the novel. The Borg ship consuming other starships, etc... that i can see as a possibility... But a planet? C'mon.

Pluto isn't a Planet anymore...

But back on topic (Not that we had this discussion a million times already....)

I agree with the Thread-starter, the amount of hatred against Before Dishonor is absurd and I think it has more to do with the audience than with the book itself. For more than one year everyboy was nervously awaiting the "TNG-Relaunch" (I still prefer "Second Decade", btw), expectations grew and grew everyday and as a result many seemed to await some kind of revelation, a bunch of books setting new standards, being better than everything published before. And of course no book can stand to that. The book (Or to be precise, it was more the entire series) didn't stand to the completly exxagerated expactations of the audience and now all frustration is culminating in the bashing on Before Dishonor. I presume, given some time, (And other books to rant about, Destiny is a highly likely candidate for this phenomenon) the average rating of this book will move to something like "An enjoyable, entertaining book, certainly not PAD's best one, but still worth to read".

 

[Christopher]

Pluto isn't a Planet anymore...

Only according to the International Astronomical Union, which is mostly star people rather than planet people and whose definitions are widely considered unworkable and incompetent by actual planetary scientists. Its proclamations aren't considered binding -- they're really just for the purposes of assigning naming categories for new bodies -- and they've sparked a lot of backlash among planetary scientists, who are probably going to arrive at their own definitions through a more "open source" process of consensus, rather than one tiny group of unqualified people issuing a dictate.

I suspect that the "dwarf planet" category will be kept, but that the bizarre notion of a dwarf planet not being a planet will be rejected. (After all, a dwarf star is still a star, a dwarf tree is still a tree, etc.) So Pluto will be a planet, specifically of the dwarf category. As will Eris, Ceres, and dozens or even hundreds of other outer-system bodies. (If the debate were only about Pluto, there'd be no debate. The whole question was triggered by the discovery of Eris, which is bigger than Pluto, and the likelihood of discovering more "super-Plutos" out there. The debate isn't about whether Pluto is a planet or not, it's about whether we want to define "planet" in a way that would give Sol system eight planets or dozens of planets.)

 

[Trent Roman]

I agree with the Thread-starter, the amount of hatred against Before Dishonor is absurd and I think it has more to do with the audience than with the book itself. (...) The book (Or to be precise, it was more the entire series) didn't stand to the completly exxagerated expactations of the audience and now all frustration is culminating in the bashing on Before Dishonor.

I must beg to differ. Blame the audience's tastes if you will, but don't make those of us who disliked the book into an embittered readership that wouldn't have been satisfied with anything. I liked Q&A, so obviously my expectations were not universally 'too high' for the TNG-R; and while I have been underwhelmed by novels I expected to be grander (such as Battle of Betazed), I can still recognize and recommend them on their own merits. Likewise, Before Dishonor fails for me entirely on its own. If anything, it's attempts to appear 'epic' are part of the problem: the threat of the MegaCube is so overblown and outsized that it becomes silly (such as 'eating' a planetoid); the ill-placed droll humour, contrasted with the tragic seriousness of events, produces an inadvertant bathetic event; and of course the empty attempt at appearing meaningful by killing off Janeway. I, for one, would have been much happier with a smaller-scale but better-written story.

Fictitiously yours, Trent Roman

 

[Defcon]

^ Sorry, but if you buy a Peter David book you know what you get: a humorous, over the top story. If that's not your taste, don't buy Peter David books. I knew what to await, and I enjoyed the book very much.

And you can't really say he tries to "appear meaningful" by "killing" Janeway, since AFAIK this wasn't his idea, but a demand by the editor.

 

[Trent Roman]

^ Sorry, but if you buy a Peter David book you know what you get: a humorous, over the top story. If that's not your taste, don't buy Peter David books.

Again, it's a question of execution. KRAD's entry was fun, as his books often are, and he destroyed several universes, so how that's for over the top. And yet, still a good book, because it was well executed. PAD's humour in this book fell flat because it was entirely inappropriate, and his over-the-topness wound up being just silly. And no, I don't think that's just PAD being who he is; I've enjoyed most of New Frontier (although, as a series, it's a lot better suited to this kind of stuff than TNG is), and would point to books like Strike Zone, Q-Squared or even the recent New Frontier entry in the Mirror Universe books as good examples of PAD making his own particular style work and work damn well. This book? Not.

And you can't really say he tries to "appear meaningful" by "killing" Janeway, since AFAIK this wasn't his idea, but a demand by the editor.

And I never said he, either. I said 'it', as in 'the story', not PAD; I'm not inclined to differentiate between what portions of the story came from the author and which came from the editor, since the end product doesn't make that distinction.

Like I said, I like PAD as an author. I'll buy his next book (and in fact did, since I bought Mirror Universe 2 after I'd read Before Dishonor). That doesn't change the fact that this particular book sucked equine phallus. IMO.

Fictitiously yours, Trent Roman

 

[FatherRob]

It's no secret that, aside from Q&A, I have been terribly dissapointed in the TNG Relaunch. Everyone has their own tastes. Mine went sour on Before Dishonor by page 70.

Fortunately Christopher L. Bennett's Greater Than the Sum is on its way. Trust me... before you write it off as 'just another Borg story' you need to read it. It definately has me excited for the Destiny trilogy... even if the Borg are involved.

Rob+

 

[Trent Roman]

^ I'm pleased to hear it. Also, jealous.

Fictitiously yours, Trent Roman

 

[FatherRob]

^ I'm pleased to hear it.

We'll be running our review of Greater Than the Sum the week of July 13 if my memory serves me. More then.

Rob+

 

[Newspaper Taxi]

The Borg eating Pluto was silly and fairly useless in the larger scope. I'll agree that it was fairly unnecessary and having the Borg destroy something that anybody, characters or readers, gave a hoot in hell about, might've been more dramatically effective.

I care about Pluto. I found it to be the most shocking death in Before Dishonor.

 

[Technobuilder]

It's no secret that, aside from Q&A, I have been terribly dissapointed in the TNG Relaunch. Everyone has their own tastes. Mine went sour on Before Dishonor by page 70.

Fortunately Christopher L. Bennett's Greater Than the Sum is on its way. Trust me... before you write it off as 'just another Borg story' you need to read it. It definately has me excited for the Destiny trilogy... even if the Borg are involved.

Rob+

Of course we'll read it... It's Christopher.

Say what you will and above everything else, The guy writes damn good books.

Side note: I love 'New Frontier', but I wasn't a fan of Before Dishonor.

 

[JD]

It's no secret that, aside from Q&A, I have been terribly dissapointed in the TNG Relaunch. Everyone has their own tastes. Mine went sour on Before Dishonor by page 70.

Fortunately Christopher L. Bennett's Greater Than the Sum is on its way. Trust me... before you write it off as 'just another Borg story' you need to read it. It definately has me excited for the Destiny trilogy... even if the Borg are involved.

Rob+

First the MryU books, and now this, I'm so jealous of you right now.

 

[historypeats]

I understand why people didn't like the book, but I found Resistance and Death in Winter to be far worse - especially the former, which reads like a textbook example of "telling, not showing." (I read this shortly after teaching my juniors about the concept of "show, don't tell," and seriously considered using chunks of the book as examples of how not to write.) David may have problems with plausibility (and I'm not talking about the "suspend your disbelief" aspects, but about characterization and the like), and his writing is getting worse as he ages. Fortunately, he still knows how to pace his stories, and I found myself consistently interested in what was going on. Now, if only he could control his tone...

As for the Janeway thing...eh. The problem with the Q is that they're (theoretically) omnipotent. They can basically do whatever the hell they want, and if Q (de Lancie version) wanted to save Janeway, he could have done so easily. The fact that he didn't - or, more realistically, that David didn't allow him to do so - indicates to me that a) Janeway's death was "necessary," b) that larger things are therefore in store for her, and c) that this must have been mandated from on high, since the assimilation doesn't make any sense to me in its current context. (I don't know anything about the Destiny trilogy, since I avoid spoilers like the plague.)

I didn't think Before Dishonor was an exceptional Trek book, but thought it was slightly worse than Q&A - another well-paced, decently told yarn. I have high hopes for Greater Than the Sum, since it (along with Orion's Hounds, which I'll tackle in the next couple of days) will be my first Bennett books...and while Before Dishonor will probably be worse than GTTS, I think I agree more with the first poster than with the chorus of people who disliked it.

(That said, Vendetta was much, much better.)