When Marco Palmieri used to hang around here, he said he liked ST novels to polarize readers' opinions.
True enough, but there are different ways books can split the readership, and not all of them are good. I'm on record, for instance, as disagreeing with the direction taken with the Founders in
Olympus Descending... but at the same time, that disagreement prompted relatively involved discussions of theology, sociology, psychology: the kind of debate
Marco would like books under his stewardship to provoke (well, I think, not knowing the man personally). I would compare it to "In the Pale Moonlight", as a well-executed piece that divides on the basis of its content. By contrast, the arguments over
Before Dishonor has largely been confined to its quality or lack thereof. There could be loftier arguments (for instance, what the ending implies about the metaphysics of the Trekverse) but they're largely lost beneath the craptacularness of the rest of the book. So comparing the divisiveness of
Olympus Descending with
Before Dishonor is like comparing the fan reaction to "In the Pale Moonlight" as opposed to, say, "Endgame". It should be about content, not quality.
And Before Dishonor opens with Janeway heading out to face the Borg for the first time in two years, an enemy threat she'd thought she had neutralized at that time, and which she stubbornly refused to believe existed throughout most of Resistance. Should she have been playing Irish milkmaid on the holodeck instead?
It's not a stroll through the park, to be sure, but she wasn't actually heading out to face a threat since the cube was supposed to be dead; series of experts had examined the thing and pronounced it such, and Janeway merely wanted to see it for herself (and had the ill fortune of being the one present when the cube awoke with its new properties). She was obviously keen on taking precautions--and they were good precautions, failing only because it couldn't have anticipated the next stage in Borg (d)evolution--but that, if anything, is just the prudence many believe Janeway not to have in the first place. It's like archaeology in the Middle East: sure, you're not thrilled on the guards with the machine guns, but you're not in a state of constant anxiety either, since you don't expect the dead to attack you. Basically, Janeway's been in far worse situations than wandering a dead Borg cube (like boarding live ones!) without flipping into her more hardcore persona. And between the bitterness and
Resistance, my impression wasn't of a passing, darkling mood, but a more long-term mental condition, like an ongoing depression. And while on the subject of
Resistance, I thought she was out of character there too. Being incautious may be in character for Janeway, but being incurious--particularly about the Borg--is not.
I'm still questioning the reason why PAD was selected to do this in the first place.
Because he was a big-name, best-selling author, and
Before Dishonor was to be a major event in the post-NEM sequence. I was thrilled when
Excessum Rector (the book's working title) was first announced, because it was PAD, an author I had enjoyed, returning to TNG, a series in which he'd penned some of my favourite books like
Q-Squared, and tackling a major Borg threat, as he had in the still-great
Vendetta. I assure you, from the time the author and subject matter was announced, I never anticipated such a tragic misfire. I don't think it could have been predicted, although I certainly wish someone at some point in the editorial process had vetted the product that was developing a little more closely.
PAD has said that he doesn`t think the three main mutineers were out of character. I couldn`t disagree more.
I thought T'Lana
was in character: here's a woman who asked to be assigned to one of the best-performing starships in the fleet because she thinks Picard and his crew desperately need her moderating judgment. From such an extreme belief in one's own infallibility, it isn't far to decide to skip the middlemen (advising others as to the correct course of action) and just take control yourself.
Kadohata and Leybenzon, we didn't actually have much in characterization established for them. It's a testament to how radically different the characters were from one book to the next that so many people feel they were out of character from having only read one book with them in it.
Fictitiously yours, Trent Roman
