Titan: Over a Torrent Sea (SPOILERS)

[PaulSimpson]

Re: Titan: Over a Torrent Sea

I'm surprised to hear that, since I was trying to make this a lighter, fun change-of-pace book after the weightiness of Destiny. It dealt with some pretty serious character baggage, but I tried to leaven it with humor and avoid getting too dark.

But perhaps that's the point Christopher - you were having to leaven the story, rather than it possibly coming out of a lighter starting point?

But post-Destiny, is this really the time for a "How Much For Just The Planet?"/"Trouble with Tribbles" type story? I'd love to see the Titan crew thrust into that sort of scenario, because the elements of humour that we've already seen in the series to date would indicate that in the right hands, that could be a hysterical novel, but just now... not quite the time and place.

Paul

 

[BrotherBenny]

Re: Titan: Over a Torrent Sea

If I lived in the US, I'd have the book by now. As it is, Amazon UK/Borders/Waterstones - ie every major major bookseller - is telling me 6th April!!! For the love of kimchee, can Pocket please allow their UK division to get some? It is getting to the point that I may have to ask my girlfriend to buy them and ship them over for me so I get them and don't have to wait.

I am NOT waiting till april to read this clearly fantastic book. I still haven't got KRAD's ASD, though it is on its way.

 

[PaulSimpson]

Re: Titan: Over a Torrent Sea

If I lived in the US, I'd have the book by now. As it is, Amazon UK/Borders/Waterstones - ie every major major bookseller - is telling me 6th April!!! For the love of kimchee, can Pocket please allow their UK division to get some? It is getting to the point that I may have to ask my girlfriend to buy them and ship them over for me so I get them and don't have to wait.

I am NOT waiting till april to read this clearly fantastic book. I still haven't got KRAD's ASD, though it is on its way.

But it's the same thing you complain about with regard to the mag though - these copies aren't physically produced in the UK, so they have to actually get over the Atlantic. And that takes time. Your option is to spend more and get them via an American outlet, or be patient - but no amount of complaining on here is going to change that simple fact, sorry.

Paul

 

[BrotherBenny]

Re: Titan: Over a Torrent Sea

If I lived in the US, I'd have the book by now. As it is, Amazon UK/Borders/Waterstones - ie every major major bookseller - is telling me 6th April!!! For the love of kimchee, can Pocket please allow their UK division to get some? It is getting to the point that I may have to ask my girlfriend to buy them and ship them over for me so I get them and don't have to wait.

I am NOT waiting till april to read this clearly fantastic book. I still haven't got KRAD's ASD, though it is on its way.

But it's the same thing you complain about with regard to the mag though - these copies aren't physically produced in the UK, so they have to actually get over the Atlantic. And that takes time. Your option is to spend more and get them via an American outlet, or be patient - but no amount of complaining on here is going to change that simple fact, sorry.

Paul

There is a difference though, Paul. I can do something about the books, just not about the mag. I'm gonna have a look at Amazon US and see how much it'll cost to get the books I want sent over. I'll only have to do it for another year or so, then I'll be in the States anyway, moving over to be with my girlfriend.

 

[PaulSimpson]

Re: Titan: Over a Torrent Sea

There is a difference though, Paul. I can do something about the books, just not about the mag. I'm gonna have a look at Amazon US and see how much it'll cost to get the books I want sent over. I'll only have to do it for another year or so, then I'll be in the States anyway, moving over to be with my girlfriend.

Well, you won't need to worry about one upcoming issue anyway...

 

[DarkHorizon]

Re: Titan: Over a Torrent Sea

If I lived in the US, I'd have the book by now. As it is, Amazon UK/Borders/Waterstones - ie every major major bookseller - is telling me 6th April!!! For the love of kimchee, can Pocket please allow their UK division to get some? It is getting to the point that I may have to ask my girlfriend to buy them and ship them over for me so I get them and don't have to wait.

I am NOT waiting till april to read this clearly fantastic book. I still haven't got KRAD's ASD, though it is on its way.

Why not get it from a Marketplace seller? I always use The Book Depository - they get the books when they're released in the US; they rarely cost more than the Amazon price (although P&P does sometimes push that over), and they're pretty speedy with delivery, too. They appear to have sold out of OaTS at the moment, but they usually get restocked fairly quickly.

 

[BrotherBenny]

Re: Titan: Over a Torrent Sea

If I lived in the US, I'd have the book by now. As it is, Amazon UK/Borders/Waterstones - ie every major major bookseller - is telling me 6th April!!! For the love of kimchee, can Pocket please allow their UK division to get some? It is getting to the point that I may have to ask my girlfriend to buy them and ship them over for me so I get them and don't have to wait.

I am NOT waiting till april to read this clearly fantastic book. I still haven't got KRAD's ASD, though it is on its way.

Why not get it from a Marketplace seller? I always use The Book Depository - they get the books when they're released in the US; they rarely cost more than the Amazon price (although P&P does sometimes push that over), and they're pretty speedy with delivery, too. They appear to have sold out of OaTS at the moment, but they usually get restocked fairly quickly.

I got, or am getting, ASD from TBD. TBD are usually good, but it does take a while for them to get the books sometimes.

 

[Thrawn]

Re: Titan: Over a Torrent Sea

But I guess what you're saying is that the book really gets into exploring the alien characters' worldviews and mentalities, rather than dwelling on their differences.

Yes, that's it exactly.

Admittedly, it's more that I didn't have a real-science solution for that. The basic crisis came more from Treknobabble energy fields than from real science, and so the solution was pretty much going to be applied handwavium in any case. Rather than think up a couple of paragraphs of that, I just said "We've devised a field" and focused on the more concrete science and logistics of the deployment.

Fair enough. It worked well.

Thanks, but this is one of those times where it looks like I planned something that I actually didn't. This book is largely based on an unsold spec novel I wrote over a decade ago, and in that version, there was no technological fix that the ocean-planet aliens (more dolphinlike there) had to accept; their fear of technology was just an excuse to keep the leading lady separate from her crew for long enough that she needed to undergo the change that's proposed for Aili and Riker here.

So really the work of creating the squales' society and environment was about half done back then and half done in the writing of this book. Which helped me do a richer job of worldbuilding than I probably could've within the bounds of my deadline for this book alone.

Well, whenever all that work was put into it, it showed in the final product. It's always a joy to read alien societies so well thought-out.

I'm surprised to hear that, since I was trying to make this a lighter, fun change-of-pace book after the weightiness of Destiny. It dealt with some pretty serious character baggage, but I tried to leaven it with humor and avoid getting too dark.

And it would appear that many others agree; looking back on other reviews, a lot of them mention how the humor was a huge part of it for them. And I guess there were a bunch of funny lines, but aside from Torvig and a couple of things very early on, it always struck me as the kind of humor one uses to get through difficult situations...like it always came from a place of necessity, rather than joy. Like I said, funny but not lighthearted.

Which, after Destiny, isn't necessarily a bad thing...and this certainly carried along Destiny's theme of optimism over fatalism absolutely perfectly. But it definitely was a dense, emotionally laden read to follow 5 other dense, emotionally laden reads, and it'd be nice to get something a bit lighter soon.

 

[RikerLover]

Re: Titan: Over a Torrent Sea

I'm not going to include spoiler codes in this because the prologue is online in a couple of places.

During the prologue in the conversation between Riker and Masc, Masc says of Titan "If she's to be the flagship of the fleet, she needs the newest and best we have to offer." Was Masc talking about the entire fleet or just the Luna class ships?

 

[Thrawn]

Re: Titan: Over a Torrent Sea

I don't believe he was using "flagship" literally, but rather saying that Titan represented so much - hope, achievement - in the minds of the Federation at that point that it might as well be the most important ship in the fleet.

 

[Rosalind]

Re: Titan: Over a Torrent Sea

I've added "SPOILERS" in the thread title

 

[Christopher]

Re: Titan: Over a Torrent Sea

During the prologue in the conversation between Riker and Masc, Masc says of Titan "If she's to be the flagship of the fleet, she needs the newest and best we have to offer." Was Masc talking about the entire fleet or just the Luna class ships?

Just the Luna class. But Thrawn's right that Masc isn't using "flagship" in the literal sense -- which it almost never is anyway in Trek. A flagship is literally either the command vessel in a group of ships on a combined mission or the vessel on which an admiral is based, or both. This is "flagship" in the vernacular sense usually applied to the Enterprise -- the symbolic lead ship, the most prominent and esteemed one. And now that you point it out, I'm surprised I employed that usage at all, since I'm generally not fond of it.

 

[RikerLover]

Re: Titan: Over a Torrent Sea

During the prologue in the conversation between Riker and Masc, Masc says of Titan "If she's to be the flagship of the fleet, she needs the newest and best we have to offer." Was Masc talking about the entire fleet or just the Luna class ships?

Just the Luna class. But Thrawn's right that Masc isn't using "flagship" in the literal sense -- which it almost never is anyway in Trek. A flagship is literally either the command vessel in a group of ships on a combined mission or the vessel on which an admiral is based, or both. This is "flagship" in the vernacular sense usually applied to the Enterprise -- the symbolic lead ship, the most prominent and esteemed one. And now that you point it out, I'm surprised I employed that usage at all, since I'm generally not fond of it.

Thanks for answering my question. Luna class makes more sense especially since Titan has been in service less than 2 years and her captain in command of any ship for the same length of time.

 

[JD]

Re: Titan: Over a Torrent Sea

I finally got the book from Borders this morning, but I've only read 8 pages so I can't really judge yet.
I did notice while flipping through that there is actually a characters list in the back, and while I never really had trouble keeping track of who's who, I do like that this has been added to the book. I hope that we see this in more of the books as they come out.

 

[William Leisner]

Re: Titan: Over a Torrent Sea

I finally got the book from Borders this morning, but I've only read 8 pages so I can't really judge yet.

Okay... OT, and not directed specifically at JD, but... seriously, nobody is expecting a judgment after 8 pages. Nobody is expecting a post after 8 pages. Please, everyone, feel free to read the book through, without any obligation to stop and jump onto the internet to provide progress reports.

 

[Marie1]

Re: Titan: Over a Torrent Sea

I finally got the book from Borders this morning, but I've only read 8 pages so I can't really judge yet.

Okay... OT, and not directed specifically at JD, but... seriously, nobody is expecting a judgment after 8 pages. Nobody is expecting a post after 8 pages. Please, everyone, feel free to read the book through, without any obligation to stop and jump onto the internet to provide progress reports.

How could you ask such a thing?!?!?!

And enthusiasm shouldn't be quelled, an repression of any kind leads to homicidal tenancies... or something.

I still have not found it by me.

Well, of course you couldn't find it by you! It's by me!

Guards!!!

Where does that expression come from? The family "back home" use it- but if you go faaaaaaaaaaaaar back, the roots are probably British... but I find the term a bit puzzling.

I'm confused- as I used to get those books *right away* here- and now... well, we just got ASD. I'm going to be out of the loop. I can't be out of the loop!!!

 

[Christopher]

Re: Titan: Over a Torrent Sea

^^Which expression? "By me" or "Guards!!!"?

 

[Mysterion]

"Gam-Pu Star Command".

 

[Enterpriserules]

I liked this book, CLB's books have been some of my favorite. This one though, does get a bit muddy in the middle with too much science that is over my head. I god lost in a lot of it. I love that it seems authentic, but it does not help when I cannot understand a lot of it (so many technical terms). I did feel like the emotional resolution for some of the characters was too easy. It seemed to be that same problem that TNG suffered from, all the psychobabble that seems to lack the depth seen in DS9 (Tuvok coming to a very fast healing in the end, just because he realized where his anger was really directed at seemed a little too easy).

On the plus side, it was good to see Riker get some time of the ship and have this relationship with Aili. The world was really interesting and well done. And, in the end, the book ends with good character moments, which are what is most important in a good Trek novel.

On a side note, I would love to have a visual of the main member of the Titan, it would be really helpful!

 

[JoeZhang]

Re: Titan: Over a Torrent Sea

I finally got the book from Borders this morning, but I've only read 8 pages so I can't really judge yet.

Okay... OT, and not directed specifically at JD, but... seriously, nobody is expecting a judgment after 8 pages. Nobody is expecting a post after 8 pages. Please, everyone, feel free to read the book through, without any obligation to stop and jump onto the internet to provide progress reports.

I saw the back cover as someone went pass me reading it on a bus. I give it a b+.