First off, glad you enjoyed the book,
DigificWriter!
It was also great to see Sam Bowers again, although I do have to say that there seemed to me to be some discrepancies between Destiny and his role/personality as described by/in the DS9 Relaunch novels, as he seemed to be much older here than is described in said novels (particularly Avatar). That's not really a bad thing, but is definitely something that I noticed.
I checked the details on his age with Marco Palmieri, the editor who oversaw his creation. As for his personality, people's personas often shift with their circumstances.
Speaking of the Caeliar, they have to be one of the most interesting alien races/species to come out of the ST universe in a while, and really reminded me in some ways of the Shedai.
Well, as the author responsible for creating both those species, I can tell you that while they might seem similar with regard to their power levels, they are worlds apart (no pun intended ... okay maybe a bit) in their philosophies.
The only issue I had with regards to the Titan, her role in the story, and her crew is that, not having read any of the other Titan novels in their entirety, I kind of had a hard time acclimating to the idea of Tuvok being part of the ship's crew...; it also didn't help that his actual role in this particular novel was fairly minor, especially in comparison to most of the ship's other major crew members.
His role becomes far more significant in books two and three.
I found myself dying to know what motivated the dramatic shift in their modus operandi, and was somewhat disappointed that the book didn't really address that (hopefully it'll come up in Mere Mortals - which I'm currently reading - or Lost Souls).
That's because it had already been addressed in the preceding book,
Greater Than the Sum, by Christopher L. Bennett.
Long story short: the Borg got pissed off after Janeway destroyed a huge chunk of their Transwarp network to bring Voyager home. After getting punked on such a large scale, they decided we were no longer worth assimilating, but clearly were too much of an obstacle to their efforts, so it was time to stop screwing around and take us out, along with anyone who ever knew us.
As I often put it to people who asked what made this story different from past Borg stories, "All previous encounters with the Borg were merely incidents. Wolf 359? Incident. First battle at Earth (
First Contact)? Incident? Second battle at Earth (
Before Dishonor)? Incident.
Destiny is the war.
One final thought: can anybody tell me what the book's title refers to? The story doesn't really specify/provide any clues, and I'm dying to know.
The Caeliar, living on a world inside a Dyson shell, cut off from the universe. It also refers to the fact that they never sleep.
