I'm finally starting the Destiny trilogy!!

[Sho]

I agree, and the "today's context" bit was important up there, too - obviously in the context of when LotR was released, and how it was subsequently received, it is a hugely important and influential work.

However, so much so that it has become one of the templates to follow, and one of the giants the shoulders of which speculative fiction stands on today. As such, you can't succeed by merely rehashing it anymore. Fictional, fantastic worlds and franchises are everywhere now, and characterizing the way Tolkien did back then, by coming up with a set of species with distinct traits and having a main character of each, is too transparent and lazy today. In the context of TrekLit in particular because that's what the shows already did and went beyond doing. So a good TrekLit story has to go beyond it, too, to be really compelling: Characters have to be realized more deeply than just being "a Vulcan, who act so-and-so".

Now, quite some TrekLit actually doesn't manage this, which is to say not every TrekLit book is deserving of high praise. That's not really a problem, even then it can still be reasonably entertaining if it's a good idea- or event-centric story. But in my mind to be called outstanding it does have to have it all . LotR didn't, so I hope Destiny is not like it in that respect.

 

[Christopher]

Nobody's saying that Destiny was deliberately modelled on LotR in any way. They just mean that it's a trilogy of similar, err, epicness. Epicality. Epicicity. Epic-scopalianism. Whatever.

 

[Sho]

Yeah - I basically just couldn't resist throwing in a little criticism of LotR when the comparison came up .

 

[WarsTrek1993]

Reading "Destiny" kept me from being bored in class.
And I agree that these books are almost on the LOTR-level of epicness!

 

[captcalhoun]

it's an awesome epic of epic awesomeness.

 

[bbailey861]

Nobody's saying that Destiny was deliberately modelled on LotR in any way. They just mean that it's a trilogy of similar, err, epicness. Epicality. Epicicity. Epic-scopalianism. Whatever.

I think I'd use Epicicity if I were drunk.

it's an awesome epic of epic awesomeness.

Now, that was Awesome!

 

[Sho]

One might also say Destiny is the very epiccenter of recent tremors in the TrekLit verse.

(And yes, I know that the epicenter tends to be confused with the hypocenter, but bear with me here.)

 

[Julio Angel Ortiz]

Nobody's saying that Destiny was deliberately modelled on LotR in any way. They just mean that it's a trilogy of similar, err, epicness. Epicality. Epicicity. Epic-scopalianism. Whatever.

it's an awesome epic of epic awesomeness.

Yeah, these.

 

[Therin of Andor]

just ask someone what Merry did and what Pippin did).

Really? I thought they were very different. Pippin was my favourite from very early on, and it was a delight to see the pair portrayed so well on the big screen in the Bakshi animated and then Jackson's live-action.

characterizing the way Tolkien did back then, by coming up with a set of species with distinct traits and having a main character of each, is too transparent and lazy today.

Did you never read "The Hobbit", because there were a whole heap of dwarves in that, and many varied personalities? Of course...

Spoiler: the ending

my three favourites died at the end and I was a blubbering mess.

 

[Sho]

Did you never read "The Hobbit", because there were a whole heap of dwarves in that, and many varied personalities?

No, I must confess I haven't . Nor the Sil, which my Tolkien-loving friends tend to name as his best work.

I kinda do stand by my remarks about LotR, though. There's just not enough character-based drama in there for my tastes (short of in Sam-and-Frodo-Trek-through-Mordor, which I liked a fair amount due to the greater depth their relationship is examined to therein), and the world building does nothing to offset it for me because other than linguistically, it's not a mechanically very interesting world. And I really can't separate Merry and Pippin. I do think Tolkien largely stuck to the one-major-character-per-species formula as a copout, and where he strayed from it it falls flat.

 

[Therin of Andor]

I do think Tolkien largely stuck to the one-major-character-per-species formula as a copout...

Thirteen dwarves and five hobbits says he didn't.

In any case, Strider/Aragorn and Boromir were both men. And The Fellowship had four hobbits. You may like to think they were interchangeable...

 

[Sho]

Depends on how you define interchangable. Obviously they had different purposes assigned by the plot. I do recall roughly what Hobbit 1 did, and what Hobbit 2 did, and so on. But did I feel they had noticably distinct personalities, or, more importantly, that their personalities made a meaningful difference to the story? No.

Anyway, before you tag me ignorant forever, I should clarify some context: I read LotR 12 years ago, and it was among the first English-language novels I read outside of school, and the most challenging yet at the time - I'd guess that I spent about 30-40% of the overall reading time flipping through an English-German dictionary. So I have to admit to the possibility that things may have gotten literally lost in translation and I'm giving old J.R.R. an undeserved bad rap.