Re: TTN: Absent Enemies by John Jackson Miller Review Thread (Spoilers
Just finished this at lunch today, and I'm not 100% behind it I'm afraid. Some good things, some bad things.
There were several inconsistencies. First, Fo Hachesa is not the gamma watch officer anymore. He transferred or resigned in
Over a Torrent Sea, replaced by Tamen Gibruch. He could always have come back, I suppose, especially since the
Titan was back at Federation Central recently. But I didn't get the impression that was the author's intention.
Second, the Romulans gave up on phase-cloak technology after "The Next Phase." Then why were several Romulan ships seen using exactly that technology in
Plagues of Night/
Raise the Dawn ? Perhaps they gave up on this particular type of phase-cloak technology and the version seen later is of a completely different type.
Third, Vale was not involved in the battle against Shinzon. She took extended leave before the Shinzon thing even happened, as seen in
A Time for War, A Time for Peace. These are just factual errors that could just maybe be worked around but really shouldn't have to be.
I did like the storyline. Making good use of past episodes from both TNG and Voyager, explaining some of the magic-technology silliness, keeping the Typhon Pact subplots bubbling. The two alien groups were well drawn. A lot of humour worked well for me too. The flashbacks to the
Enterprise-D's earlier mission were hilarious, with the aliens' antics driving them up the wall. I could very easily picture TNG-era Frakes and Sirtis in full face-palm mode. And it's good to have some humour once in a while. The larger novels get a bit intense and stodgy sometimes, so these smaller novellas are the perfect place to lighten things up for a bit.
But it's a mixed blessing. Many times I was put off by things seeming
waaaay overblown and cartoonish. Throwing a chair is something I could see Riker do in response to going back to Tezwa maybe, but this? This wasn't a life-and-death mission of gut-wrenching horror and misery, it was just wasting time with annoying brats. Overreaction.
And there were far too many exclamation marks for my liking. You
do not put exclamation marks in descriptive text. You just
don't. In dialogue, fine. In internal monologue, fine (but even then not when your POV character is a Vulcan,
JFC 
). But in general descriptive text, no. It comes across as juvenile, frankly, and takes the otherwise welcome fun-comic-booky atmosphere way over the top. I felt like a big rubber boxing glove was going to jump off the page and bonk me in the face, with a splash of
KA-POWWW!!! and
WA-SHAMM!!!
And finally, it still wasn't...
Titan. I complained in the
Poisoned Chalice thread that it wasn't a real
Titan book, it was just a book that featured
Titan characters.
Titan was designed to be the series that focused on strange new worlds, both outside the ship and inside, while the various other series did political intrigue and diplomatic missions. But lately it seems to have swapped over - DS9 and TNG are both about to set off on big missions of exploration while
Titan is completely losing what used to be unique about it as a series. Where is the in-depth exploration of new worlds and new civilizations? Where are the fascinating insights into the wacky aliens that make up so much of
Titan's crew? Instead it's all the most human/oid crew members getting the focus, dealing with two other humanoid races.
All of that sounds incredibly negative, for which I apologise. I enjoyed reading it, it was a nice diversion, and I don't regret buying it. But I really think it's just not what I'm looking for from a
Titan story.
Okay, now I'm off to read the rest of the thread.
.
EDIT: Ah, I see several of the editing complaints already raised and addressed. I even missed one.
.
