Spoilers TOS: The Antares Maelstrom by Greg Cox Review Thread

Ah.

I find myself abruptly thinking of what I've always regarded as "The Longest Miniseries In Television History," Babylon 5. Not to mention how DS9 and ENT became increasingly arc-driven, and DSC was primarily arc-driven from day one.

 

Chekhov's best line ever"

Spoiler

My rodents are out of control!

 

Or even Run For Your Life with Ben Gazzara - guy with a incurable disease wandering about the planet meeting a different plot and group of characters each week.
.

 

For single episode anthologies there's also Lore, Phillip K. Dick's Electric Dreams, and Black Mirror. Black Mirror is probably the biggest anthology series out there right now.
And on the non-genre front there's also the season anthology American Crime Story.

 

I just finished The Antares Maelstrom and I thought it was great. Thank you Greg Cox. I look forward to your next one. Now I'm off to The Enterprise War.

 

I've just read the first pages - too early to say something. Oh how I've missed the good old Kirk adventures.....

 

This book tasks me. This book tasks me, and I shall read it. I'll read it round the Moons of Nibia and round the Antares Maelstrom and round Perdition's flames before I listen to Literary Treks episode 279!

I stabbed at thee book before listening to episode 279. A fantastic new addition to the TOS literary universe. I loved that Uhura, Chekov, Sulu and Scotty all had substantial roles in this novel.

The “who done it” on the station kept me guessing to the end and Sulu got to explore some of his command potential.

You know you are in trouble when Scotty takes one look at your energy generation systems and says he can’t help you! The miracle this time was saving the township.

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️’s from me. A great read.

 

I saw someone in the TrekCore review comments saying they should have used the DSC Enterprise on the cover because it's the 'modern version'. Lmao seriously.

 

I'm only about 2 chapters in and I have no issues thinking of it as the original series version (though admittedly other than the snippet at the end of the last episode of season 1 I have not seen Discovery's version).

Personally I think you'll visualize the story however works best for you. When I read "The Enterprise War" because I have not seen season 2 of Discovery yet throughout the book I thought of "The Cage" more than anything else. But it wasn't a detriment to the story.

The main problem I see with visualizing "The Antares Maelstrom" as a Discovery style story is the characters. Other than Spock I don't believe any of the other original series characters were featured in season 2. So you'd be thinking of William Shatner, DeForest Kelley et al with Discovery production design. Perhaps others have greater imagination that I but that's mixing things up too much IMO. I usually visualize original series stories as they were featured in the original series-remastered episodes (with TNG warp effect only because that was my favorite warp effect---so I guess you could say more specifically like how the Defiant appeared "In a Mirror, Darkly).

I did notice a Discovery nod though with the mention of the Shenzou (how dare Greg do that I kid--I believe he was the one that mentioned he was told by a fan NOT to include any Discovery mentions---which I imagine would only make him want to put one in all the more ). And even a nod to Enterprise with the animosity between the Tellararites and Andorians. I'm at chapter 3 so there may be other nods to both 'prior' shows as well.

 

Yeah. I really enjoyed "The Captain's Oath" and "The Enterprise War" (though that one was a bit stressful--but in a good way that it was a good story that really pulled you in). But it's nice to read a good old fashioned original series story that takes place in the middle of the 5 YM.

I love the relaunches, and what I would call continuity building stories like lost era stories and "The Captains Oath"....oh and movie era books (looking forward to Christopher's book next year)---but it's nice to go back to a straight up 5YM story from time to time as well.

 

I always picture the books as extended episodes of the series, so for series era stories, I always imagine things how they looked at the time the story is set. So for TOS, I image the TOS actors, on the TOS sets, but I tend to picture the "special effects" as completely realistic, rather than with '60s or late '00s quality effects.
For anything we never saw on screen, I just let my imagination go wild.
The only time where my mental picture doesn't necessarily line up with the series/movie the books is from is the alien designs. I tend to go with either the most recent or my favorite, so for instance even when I'm reading TOS books, I still picture any Andorians with the ENT design. Even now that we have a new design in Disco, I'll probably stick with the ENT versions since that fits the descriptions we got better. The Tellerites on the other hand will probably be the Disco version for me now.

 

Naylis reminds me of Quark.......

 

Quark would probably consider that last remark an insult. Although there are probably plenty of Ferengi who'd consider it a compliment.

 

Got this a couple days ago and I'm about a quarter of the way through, I'll hold back on rating it since I haven't finished but I'm thoroughly enjoying it so far. As a fan of Westerns I'm loving that this one sort of feels like a boomtown story in space, and one thing that's really stood out is that the characterizations of all the major players are spot on and the novel really succeeds at capturing their distinctive voices. Barring some major shenanigans coming out of left field this is gonna be an easy above average for me at least, if not even outstanding by the time I'm done.

 

Maybe start it In a couple of weeks...

 

Just completed this novel. I rated above average. I enjoyed the book mostly. The main reason I didn't rate it excellent is that there was a bit too much going on. There were basically 4 stories going on within the novel. One is the space station being over-run by prospectors. Another is the planet being over-run by prospectors. Both cause various issues, including a near catastrophic warp core breach within the planet's atmosphere. Then there is smuggling of tea by a neighboring planet and finally a rescue mission in the Antares Maelstrom and the discovery of a new style of life-form. Now Greg Cox does do a good job balancing the various stories but I think maybe he was doing just one or two too many things. There is also side stories about the neural neutralizer from "Dagger of the Mind" and perhaps a romantic interest for Sulu.

Each story is good on it's own merits and probably could have been broken up into two books. One thing I might have done is at least did away with one of the over-run by prospectors storylines. Some of the space station storyline probably could have been combined with the planet based storyline for instance. I did like that Kirk left Sulu on the Space Station to lead the Starfleet aid there, while sending Spock to the neighboring system to investigate the smuggling. But it just seemed too much was trying to be done here.

Now, that being said, I still found it above average because even though I felt there was 1 or 2 plot threads too many for a single book, they were all handled well. Cox references some episodes of the original series like "Dagger of the Mind" "Metamorphosis" and "The Cloud Minders". It's always nice to follow up on a favorite episode in some fashion. He also does a good job addressing the Prime Directive with the smuggling operation. In this case it was a positive argument for the Prime Directive, how it's designed to protect more primitive populations from being taken advantage of. And each of the major crew members (Kirk, Spock, McCoy, Scotty, Sulu, Chekov, and Uhura) are all given a good amount of 'screen' time in the novel, and he even gives some secondary characters something to do like Lt. Palmer at communications, and Nurse Chapel (along with some original characters as well). He also does a good job explaining some of the economics of the future and how even in the future people are not immune to the desire for wealth.

And it's been a while since we've had an old fashion 5 YM story. I love the relaunches and books that address missing periods of Star Trek history like "The Captain's Oath" and "The Enterprise War". But it's nice to sit back and read a 5 YM story that's just that, a 5 YM story like an episode of the original series.

So while I couldn't rate it 'excellent' I'd still highly recommend this novel.

 

Just finished. The book is Outstanding! Thank you Greg Cox. Great read!

 

I finished this book recently and thought Greg Cox's novel was outstanding. I enjoy reading all of his TOS books.

 

Loved it! Greg has a superb grip on the characters and I loved the multiple plots that weren’t massive game changers like the relaunch novels

 

Very plot-driven. In fact, I’m having a hard time remembering much beyond running here and there. Oh, I guess there was some running there and here, too.

That works for a lot of people, and even for me, if I’m in the right mood. I guess I just wasn’t in that mood.