A STITCH IN TIME Read By Garak Himself...

In my thoughts on the book over in TrekLit, I noted that I was becoming a little frustrated with Garek being taken by some modern segments of fandom as some kind of mascot or icon, and it was good to see a Garek with some teeth, who wasn't just a bastard when he was going through narcotic withdrawal but, surprise, was a state assassin who actually kills nice people from time to time.

 

Not a good thing for the senator, anyway

Garak is an assassin. It was clearly better for Cardassia (not the Dominion collaborationist government, but the nation and people as a whole), the Alpha Quadrant, and for that matter Garak personally if Vreenak died before he could reveal that the data rod was a fake.

It was a war. Many people were dying every day. Vreenak's death did more than most to tip the outcome of the war in a favorable direction.

Okay, I guess that's enough of the "ends justify the means" speech.

 

I like Garak!
I found him interesting to start with because he was a bit of a mystery. You would never know if he finally would up among the good guys or the bad guys. It was almost the same with Dukat to start with too, but as we know, he did end up on the bad side.

Garak on the other hand did end up on the good side. he also did to have a lot of remorse for ehat he had done in his previous career. Much of this is describeD in the excellent book A Stitch In Time.

I do object about it.

The book described him as far worse than he ever was in any episode or other book. Then he was destroyed and humiliated before killed off.

OK, he might re-appear again in some book or so. But the damage is already done and it will remain as long as no one does anything about it.

Oh well, I'll add it to the Lynxverse and come up with something own which erase the damage.remember the rules:

Rule 1: Never ever trust or like an autor ,a book or any book series.
Sooner or later something will show up which makes you very dissapointed and will change your opinion.

Rule 2: Never ever have a favorite character! That character will be killed off or ruined sooner or later.

Rule 3: Always be cautious with everything written after 1999.
Always remember that dystopia now rules in the "Gray Universe".

Rule 4: If you want to read a really good story which you really like, write it yourself!

Rule 5: When stuck in some contradiction, always stick to the Lynxverse!
It's the one and only option if you will stay happy with Star Trek

I guess that Rule 4 will be the accurate solution in this case!

As I wrote above, he did end up on the good side and also regretted a lot of things he had done.

But he did regret many of his actions and ended up on the good side.
I like Garak and I will continue to do so.

OK, I might have a somewhat weird taste sometimes but I stand up for my favorites!

 

I don't think anyone is saying you can't like Garak.

I love Garak as a character. But I would never trust him for a second if he were real. And he himself would tell me that I was right not to.

I also love Dukat and Winn.

 

Yeah, a process you describe as being "destroyed and humiliated." Disclaimed by the government he served for non-specific but implicitly horrible crimes? Check. Regretted his prior actions? Check. Changed himself to make amends? Check.

I don't see what the big deal is unless you specifically have a problem with him having having been a bad guy before DS9 started, which you just said you don't, or you have a problem with him switching sides to help his former enemies, which you obviously don't. So we're left with, what?

Spoiler: Second Self

Is it the idea of him moving to Bajor that's so horrible? Is "looking Bajoran" a fate worth than death? Is it living out the rest of his days until he's in his early hundreds as an old man of peace enjoying a quiet retirement in the village full of innocent people whose lives he saved such a desecration of his work for the glorious Cardassian uplifting of the wretched and undeserving Bajorans?

You're being strong but vague, and for someone who, again, actually read the book, the only way your vehemence doesn't imply a horrifying worldview is if it comes down to "there should be no conflict in drama, and no story should ever end, so, definitionally, a story where Garek faces problems and his story is brought to a conclusion would be awful and the person who wrote it a monster," even if the problem were that the grocer was out of yarmok sauce and he'll have to come back tomorrow, and the conclusion is that Garek lives for a thousand trillion years until the expansion of the universe causes him to discorporate into a cloud of atoms after he becomes the last surviving object in creation.

 

Yeah, no. Not true at all.

Yes? And Second Self doesn't contradict any of that.

 

I do have a problem when one of my favorite characters:
1. Is made many, many, times worse than he ever was in the series and in the great book A Stitch In Time.

2. Is turned into something he was never supposed to be, I mean the patriot Garak becoming a Bajoran and all that crap, not to mention the time-traveling nonsense involved.

I actually like the Bajorans and all about them but turning garak into one is silly.

3. Is killed off at the end of the episode.

I have nothing against garak facing problems and feeling remorse over what he may have did in his previous life but this is reidiculous.

As I wrote before, such an interesting character as Garak should be able to generate a lot of interesting books in the same style as The Never-Ending Sacrifice and The Crimson Shadow, books where garak could be the main character or one of the main characters. Instead he was destroyed in Second Self.

But the character is destroyed in that book.

 

In your opinion.

 

Yes, I think that he has been totally destroyed before killed of and I don't like that!

 

On being a patriot, it's worth rereading or listening to A Stitch in Time @Lynx - it's clear by the end of the novel he isn the "patriot" you present him as; indeed he's very critical of that patriotism, a man embracing hebatian spiritualism, a man who had come to respect the Bajorans, a man ready to embrace the political and social antithesis of the cardassian state he had spent his life either serving or seeking to return to, and more - which is the point in time all of Una's novels advance from (well except Hollow Men!).

But honestly Lynx, why spoil yourself? It's so stupid to read plot spoilers rather than follow the stories

 

I've read A Stitch in Time which I regard as the best Star Trek book I've read, together with Greg Cox's Voyager novel The Black Shore.

I'm well aware of Garak's thoughts about the Cardassian society which existed before The Fire (when Cardassia was destroyed by The Dominion as revenge for changin side in the conflict) and all tat, including his own service in the Obsidian Order, how critical he was to all that and the remorse he felt over many things in his past.

But I still regard him as a patriot.

He could have stayed on Deep Space Nine or he could have settled down in the Federation after the war but he went back to Cardassia, helped Damar and the others fight for their independence. He also wanted to help building a new and better Cardassia which we also saw in the book The Crimson Shadow.

But I disagree with your statement that Garak's development in the books advance from that point, I would rather state that its' bouncing away in a rather bizarre direction, at least when it comes to the novel Second Self.

If the situation had become so bad for Garak that he had become persona non grata both in the Federation and on Cardassia, I would have seen it more logical that he had settled down on some other planet. In fact, a return to the station deep Space Nine where he actually did have some real good friends would also have been a better solution.

As for reading plot spoilers, it's something I've done very seldom. The only times I've done that is when some appearance of Kes in some book written after the end of Voyager is mentioned in some discussion because if a book is built on or continues what happened in a certain disgusting episode in season 6 of Voyager, then I'm not interested.

In garak's case, it was all about reading A Stitch In Time and becoming curious about what Garak was doing after the end of the Dominion War and if there were some books about it. So I found The Crimson Shadow which I thought was great and later on when someone mentioned Rugal Pa'dar in some discussion here on Trek BBS and that there wasa book about him, I decided to buy that one too. I had no idea that Garak was so much involved at the end of the story as he was so that came as a great surprise and a bonus as well.

Recently, when I wanted to find more books where garak could be involved, I stared to search Memory Beta because I thought it would be the best source tho find something interesting. So I found The Enigma Tales. I just took a brief look at the synposis for the book and that why I saw that Bashir was mentioned being in some ward.

Now that made me a bit........suspicious because I was definitely not interested in reading about Bashir's possible decease or whatever it was so I started to dig for facts about it and that's when I stumbled over Second Self when I saw that Garak was listed as "deceased".

And I'm glad that I did find out because I don't like to waste money on books and other things which annoys me. I remember some short story in some book with short novels where Kes was killed off. I became so annnoyed that I almost destroyed it.

But since I hate to destroy books, something I regard as an utterly disgraceful and disrespecitg act, I just went to a second hand store which had a book section an just placed it among other books there. Maybe someone bought it, I don't know and frankly I don't care.

 

Which episode?

 

Fury. Lynx does not care for that episode, to put it extremely mildly.

 

The one of Voyager where Kes was brought back to be totally destroyed. The worst episode ever in any TV series.

 

she was redeemed at the end of the episode.

 

She definitely wasn't!

She showed up as a crazy lunatic and went away as a pathetic old wreck.

That's utterly character destruction, the worst I've seen in any series and movie.
I hate that episode and I will continue to hate it.

 

My library has the audiobook available through Libby. I'm hoping to start listening to it soon.