Re: Before Dishonor -- comments & opinions ****SPOILERS****
Well, I finished this yesterday, and since this thread EXPLODED in replies I'm not nearly going to read them all. I did however skim them and see that the majority of how I felt has already been noticed and posted by others. Those being:
This book was (all things considered) very average. It came out average not because any aspect of it was average but because half of what happened was absolutely fantastic and the other half was so much horrible BS.
I agree Leybenzon, T'Lana, and Kadohata were completely ridiculous in this novel with special emphasis on Kadohata who has been allegedly on the ship the whole time dating back what appears to have been many years. Her loyalties are awefully flimsy and I don't think I'm out of line saying that there is NO WAY Data would have selected this person to be 2nd officer. Prior to this book I liked all three of them especially Leybenzon. Now, however, I want them all dead. Quickly! And while some characters are made to be hated, I don't feel that was the intention here (possible exception being T'Lana). But even in those cases you are supposed to "love to hate them" (DS9's Dukat comes to mind) where as now I just hate them and don't want to see them again.
Now, I did catch the post where someone posted from PAD's log that he didn't have Q&A to reference. And well, yeah that does kinda suck, but unfortunately that little fact doesn't make the book suck less. In fact his response to that complaint to me was a bit of a cop-out.
[soapbox]
I call this "playing the victim" someone points out a problem and the person responds "it's not my fault." Well actually it is, because you are directly responsible for what you write and you know you are writing within a series, your editor (or whomever) gives you the book not immediately preceding yours and you don't think to ask them "uh, what about this book? why isn't it important?" And even then if they insist it isn't (from what I can tell PAD and KRAD know each other) why didn't PAD at least email KRAD and say "hey, I'd like to make sure my book is as good as I can make it and I'd like to just make sure I don't pull a character assassination after you've already written something, could you let me in on a few details?" This of course then begs the question why the editor decided Q&A wasn't important for PAD. WTF?![/soapbox]
Anyway... I don't feel the Borg were "scarier" at all. If anything all they were is more ridiculously over the top, it didn't make sense that they ate Pluto and grew to a size larger than Earth. Why exactly did they need to be that big? Oh yeah cause the Borg Queen is now a size-queen and being big means being perfect and better and stronger... whatever.
Now let's talk the planet killer. For all it's apparent power and technology all the Borg had to do was move behind them and suddenly it can't do anything!?!? Oh and the bending time and space with her mind was kinda out of the blue.
Janeway, first of all I don't understand what all the talk is about her being dead, She wasn't dead at the end of the book I read.
For the epic scale of events that occurred in this novel, I think this (along with every other insanely huge event that occurs in large fictional universes) suffered from believability because how is it that only the Enterprise and the Excalibur were the only two ships we heard of or saw. And don't give me that "it's a big galaxy" mess. This was big enough that literally every ship that is armed should have been called directly to Earth. Voyager? Defiant? Where were you? I also found myself asking where the hell were the Klingons? They're our allies and are all about a good honorable battle? Hell I'd even venture to ask where were the Romulans, Breen, and any other big power in the quadrants? With the Borg being that "big a threat" no race who knows the Borg would begin to think they'd stop at Earth and would immediately go to help save Earth if not for the purpose of saving Earth but for saving their own planet that would be next. Similarly, I think someone up-thread asked Where the hell was the Federation President?!?!?!?!? Oh the council is making decisions but the damned PRESIDENT isn't in on it???
Now that I've listed most of (surely not all) the bad things here's the good:
I did like the fact that the Borg were at least attempted to be shown as FINALLY adapting to humanity and individuality, accepting and even allowing some drones to be someone autonomous. I never found it believable that the Borg (from the shows) wouldn't eventually realize there is some manner of "perfection" in accepting individuality. I also liked the fact that right off the bat Janeway was warned by Lady Q not to go running headlong into disaster and then Janeway being Janeway did it anyway and got immediately assimilated. I am one who am all for killing of a main character, even though I personally wouldn't have chose this specific one, it was done swiftly and actually made sense that Janeway would be the one.
Aside from much of the dialogue which I didn't like (and thought it rather out of character most of the time) I do think PAD is rather good at setting up scenes and situations, the sheer lunacy of the whole mutiny was itself a decent idea with a decent purpose, but the execution of it struck me as more slapstick comedy than deadly serious lives and careers are on the line. One thing about that scene however that I felt was spot on was Worf's reaction (not his dialogue). I believed he really would have killed all three of them without hesitation and regardless of how good Leybenzon is he'd have died terribly. Although Worf's little daydream about T'Lana spread eagle with fire ants struck me as very non-Worf. A redeeming quality was at the end when Worf took her to her quarters and showed more of what I expect out of the post-Ambassador version of Worf.
On the whole I find I have more bad things to say about this book than good, but I did actually like reading much of it (perhaps morbid curiosity? I don't know).
One thing regarding Pluto's affect on the solar system as a whole. I agree it'd be very minimal if at all. But when the Cube flew into the sun didn't it come out MUCH bigger than when it went it? Therefore insinuating that it took matter from the Sun itself too? While granted the sun is monstrously large compared to even Jupiter, taking matter from it to make the cube grow to be bigger than Earth seems like it'd have quite a large effect on the system, if nothing other than the fact that an Earth-sized object's worth of matter is now floating around the rest of the inner planets.
