Binge Book Buy! Catching up on Recent New Novels

[Technobuilder]

So I got off work early and ended up getting 6 new Trek Novels in one fell swoop. Its been about half a year since I was buying Trek Lit regularly, so hopefully this goes a ways into catching up on what I've missed.

Of course I bought the Star Trek: Terok Nor Trilogy when it first came out and am only now finishing Book 2: Night of the Wolves

DTI: Forgotten History by Christopher L Bennett

VOY: Children of the Storm by Kirsten Beyer

VGD: What Judgements Come by Dayton Ward & Kevin Dilmore

VGD: Storming Heaven by David Mack

ST: Typhon Pact - Plagues Of Night by David R George III

ST: The Rings of Time by Greg Cox

You're welcome Authors!

Just know these books are very much appreciated.

 

[shanejayell]

All pretty solid books. The only one I was iffy about was the Typhon Pact one....

 

[Skywalker]

How was Night of the Wolves? I just recently finished Day of the Vipers and loved it.

 

[Patrick O'Brien]

All of those books are solid choices I rate VOY: Children of the Storm by Kirsten Beyer, as #1 in that list. Though it is a competitive field.

Enjoy your summer reading Technobuilder!

 

[Technobuilder]

How was Night of the Wolves? I just recently finished Day of the Vipers and loved it.

I'm still not finished with Night of the Wolves yet (another 160 pages or so to go) but thus far it's been a decent follow up to the excellent Day of the Vipers by James Swallow.

My only real complaint with Book 2, and I'm guessing Book 3 also (since they were written by the same team of Perry & Dennison) would be the apparent incongruity with how women are portrayed and regarded in both the Cardassian military service and their overall roles in Cardassian Society.

Basically in Vipers, Cardassian Women were just as capable as men and present in all facets of the Military structure, in Wolves it's like they took a step backwards to say that women are perceived as WEAKER, LESS CAPABLE, & don't serve in the military save with RARE exceptions.

Maybe it's just me, but it was quite jarring to see such a polarity shift from one book to the other. I would of preferred something more consistent. I'm just so used to David Weber's Honor Harrington Universe where the idea of women in command is so commonplace it's not even an issue that I forget some suthors still utilize a perception of disparity between the sexes as some sort of black mark. After Vipers, it really wasn't necessary.

 

[BritishSeaPower]

Technobuilder, this may be an incidence where Swallow wasn't in line with continuity. Using on-screen evidence from DS9 and from mentions in the DS9-R, the Cardassian military and command is almost exclusively male and the sciences/engineering are almost mainly female.

 

[Christopher]

^Although in the show, it wasn't because the men considered women physically inferior and unworthy of military service, but because the women considered men intellectually inferior and unworthy of scientific achievement.

 

[BritishSeaPower]

That's right! I forgot about that.

 

[Technobuilder]

Basically, my only real nit to pick has come down to the Trilogy being inconsistent with itself through it's portrayal of Cardassians and Cadassian Culture, other than that... Seems like a good read.

If only Una McCormack had been able to lend her perspective on Cardassians lol.

Swallow continues to impress.

 

[Skywalker]

Yeah, Vipers was my first exposure to James Swallow, but I was very impressed. I'd tried reading the book a couple of years ago, but had a hard time getting into it. Then I finally watched through the entirety of DS9 for the first time last year, and when I gave Vipers another chance, I ended up enjoying it much more. Who'd have thought?

 

[Christopher]

Basically, my only real nit to pick has come down to the Trilogy being inconsistent with itself through it's portrayal of Cardassians and Cadassian Culture...

Is it really inconsistent, though? Consider -- the first volume ends in 2328, the second picks up in 2345. A lot can change in 17 years. Look how much the status of women and gay/lesbian people has changed in the US military in a comparable amount of time. Prior to the 1990s, women in the US armed forces couldn't fly combat planes or serve on combat ships, but today they can, and the rules against allowing women in ground combat are on the verge of giving way as well.

So if our armed forces' policies could change that much in a generation, why couldn't the Cardassians' policies change in the other direction, from full inclusion of women in the military in one generation to their exclusion a generation later? Maybe there was a shift in leadership or social mores in the interim, a more traditionalist or conservative faction coming to power and undoing egalitarian practices (much like what many right-wing legislators in the US are currently trying to do with women's rights).

I say that if an alien culture is portrayed in inconsistent ways in two different books, it's only a continuity error if they take place close together in time. If they're separated by a generation or a century or more, then it would be far more implausible if the culture hadn't changed in the interim.