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Burning Dreams

Re: My review at Amazon.com....

garamet said:
Bobatiel said:
MWB has a way of connecting me to the TOS I grew up with. It's an uncanny level of familiarity. I feel as if I'm watching TOS as I did decades ago. I don't know what it is, and how she does it, but I love it!

I guess it's because I grew up with it, too. Heck, there was a point where I'd seen those reruns so many times I could identify a TOS episode two seconds in...

Oh.

That's how she does it.

We reach.
 
Ok, time for my $0.02US. Burning Dreams is a most welcome addition to the Trek Universe. My only complaint (and let's get this out of the way) is that I really don't see Captian James T. Kirk acting as giddy as a school girl upon taking the Captain's Chair of the USS Enterprise, but that's just me. I loved the rest of the novel. It even got the proper emotions working at the end. :( I'll admit it, I needed a kleenex.

The ending definately left me wanting more. For instance, does General Order 7 still exist in Picard/Sisko's time? Could you imagine what the Federation could've done (or even the Dominion) with the Talosians' powers during the Dominion War. That power of illusion is far more powerful than the holodeck (no need for holoemitters).

Also, I would like to read more Pike novels. (Or even imagine what Star Trek would've been like had we gotten that first crew. Would we still be talking about it 40 years later?) And more novels by garamet. :thumbsup:

As a huge fan of TOS/TNG/DS9 (and all of the movies except for the first attempt at a ninth film) Burning Dreams absolutely fits perfectly in the Trek Universe that we've known and loved for the past 40 years. The "Human Condition/Adventure" doesn't always need grand starship battles and voyages to tell a tale, even personal stories do the trick.

(And if my rambling made any sense, YAY! To quote one of my favorite movies, "Back off man, I'm a scientist." I'm a scientist, not a writer. :D )
 
my $0.02US as well.

i thought it was a good book but i'm fairly certain i didn't like it as much as a lot of the posters here. i guess my main thing is this was called the "ultimate christopher pike novel" and when i'm reading the thing i remember thinking i'm almost a third of the way through and he's still a teen-ager. there was some good stuff in there, but as a whole i didn't work as well for me as some other ST books i've read recently.
 
It was really good, but I wanted so much more. Great attention and time spent on his youth and what happened on Talos, but there was so much time in the middle. I hope we get more there in a future book.
 
The time in the middle has already been explored in several books. While Pike had a lot of interesting missions aboard the Enterprise, they did not all influence his character, and they were not all relevant to the story that Margaret wanted to tell.

Who knows? We may get more Pike stories down the road if the sales are strong enough.
 
rafterman1701 said:
Oh, I know there is plenty out there to fill in the gaps, I just want more. I'm greedy.
Not just that, we also know that Pike was the captain for 2 five year missions to explore...
 
Re: My review at Amazon.com....

**Possible Spoilers for those who haven't read it**

Well seeing as I just finished reading the book, I doubt I can comment on much of the past 9 pages of thread. :lol: But I did browse through them...

First off, great book...great story! Loved it alot. Great to get some insights into Pike's life. The development of his character was great...and I'm glad we get to see Vina as more than the "blond bimbo" she seemed to me in The Cage. She actually has some in-depth intelligence here!

I agree with one poster above that continuously calling Number One "Number One" got a tad odd in feeling. Maybe call her "Commander" (especially by those under her) every once in a while would've made it sound more natural. The fact that she has no name, though, didn't bug me really though.
As for her character, I never really got the feeling from The Cage (or any previous book) that she would be such a hardass, as she turns out in this book? But I guess that was just my personal impression.

I really like the ending....Talos's transformation and re-birth was inspiring. I've always thought since seeing the Menagerie that just having Pike "retire" there seemed a dull ending...and MWB gives us a much more plausible outcome for the long run. I loved it!
But it's SCREAMING for a followup! Talos applying for UFP membership? Wow...how does that turn out? I'm guessing it takes a LONG time....cuz if they were in the UFP in the Dominion War, that war would've lasted only a couple of days! :lol: Just give some illusion to the Jem'Hadar and next thing you know they're flying into a star. End of problem. ;)
So yeah...that ending is definitely gonna need to be followed-up by somebody, eventually. *hint hint!* :D

Great read...highly enjoyable! :)
 
blsisko said:
Not just that, we also know that Pike was the captain for 2 five year missions to explore...

No, we know he was captain of the Enterprise for over 11 years (we don't know how long he was captain before Spock joined his crew). We don't know if "five-year missions" were standard at the time, or indeed at any time. Just because the E was on a five-year tour of duty in TOS doesn't mean all Starfleet vessels are sent exclusively on tours of that duration.
 
Christopher said:
No, we know he was captain of the Enterprise for over 11 years (we don't know how long he was captain before Spock joined his crew). We don't know if "five-year missions" were standard at the time, or indeed at any time. Just because the E was on a five-year tour of duty in TOS doesn't mean all Starfleet vessels are sent exclusively on tours of that duration.
Ok, so I took my cue from the book (which had the two 5 year missions) and had a brain fart regarding the 11 years. My bad. :D

Point was that there are a lot more tales to tell about this crew and this Enterprise. That's all. Yup.
 
Christopher said:
We don't know if "five-year missions" were standard at the time, or indeed at any time. Just because the E was on a five-year tour of duty in TOS doesn't mean all Starfleet vessels are sent exclusively on tours of that duration.
That's an interesting way to look at it. ;)
 
I agree with one poster above that continuously calling Number One "Number One" got a tad odd in feeling. Maybe call her "Commander" (especially by those under her) every once in a while would've made it sound more natural.

Heartily seconded! Staying true to source material doesn't mean staying true to its letter. What happened during just one hour of onscreen fun is not the entire lives of the characters in miniature. It's a narrow, biased view into those lives. When we see more, we should see different more.

The name for #1 is one such thing. Another would be to show, say, Tholians using something other than webs as their weapons, and even going "Huh?" when a character asks why they don't use webs. "Why should we use a web here when our primary weapon is the nano-spear?" Steering away from stereotypes is vitally important when starting with such narrow source material.

We don't know if "five-year missions" were standard at the time, or indeed at any time.

Certainly Kirk in TMP seems to think that his five years were a unique achievement...

Still waiting for BD to hit the shelves; still wavering between buying and going by the mild spoilers here. :)

Timo Saloniemi
 
The problem with Number One is that she'd been given at least two different last names by other writers, and I knew some readers preferred one name over the other, so I figured I'd avoid the issue altogether and let the reader decide.
 
garamet said:
The problem with Number One is that she'd been given at least two different last names by other writers, and I knew some readers preferred one name over the other, so I figured I'd avoid the issue altogether and let the reader decide.
You had the power of illusion, you should have used it for evil and decided on the final name for Number One. :devil:

After all "Nyota" Uhura has had at least two "official" non-canon first names, before "Nyota" was more or less decided upon.
 
blsisko said:
garamet said:
The problem with Number One is that she'd been given at least two different last names by other writers, and I knew some readers preferred one name over the other, so I figured I'd avoid the issue altogether and let the reader decide.
You had the power of illusion, you should have used it for evil and decided on the final name for Number One. :devil:

After all "Nyota" Uhura has had at least two "official" non-canon first names, before "Nyota" was more or less decided upon.

But, see, I knew Nichelle Nichols preferred "Nyota." I've never had the opportunity to ask Majel Barrett what she prefers. ;)
 
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