Spoilers Coda: Book 1: Moments Asunder by Dayton Ward Review Thread

Downloaded and finished it this morning. I won't go into full detail as it is so early on but there are at least some implied spoilers below.

It's good, interesting and unexpected choice of bad guy. Very Enterprise focused so presumably we'll get more of Titan and DS9 later on.

There is a lot of plot to cover but there's some decent characterisation and nice moments for most of the Enterprise crew and a few others. If this is the last hurrah it's nice to have more moments with these characters rather than all doom and gloom. Hopefully there will be some more celebratory moments later.

However this isn't a cheery book overall and the body count is already pretty high and this is only book 1. To me the biggest loss felt sightly thrown away but it is that kind of threat and they may return to it later on.

 

One thing I've picked up on in this book might be foreshadowing or might just be me overanalyzing:

Spoiler

Meyo Ranjea appears, and dies, in this book, but he was already killed off, or as good as killed off, in Shield of the Gods. This could mean that what the Devidians are doing is making such a mess of history that DTI's shielded archives aren't shielded well enough, so they don't actually know about the alterations. Add that in with the Andos/Akaar discussion involving Tom Paris and B'Elanna, and I'm starting to wonder if the Krenim (or even Annorax himself) are going to play a role in saving what's left of the Litverse timeline.

edit: fixed some bbcode - too used to Discord markup

 

T'Ryssa Chen dropping 'second contact is just as important.'
Aahhh... I love that. Of course they get her to do the Lower Decks reference! Perfect!
I think I needed that laugh, after all the moments of tearing up in the first few chapters.

I still think she'd make a wonderful fan episode Captain. USS Bacco. Vesta refit class.
Probably dead now, though... given where this timeline is presumably going.

 

Did a really fast skim through of the Kindle edition; will go back and read it properly later. All I can think is, 'Oh, fuck.' If a major character is already gone at the end of Book One

Spoiler

Ezri and the Dax symbiont

I don't have high hopes for

Spoiler

Beverly and Rene

making it out of Book Three alive. Captain Picard's going to be lonely by the end of the trilogy is my guess.

 

Well, fuck.
I almost threw my phone towards the end.

 

My reaction exactly, though I can't throw my computer.

 

This just downloaded this morning, and I'm a little than a quarter of a way through so far, but I've got to ask the author... did Chen just make a "Lower Decks" reference in the crew lounge???

 

(There are spoilers in this post, including deaths of characters.)
Finished reading it earlier today, and quite enjoyed it. Moments Asunder certainly felt a lot less hopeless than I expected (then again it's part one...), despite the high number of dead recurring characters. The inclusion of Wesley both worked for me and made a lot of sense in regards to the story. Maybe my highlight was the choice of adversary for the story, their motives make sense (even if their execution is a bit grand) and I liked that it was a previously known enemy, and not some new shadowy force. That really helped ground the, on the surface, very "out there" (for Star Trek) story for me. Ward has also managed to make me like the TNG supporting cast that was built over recent years, particularly Taurik and Chen's interaction and Doctor Tropp. The inclusion of the 29th century time cops was also nice and appropriately set the scale of the threat, as did Old Wesley's death. The trip to the far far future at the end dragged on a bit too for me, but that may also be the result of binge-reading the book. I was quite surprised at the death of Taurik and I don't buy Dax' death.

One question, Natasha and René are both six, going on seven here. With them being born in July and September 2381, that would imply the story takes place in mid 2388, or at the very least in September 2387. Is that a mistake, since the novel also references "Collateral Damage" (January 2387) as being weeks ago?

 

As I pointed out in a Facebook post, the creatures, to me, are supposed to invoke the look and feel of The Reapers from the Dr. Who episode 'Father's Day' as well as the Shadow Demons from DC Comics 'Crisis on Infinite Earths'; which might be a clue as to where this story is headed.

 

Just bought my copy and starting to read it. I am still at work but as nobody else is currently in the office I'm sure I can get away with a chapter or two lol

 

For dead characters in books 1&2, might they not be dead by the end of book 3?

 

Or maybe they will never have existed.

 

Only 3/4 of the way through, and already lamenting what's happening in the litverse timeline, but not as much as I lament what has to happen in THIS timeline to reconcile with another timeline.

 

Honestly, at this point the only reason I'm going to read on is because I'm invested in the story. I'm not looking forward to it at all. While okay (thus the "Average" vote from me), this first volume made me feel horrible. It's bothering me a lot.

 

Okay, I'm in. I was going to read some books leading up, but I've learned from my kid that you can deny yourself too much by trying to avoid spoilers. I'm three chapters in and enjoying it, and I appreciate the "Last Time On" note at the beginning. I may go back and read some of those other novels. The furthest I ever got in the relaunch era was Death in Winter and Avatar, which did not impress.

I think I may be enjoying it more because I am not up to speed on what happened before. It feels like a movie sequel that has jumped ahead in the narrative, and I'm excited to see what happens, and what has happened.

 

Well, book one down.
I'll just be over here, crying inconsolably, waiting for the next book.

 

Oh, sweet summer children … if you think book one of CODA is a kick in the teeth, you have no idea what awaits you in books two and three.

 

You're an actual monster, aren't you.
A talented author-monster, but still...

 

Many, many years ago, on this very forum, in the wake of Star Trek: Insurrection, folks wondered what 'Star Trek X' would be (this is obviously well pre-Nemesis). The consensus was what we needed was a big crossover film of TNG, DS9 and Voyager to pull the entire 24th century together. A cool concept, but it was hard to imagine what that would look like.

We eventually got that in Star Trek: Destiny. Before Star Trek: Picard, I considered Destiny the unofficial Movie #11. The one that could never get made but had all the scale and crossover-ness and evolution from the series. "The big one with the Borg". Even the name invoked the TNG movie format. It scratched that long unscratched itch.

The Typhon Pact and the Fall I thought of more of like 10 Episode Miniseries. They were great in their own way, but it was quite different than Destiny.

In Coda, we're getting something on the scale of Destiny. It's unofficial Movie #12, in a sense. The one that ends it all. And Act I, Moment's Asunder, more than lived up to the task of setting up the stakes and hitting us with a lot of surprises. I'm looking forward to Act II.

--
Side point, I hope CBS doesn't take forever post-Picard Season 3 to decide what it wants to do with the 24th/early 25th century (if anything), so we can either get Litverse 2.0 a new post-Picard (or post-Nemesis) series in the next few years. Because years of indecision leading to an absence of the kind of development of a Litverse that we saw with the pre-Picard continuity would be a terrible waste.

 

Perhaps I should not be reading this book quite so fast, Mr. Mack?