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

[Josh Kelton]

Beyond Trek Podcast has an interview with Dayton Ward.

https://player.fm/series/beyond-tre...-penning-the-most-epic-epic-that-ever-epicked

 

[F. King Daniel]

Stream of conciousness comments loaded with SPOILERS:

So glad I read those A Time To... Wesley books before this!

A Second Contact taskforce being created around seven years later in the novelverse compared to the TV STU. I wonder what novelverse Mariner and Boimler have been doing for these past seven years?

Isn't Worf getting the Prometheus one of the clickbait site synopsis of that Captain Worf spin-off that Michael Dorn was pitching for years? Also of course, in Last Full Measure he becomes Enterprise captain in 2381.

I'm thinking about Geordi's reservations about leaving the Enterprise here, compared to Last Full Measure when he was out the door as soon as he realised the scope of the mission to save the Romulans. Obviously we're talking personal career progression versus 900 million lives, but it's still an interesting parallel.

Guessing now the guy who stepped out of and then into the Guardian as it was destroyed was it's creator. Or Carl.

Not sure what to make of the baddie space snakes yet.

 

[Charles Phipps]

Chances are they are all coming back in the end.

I mean, probably, but that doesn't mean that their deaths as characters in-universe won't hurt and that we won't miss the likelihood of no future adventures with them. The past we lose with them is really the mourning of the Novelverse as a whole.

 

[ToddCam]

We can hope that some of the writers for the shows adapt them into the canon. I feel we live in a different world in terms of media nowadays. Star Wars didn't leave a cool villain like Thrawn in the dustbin of "obsolete" tie-in media. No reason great characters like Chen, Vale, Vaughn, etc., couldn't make the transition. I know I'd love to see Dr. Ree on Lower Decks.

 

[Julio Angel Ortiz]

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

Reading your earlier comment in the thread, and having read the book last night... yeah, I was looking for this comment.

I also got Crisis on Infinite Earths vibes, which is funny that someone else mentioned that (the original, source comic, not whatever was on TV).

Great opening to the trilogy read it in one day. Tense, body count is no joke, and it feels like the stakes are about as high as they can get. Wasn't expecting the villains to be who they were, but it works.

One thing that that stood out to me:

Spoiler: Spoiler for Book 1

Ezri's POV death felt... odd. Like, I kept wondering if there was a specific stylistic choice for it and that it's really a clue for something later... like we all just think these people are dying but they're not dead-dead (just *mostly* dead)...

And one minor nitpick which may be explored in the next novel...

Spoiler: Another spoiler

We didn't get to see Worf react to Ezri's death. Like, the death of Ezri *and* the Dax symbiote - and his connection to them both - felt like something to cover.

Overall, bravo to Dayton for kicking off the trilogy in fine form and man, I can't wait for the rest.

ETA: I clearly use the Spoiler function *a lot*. /facepalm

 

[DarrenTR1970]

So, is Wesley the last Traveler? That's the impression I get.

Also, there's mention that the higher beings have moved on - the Organians, the Metrons, even the Q aren't around.

That leaves the Prophets/Wormhole aliens.

 

[VESATI]

So, is Wesley the last Traveler? That's the impression I get.

Also, there's mention that the higher beings have moved on - the Organians, the Metrons, even the Q aren't around.

That leaves the Prophets/Wormhole aliens.

Yeah, that makes me wonder if the Q went all "Protocol Omega" (Traveler's reference) on the litverse timeline.
I don't see what the Devidians are doing as being any actual threat to the Q.

I get the impression that the Organians and the Metrons just decided to nope-the-fuck out of there rather than deal with it.

 

[Julio Angel Ortiz]

So, is Wesley the last Traveler? That's the impression I get.

Yeah, that makes me wonder if the Q went all "Protocol Omega" (Traveler's reference) on the litverse timeline.
I don't see what the Devidians are doing as being any actual threat to the Q.

That leaves the Prophets/Wormhole aliens.

I thought the same.

I fully expect the new DS9 to get nuked along with the Prophets during the remainder of the trilogy.

 

[ToddCam]

FYI, the thread is marked as spoilers, so you don't have to use spoiler tags.

 

[Markonian]

Do we know if the Wesley from Riker's Enterprise-D had moved on to become a Traveler as well by 2373?

 

[Charles Phipps]

Do we know if the Wesley from Riker's Enterprise-D had moved on to become a Traveler as well by 2373?

Maybe he married Robin Lefler and there's a hilarious story about him hating Si Cwan on the alternate-verse New Frontier.

 

[thribs]

Maybe he married Robin Lefler and there's a hilarious story about him hating Si Cwan on the alternate-verse New Frontier.

There is? I’ve read all the NF novels and Wesley isn’t in any of them.

 

[jaime]

I… didn’t enjoy it much. It felt like a by the numbers recent TNG book (here’s some exposition on the episodes referenced, here’s an old threat turning up again from the episodes, here’s a bottle of wine) with the added ‘bonus’ of ‘well, they’re ending it anyway, who can we kill off this chapter?’ which, given its going to be somewhat apocalyptic anyway (they’re gonna wipe the timeline) just feels like too much. Cable/Wesley as well just makes me think that something is owed to Wheatons newfound geek godhood too. (Will he do the audiobook I wonder?)
Because it’s a part one, it’s possible we will see the characters we are fond of brought back before the end, but it also meant it moved very glacially, and the ‘robed figure’ felt like deliberate red-herring along the lines of ‘it’s an alternate Wesley/Q/Picard… not really. It’s a bland thing’ with long writing plot lines also being killed off rather than used in an interesting way. (Taurik and books and books worth of DTI stuff.)
There should have been a better way of clearing the decks, but we will see. (Even the Voyager books had their rushed ending mentioned here.)

Perhaps all of that was inevitable. One thing that isn’t is making it so Picard centric, when he is the one character we already have more of. Maybe this should have had more Aventine and Titan content, and maybe ‘our’ lit characters should have got more than mildly heroic but pointless deaths.

 

[Charles Phipps]

There is? I’ve read all the NF novels and Wesley isn’t in any of them.

No, I meant that in the alternate universe trekverse that is being referenced that maybe Wesley was in the NF cast.

Tasha Yar being still alive in said universe.

It was also a joke.

 

[thribs]

No, I meant that in the alternate universe trekverse that is being referenced that maybe Wesley was in the NF cast.

Tasha Yar being still alive in said universe.

It was also a joke.

Oh, apologies. I misread and thought you said there was a hilarious story.
I did find it odd he was never in one. Him and Lefler were so good together in the Game. I would have had him be in a NF story or two

 

[David cgc]

Maybe he married Robin Lefler and there's a hilarious story about him hating Si Cwan on the alternate-verse New Frontier.

I did notice the Excalibur had become a Galaxy-class several years early during alt-First Contact, but just shrugged and went, "Alternate timeline, what are you going to do?"

 

[Allyn Gibson]

I say this jokingly. I think Crisis is just going to be a natural comparison because of related base concepts and Crisis being such a massive milestone.

I've been thinking more Doctor Who -- this seems, at least to me, what the Time War would have looked like to someone living through its effects, with time breaking down and being warred over around them, past and future uncertain. And it's kinda what I hoped a "Tales of the Temporal Cold War" anthology would have been like, showing different fronts in the 23rd- and 24th-centuries of the Enterprise concept. I don't know if Pocket ever would have done an anthology like that, but I'd have read it.

 

[ToddCam]

I… didn’t enjoy it much. It felt like a by the numbers recent TNG book (here’s some exposition on the episodes referenced, here’s an old threat turning up again from the episodes, here’s a bottle of wine) with the added ‘bonus’ of ‘well, they’re ending it anyway, who can we kill off this chapter?’ which, given its going to be somewhat apocalyptic anyway (they’re gonna wipe the timeline) just feels like too much. Cable/Wesley as well just makes me think that something is owed to Wheatons newfound geek godhood too. (Will he do the audiobook I wonder?)
Because it’s a part one, it’s possible we will see the characters we are fond of brought back before the end, but it also meant it moved very glacially, and the ‘robed figure’ felt like deliberate red-herring along the lines of ‘it’s an alternate Wesley/Q/Picard… not really. It’s a bland thing’ with long writing plot lines also being killed off rather than used in an interesting way. (Taurik and books and books worth of DTI stuff.)
There should have been a better way of clearing the decks, but we will see. (Even the Voyager books had their rushed ending mentioned here.)

Perhaps all of that was inevitable. One thing that isn’t is making it so Picard centric, when he is the one character we already have more of. Maybe this should have had more Aventine and Titan content, and maybe ‘our’ lit characters should have got more than mildly heroic but pointless deaths.

I actually listened to the audiobook when I got it (have had insomnia for months) and it's not Wil Wheaton.

I remember in reading other Dayton Ward books skipping over the exposition of old episode plots. I'm sure it's hard for a tie-in writer to balance exposition about the source material.

I also would have preferred less Picard for this, except I did appreciate the parts where he was thinking about what it meant to be a father and his love for his son.

 

[Charles Phipps]

I did notice the Excalibur had become a Galaxy-class several years early during alt-First Contact, but just shrugged and went, "Alternate timeline, what are you going to do?"

Ashley Judd, who was my babysitter for random factoids (I'm from Ashland, ky), wanted to show up in Nemesis as Wesley's wife.

 

[thribs]

Ashley Judd, who was my babysitter for random factoids (I'm from Ashland, ky), wanted to show up in Nemesis as Wesley's wife.

According to Frakes, she disowned Star Trek and her character. I heard him say so at a convention