Spoilers DSC: The Enterprise War by John Jackson Miller Review Thread

[Avro Arrow]

Blurb:
An all-new novel based upon the explosive Star Trek TV series!

A shattered ship, a divided crew—trapped in the infernal nightmare of conflict!

Hearing of the outbreak of hostilities between the United Federation of Planets and the Klingon Empire, Captain Christopher Pike attempts to bring the U.S.S. Enterprise home to join in the fight. But in the hellish nebula known as the Pergamum, the stalwart commander instead finds an epic battle of his own, pitting ancient enemies against one another—with not just the Enterprise, but her crew as the spoils of war.

Lost and out of contact with Earth for an entire year, Pike and his trusted first officer, Number One, struggle to find and reunite the ship’s crew—all while Science Officer Spock confronts a mystery that puts even his exceptional skills to the test…with more than their own survival possibly riding on the outcome….

About the Author:
John Jackson Miller is the New York Times bestselling author of novels including the Star Trek: Prey trilogy; Star Trek: The Next Generation – Takedown; Star Wars: Kenobi; Star Wars: A New Dawn; and Star Wars graphic novels, including the Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic series. He has also written the eNovella Star Trek: Titan: Absent Enemies. He has written for franchises including Halo, Battlestar Galactica, Conan, Iron Man, Indiana Jones, Mass Effect, Planet of the Apes, and The Simpsons. A comics industry analyst and historian, he is the founder of Comichron, the world’s largest public database of comic book circulation data. He lives in Wisconsin with his wife, two children, and far too many comic books.

https://www.simonandschuster.com/bo...kson-Miller/Star-Trek-Discovery/9781982113315

_______________________________________________________

So I know this one is out there now, by virtue of having bought it tonight! Unfortunately, there's no reading in the cards for me this weekend, but I'm hoping to get into it over the holiday weekend next weekend. But since people can now buy it, it's time for the review thread to go up!

Please note that JJMiller has indicated in the past that he does not participate in review threads. So if you have any questions for the author, you will probably need to post them in another thread.

 

[Ronald Held]

Hopefully I get to meet him in LV.

 

[JJMiller]

Please note that JJMiller has indicated in the past that he does not participate in review threads. So if you have any questions for the author, you will probably need to post them in another thread.

Thanks -- it's generally good for readers to have their own space, and it helps preserve authorial sanity!

I recommend questions go in the existing announcement thread, which I will continue to monitor. And I do hope to see everyone here who's going to Vegas!

 

[Reanok]

I've been looking forward to reading this new novel. I've enjoyed reading the other Star Trek novels. JJ Miller has written.

 

[Leto_II]

My copy should be arriving soon from Barnes & Noble, though I’m out of the country right now and won’t be back ‘till the end of next week. Can’t wait.

 

[JD]

Just in case anyone here goes for the e-books, that comes out Tuesday.

 

[thribs]

My copy is coming and should be with me later today, with the Alien Isolation novelization which is a surprise since I was expecting that next week.
I look forward to reading it. The title makes it sound like it's a big battle with all the Enterprise's which I doubt. My money would be on the J if so.

 

[Yistaan]

EDIT: post moved to other thread

 

[Avro Arrow]

some questions for @JJMiller .

Please note that JJMiller has indicated in the past that he does not participate in review threads. So if you have any questions for the author, you will probably need to post them in another thread.

I recommend questions go in the existing announcement thread, which I will continue to monitor.

 

[thribs]

My copy just arrived. Book feels rather cheaply made. I guess it’s more environmental that way.
I’ll start reading it once I’ve finished Thrawn.

 

[Reanok]

I've ordered the book I'm looking forward to reading it soon.

 

[indianatrekker26]

My copy just showed up in the mail during my lunch break from work. I read the prologue during lunch. I cant wait to really dive in tonight.

 

[thribs]

Read the first 60 pages. I like that he's given an explanation into why the Enterprise looks different; with it being modified for nebula travel. I suppose that means we need to change the name of it from Discoprise to Enterprise - Nebula Mode.

 

[David cgc]

Just finished the book. It was a fun adventure. I liked the new engineer, Galadjian. Like an upbeat version of Ra-Havreii. It wasn't until the very end that I thought to check MA and MB and realized the connection to JJM's earlier Trek stories. I liked Connolly getting some attention, giving some more shades to him than "mansplainer red-shirt" and some motivations for how he got quite so cocky.

I'm not sure if it's just because of how disappointed I was by Discovery's second season, but almost all of the overt tie-ins with the show felt more like a fix-fic than before-the-fact coordination. I know that's a thing that's often an issue with tie-ins, especially ones that go deep or associate with a specific on-screen story, and it has varying levels of success, with CLB's explanations and developments probably being the best at seeming like something that'd come up anyway in the book's story and not a patch-job, stuff like Data losing his emotion chip in ATT or the reenactment of Trip's death in The Good That Men Do being somewhere in the middle, and that period where it felt like every book had an different explanation of how the Romulan Bird of Prey travelled between stars on "simple impulse" being the worst. These kind of felt near the lower end.

Spoiler: Enterprise War/DSC Season 2 connections

The first one I noticed was Pike talking about meeting Georgiou at the Academy, mentioning that he "[could]n't remember what brought her back there," and the vague and elided mentions of Desperate Hours culminating in a line about how, in retrospect, Spock had not actually gotten over his issues with Burnham. Having the ship banged to hell and literally ripped in two to explain how it is the damn phones brought it down for the count. Orchestrating a series of events for Spock to end up on an ice planet (in his Anovos ST09 Parka) with the Red Angel to have his mindmeld, something that went unexplained in the show (both how he came to be in that position, and which Burnham it was who found him) likewise felt like it was papering over a gap in the series that shouldn't have existed, and not a revelation being left for the tie-ins. On the plus-side, the allusions to "The Menagerie" were far more restrained and subtle than in DSC, which jumped gears from "foreshadowing" to "inexplicable fan-service exploitation" very quickly.

(There's a similar thing that bothered me that I can't blame on DSC, but is just a case of prequel-itis, specifically Spock musing that he could never imagine disobeying orders around Captain Pike, and Number One mentioning that the detached engineering section should probably have some sort of "battle-bridge." Well, maybe I can, but only in that DSC also needed to be reminded that many times, less is more.)

I get it, DSC is the new hotness, we're far away from the ENT days when the most sensible thing to do was focus on the post-finale lines and wait to see how the show shook out so we didn't get a lot of "Bill Rikers" and "Dr. Zimmermans" in the hopes of getting the occasional "The Siege" which would still mostly hold up in a year, but I don't enjoy feeling like the book I'm reading is the clean-up crew covering for the parent show being sloppy, like a group of well-meaning engineers and senior officers operating a famous scientist's computers for him so he doesn't seem incompetent as chief engineer. Or that time Janeway got brain damage. God, that was irritating.

Am I saying I'd have enjoyed the book more if it had followed the second season's lead and ignored the seventeen-year age gap between Pike and Georgiou, or that Desperate Hours ever existed? Yeah, probably. I'd be happiest if the show hadn't done those things to begin with, but drawing attention to them just reminded me of little things that bothered me about season two, which reminded me of big honking things that bothered me about season two, when I was enjoying a perfectly pleasant novel about Spock getting kidnapped by slavers and the Enterprise being torn apart by spider-crabs.

 

[Stevil2001]

Spoiler: Enterprise War/DSC Season 2 connections

The first one I noticed was Pike talking about meeting Georgiou at the Academy, mentioning that he "[could]n't remember what brought her back there," and the vague and elided mentions of Desperate Hours culminating in a line about how, in retrospect, Spock had not actually gotten over his issues with Burnham.

I'll write a full review in the next couple days, but yeah, some of these made me roll eyes. Paraphrasing, but "It already felt like many years since they had spoken, and Spock was sure Burnham felt the same"?!

Orchestrating a series of events for Spock to end up on an ice planet (in his Anovos ST09 Parka) with the Red Angel to have his mindmeld, something that went unexplained in the show (both how he came to be in that position [...]) likewise felt like it was papering over a gap in the series that shouldn't have existed, and not a revelation being left for the tie-ins.

On the other hand, I don't feel like the show needed to explain why Spock was where he was-- isn't it just a quick flash? So we can assume he's on some kind of mission; the novel just fleshed out what mission it was. I was all like OHHHHH when I realized what was happening; I didn't expect it when it did (partially because I had forgotten some of the details of the show's flashback).

 

[Ronald Held]

Just started it, die to the LV Con. Not certain what to make of the story.

 

[Reanok]

I got the book yesterday. I haven't had time to start reading it yet.

 

[Stevil2001]

I've always been a fan of Captain Pike's Enterprise-- I used to have a website on a shitty free hosting platform devoted to it-- and I was disappointed that the first Discovery novel, Desperate Hours, didn't quite lean into its Pikeness more. So of course I enjoyed this. At first it's a pretty action-y novel, as the Enterprise explores a dangerous region of space and ends up beset by aliens who kidnap a big chunk of the crew. Fun but disposable. But about halfway through, something dramatic happens, and the novel gets contemplative and atmospheric. I loved the difficult situation everyone ends up in, and I loved how they all handled it, and how it reveals so much about these people. Great big set pieces, awesome visuals of things I surprisingly can't remember being doing in Star Trek before. But also nice little touches, such as Nurse Carlotti's problem, or the role of shipwreck narratives. There are also some nice moments where the book joins

Miller also does a good job with the characters. His Captain Pike captures everything I liked about Anson Mount's portrayal, his Spock is excellent, and he does a strong job with other mainstays like Number One, Yeoman Colt, Nhan, and Doctor Boyce. I also really enjoyed the original character of Galadjian (I hope we see more of him somewhere, but I know by Discovery season 2 he's not around), and I was surprised by he journey Miller took Connolly on. At first the guy annoyed me just as he did in the season 2 premiere, but by novel's end, I understood and liked him and felt bad about how he was depicted in "Brother." Which, I guess, is what a good prequel does!

Slightly more comments here: https://lessaccurategrandmother.blo...overy-enterprise-war-john-jackson-miller.html

But suffice it to say there was a lot to like about this book.

 

[David cgc]

But about halfway through, something dramatic happens, and the novel gets contemplative and atmospheric.

I remember when the book was building up to that, and I checked the page count and was surprised that I was less than halfway through, because it felt structurally like we were getting to the end.

 

[BuckBokaiLondonKings]

Finished it today. Loved it! I felt like all the characters were written right on the mark. Could easily see Anson Mount standing on the bridge of the Discoprise. Great stuff! Voted outstanding.