A personal request to Christoper Bennet, please can you include Shran in the next book?.
I never planned to have Shran absent for long. There wasn't a role for him in Book 2, but I consider him an important part of the ensemble.
Hravishran th'Zoarhi is Shran's imperial name but that doesn't require him to use it. The captain of Thejal was officially known as Trenkanshent sh'Lavan but went by her native Dreshnan name Kanshent Shelav. We have that on present-day Earth, too: If my native name was Steffen Müller, I might call myself Steven Miller when in the USA. In short, I don't think a legal name change is necessary.
Exactly. Lots of people go by different names in different countries or contexts. Jackie Chan is really Chan Kong-Sang.
Agents of SHIELD's Chloe Bennet went by Wang Keying when she lived in Beijing. Alexander Siddig's real full name is Siddig El Tahir El Fadil El Siddig Abderrahman Mohammed Ahmed Abdel Karim El Mahdi.
Besides, canon trumps tie-ins, and the name Thy'lek Shran is from an onscreen graphic in an episode, which makes it not quite canonical but certainly closer. And I never liked the novels' insistence on forcing every Andorian name to conform to the pattern created for the DS9 relaunch. Earth has hundreds of different naming conventions, so why should an alien world have only one?
You know what would be a great thing to see in the next
Rise of the Federation novel? A detailed explanation for "Warp Delta".
http://en.memory-alpha.org/wiki/Warp_Delta#.22Warp_Delta.22
I've looked into the ship classes that were around in the era, so it's possible that more of them could show up later on, if there's a good opportunity for it.
I'll admit that I do still find this concept sort of confusing. Christopher, so the Federation Starfleet as of the 2160s consists of several organizations under one umbrella, those being UESPA, the Andorian Guard, the Tellar Space Administration, the Alpha Centauri Space Research Council, and the Vulcan Space Council, correct? Does that mean that each sub-organization has its own fleet of ships, all of them crewed only by members of that sub-organization? For example, is every crewmember of the Endeavour or Pioneer--even those who aren't citizens of United Earth--part of UESPA (and thus wear the arrowhead insignia), or do the ships feature integrated crews consisting of officers from all of the various sub-organizations (each wearing whichever insignia is appropriate for them)?
At this early stage in Starfleet history, the various space agencies administer their own fleets with their own crews -- since, after all, they were independent fleets just a few years ago, and the first Starfleet Academy cadets are still about a year away from graduating. There's some exchange of officers among fleets, akin to T'Pol's service aboard NX-01 as a Vulcan High Command officer in the first couple of seasons of ENT. I don't think I've specified, but unless I've established otherwise and forgotten, I think Thanien would still technically be an Imperial Guard officer.
This speedy approach comes, I guess, from not being the core plot of the novel - certain things just happen to advance the story?
It comes from having an 80,000-word limit, mainly. But I have more room on the next two.
I hope we get some answers one day about what went down there. The Errand Of... books, which are among those which make it explicit that there hasn't been full-scale interstellar war since the Romulan War, also mention that many consider a victory at the Battle of Axanar responsible for "preserving the Federation". 
Until proven otherwise, I'll assume it's the unseen Neptune-class (ENT: Singularity). The NX-class really seems to stand out with its lettering nomenclature. I wonder wether Starfleet is commissioning new Columbia-class ships? (USS Buran anyone? 
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