Some mildly disjointed thoughts, having just finished the novel:
Won't Join A Club That'll Have Me As a Member: Arken II, former subject world of the Andorian Empire, has joined the Federation as the ninth Member State some time between January and June of 2165. We do not yet know the full formal name of the Arkenite polity.
The Federation as of this point comprises the following Member States, in order of joining:
- United Earth (Founding Member, 12 August 2161)
- Confederacy of Vulcan (Founding Member, 12 August 2161)
- Andorian Empire (Founding Member, 12 August 2161)
- United Planets of Tellar (Founding Member, 12 August 2161)
- Alpha Centauri Concordium (Founding Member, 12 August 2161)
- Confederated Martian Colonies (2161)
- United Rigel Worlds and Colonies (2164)
- Vega Colony (2164)
- Arken II (2165)
What's In A Name?: We do not yet know the full formal name of the Arkenite polity, but we
do know the Deltans'! Their full formal name is the Dhei Union, usually translated into English as the Deltan Union. This confirms 2003's
Star Trek: Star Charts, in which they are also listed as the Deltan Union.
Given the Dhei/Deltans' philosophical and biological propensity towards the idea of interpersonal unity, it makes sense that their polity name would be translated as "Union."
Take Me To Your Leader: We've got four entries for this one.
- The full English title of the Dhei/Deltan head of government is the Prime Minister of the Deltan (Dhei) Union. This is consistent with IDW's 2012 miniseries Star Trek: The Next Generation/Doctor Who—Assimilation², the Star Trek/Doctor Who crossover comic set (mostly) in 2368, and during the Doctor's eleventh life while he was traveling with Rory Williams and Amy Pond (but also featuring sequences set during Kirk's command of the Enterprise in the 2260s and the Doctor's fourth life). Issue #1 featured a combined Borg/Cybermen fleet attacking Delta IV (Dhei), whereupon the Prime Minister of Delta IV ordered a planetary evacuation. Though I think it is probably safe to say that Assimilation² is still out of continuity with the Pocketverse.
In 2165, the Prime Minister of the Dhei Union is a woman named Mod'hira. Contact with non-Dhei is considered rare enough to warrant the Prime Minister's personal attention, both with the USS Essex and with the Orions.
- The head of government on Vanot is also known as the Prime Minister, although the full state's name goes unrevealed. In 2165, the Vanot Prime Minister is a woman named Pevrat Hemracine. However, the "power behind the throne" in Vanot's corporate state is actually Daskel Vabion, the head of the Worldwide Automatics corporation.
- The title of the head of government on Vulcan has changed again. In Kobayashi Maru by Michael A. Martin and Andy Mangels, T'Pau was established to be the First Minister of the Confederacy of Vulcan. This seemed to fit in with a reference from "Home," wherein it was established that the then-First Minister was dismissed in 2151 after Archer and T'Pol revealed the Vulcan spying station on P'Jem to the Andorians. I had been inclined to take this to mean that the P'Jem revelation had led to the High Command seizing power from civilian leaders in a coup, meaning that V'Las only came to power in 2151, but that was my inference/interpretation, not fully established.
Then, in 2009, with the departure of Mangels from the line, Martin's solo book The Romulan War: Beneath the Raptor's Wing referred to T'Pau as the Administrator of the Confederacy of Vulcan, retaining a title similar to that of the Administrator of the Vulcan High Command (V'Las's title). This was carried over into The Romulan War: To Brave the Storm. There was no acknowledgment made in the novel of T'Pau having been referred to as First Minister in Kobayashi Maru.
Now, we are back to the post-Reformation Vulcan head of government being known as the First Minister of the Confederacy of Vulcan. This novel does not acknowledge the Romulan War duology's reference to T'Pau as Administrator (she is explicitly referred to as a former First Minister).
I am inclined to interpret both Beneath the Raptor's Wing and Uncertain Logic as engaging in a retcon of the earlier novels' titles for T'Pau. Though I suppose it is possible that there remains a post of Administrator of the Confederacy of Vulcan alongside the post of First Minister. After all, if you have a First Minister, that implies the need for a head of state to appoint the head of government, at least under a governmental model used by Humans. Not that Vulcans must necessarily have a head of state/head of government style system, either.
After T'Pau decided to leave office at the end of To Brave the Storm, shortly after the founding of the Federation in August 2161, Uncertain Logic confirms that she has left office yet remains a powerful figure on Vulcan.
She has been succeeded by Kuvak, who had been a member of V'Las's cabinet before turning on him when he attempted to launch a George W. Bush-style illegal invasion of Andor on the basis of fraudulent WMD charges. He then served in T'Pau's cabinet, where he did various vaguely assholish things that I can't be bothered to remember because sweet zombie Jesus I did not like the Romulan War duology. But now he's the leader of all Vulcan, which I'm not sure I would like if I were Vulcan--it's like, would you trust a former aide to Augusto Pinochet if he turned on Pinochet at the last minute? Would you trust Colin Powell to serve as President after he served George W. Bush? Not sure I would. Though the Kuvak government seems relatively benign.
- The 2164 election seen in Tower of Babel is formally established on page 5 to have been for the office of President of the United Federation of Planets, rather than for President of the Council of the United Federation of Planets (which is the office A Choice of Futures had established for Thomas Vanderbilt).
Haroun al-Rashid was first established in 2005's Articles of the Federation in the form of a presidential shuttlecraft named after an early UFP President--he's had a very long life for a character that originally appeared almost literally as a historical footnote! Here, his full name is established: Haroun ibn Ahmad ibn Suleiman Abdurrahman al-Rashid (which would surely drive Donald Trump crazy).
We get a bit more of al-Rashid's background -- he is from Sudan, and is of mostly Nubian heritage. I really like these kinds of references to big, prestigious people being from countries that we today tend to consider failed states or third world hellholes--2009's TNG: Losing the Peace did something similar when they established that Geordi's hometown is Mogadishu, Somalia. It helps remind us that the divisions of power and wealth we take for granted today don't exist in the world of Star Trek's United Earth and Federation--that a man from Sudan being the most powerful person in the known galaxy is no more remarkable than someone from the United States or Europe. It shakes up our U.S./Euro-centric biases, I think. 
On the Steps of the Palace:
- The Vulcan capitol--presumably the building we saw V'Las operate out of in "The Forge," "Awakening," and "Kir'Shara"--is established to be known as the Administration Tower.
- The Vanot capitol is known as the Great Ancient Hold
- President al-Rashid is still operating out of the Federation Executive Building. The Palais de la Concorde is scheduled to exist some time before the end of his term of office--but of course, al-Rashid's term could extend up to January 2177, so there's plenty of time yet.
You've Got to Go to the Emerald City:
- The capital of Delta IV/Dhei is Ambhat City. It is led by a mayor. In 2165, the Mayor Ambhat City is a man named Serima.
- The capital of Vulcan remains ShiKahr.
Chattering Monkeys: The Vulcan legislature is now known as the Vulcan High Council, sometimes just called the Vulcan Council. It has a number of factions, though we don't know if there are any organized political parties since the breakdown of T'Nol's Anti-revisionist Party.
The Decider: The look into V'Las was fascinating. He always seemed unusually emotional for a Vulcan leader, and we get some insight into why: V'Las is actually the son of Romulan infiltrators, and he collaborated with the Star Empire in order to bring Vulcan into a militaristic state that would prompt them to re-unify with the Sundered. However, his primary loyalty remained to Vulcan (or at least his perception of it), and he did not favor Vulcan's conquest by Romulus.
Also, apparently there's some minor retconning of what the
Romulan War duology established about him. Or something. I don't know. I can't remember and really can't be bothered.
A Rose By Any Other Name: It turns out that the name "Romulan" is actually an English transliteration of the name
Rom'ielln, a name developed by the Rihannsu to hide their true nature as the Sundered from Vulcan when Vulcan ships began to enter their territory some time in the 20th century. The Rihannsu feared what the Vulcans would do to those who had rejected Surak and left the homeworld; later, they were disgusted by what they had learned of Vulcan culture post-Surak, and so sought to repel them. When a 21st century Rihannsu Praetor named Sartorix came to power, he decided to try to use sleeper agents to subvert Vulcan culture into a more militaristic direction--leading to V'Las's ascension to power.
This nicely explains why T'Pol asserted that their name was "Romulans" in the ENT episode "Minefield," and reconciles this with TrekLit's traditional "Romulans'-real-name-is-Rihannsu" thing that's been going on in various forms since Diane Duane wrote
My Enemy, My Ally in 1984.
The Heart of an Empire: I'm influenced by historical materialism, so as I read about Vulcan debates on the changes to their society after V'Las's fall and the discovery of the
Kir'Shara, I found myself what T'Pau's termination of Vulcan neo-imperialism might have done to the Vulcan economy. Imperialism and neo-imperialism are embraced because they bring solid benefits to the dominant party--siphoning wealth from the periphery into the center, and keeping the puppet governments of the periphery in power with the center's backing. When Vulcan suddenly transitioned into an egalitarian foreign policy, did that lead to any economic destabilization? Are there perhaps factions of Vulcan society, or Vulcan elites, who resent the T'Pau and Kuvak governments for cutting off the source of their wealth? Has Federation membership compensated for any economic hardship a more egalitarian foreign policy may have prompted? Did the newly-Syrannite Vulcan discover that it grew wealthier from a more egalitarian foreign policy, or did its people decide, in light of the
Kir'Shara, to forgo the economic benefits of neoimperialism in favor of a higher moral purity?
It is interesting to consider this question in light of the very small glimpse we got of (Syrannite) Vulcan economic policy in TOS's "Journey to Babel." In that episode, Ambassador Sarek, representing the Confederacy of Vulcan to the Babel Conference being convened over the issue of the admission of Coridan to the UFP, noted that Vulcan favored admission because "Under Federation law, Coridan can be protected [from illegal mining operations] and its wealth administered for the benefit of its people." Which, to me, sounds very redistributionist, if not out-and-out socialistic.
Meanwhile, it is interesting to see that at least part of what's driving Federation exploration is pressure from the firms of the Rigel system to expand to find new trading partners.
Thataway: According to
Star Trek: Star Charts, Balduk is all the way on the other side of Klingon and Romulan space. So I get the impression that the
Pioneer and her fleet are operating in the area of space that will one day become the tri-border between the UFP, Klingons, and Romulans. I wonder if they've encountered the Azure Nebula yet?
Interestingly, this implies that Federation expansion into the area that will one day become the Klingon frontier was at least in part motivated by Federation commercial concerns.
And Now, A Word From Our Sponsors: The look at Vanot society was quite fascinating, and I very much enjoyed it. They seem to be roughly equivalent in their technological development to 1940s Earth; the parallels to World War II and Hitler were particularly notable. The references to radio serials reminded me of entries on
Christopher's blog to his having been listening to the 1940s
Superman radio show--I wonder,
Christopher, was your depiction of Vanot influenced in any part by that?
The idea of Vanot uniting during the 1940s is not as far-fetched as one might think; there was an active movement for world federalism after World War II, to stave off any future such conflicts. The United Nations is partially the product of that movement, though it of course is far short of a world government.
The portrayal of the Vanot government as being wholly in the pocket of their corporate donors was dead-on and disturbingly relevant to real life. I couldn't help but think of the Apple corporation when reading about Worldwide Automatics--though I kept picturing Vabion as being played by Kyle MacLachlan of
Twin Peaks fame, currently guest-starring as Cal on
Agents of SHIELD.
For Cardassia!: Unless I am very much mistake, I do believe that this novel marks the first time
Christopher has written for a Cardassian character! His Iloja is a little bit less self-consciously erudite than many Cardassian characters are, particularly when they're written by
Una McCormack, though he retains the famous Cardassian propensity for speechification. Loved his speech, by the way.
Never Met A Stranger: I might be inclined to think it unrealistic that Spock's family seems to be connected to everybody--except that, well, his family was always depicted as being full of elites, so it makes some sense that his grandparents would be close to two administrations and to influential early Starfleet admirals like Archer. I do find myself wondering why Sarek would grow up to be so disapproving of Spock joining Starfleet if his parents were so friendly with Archer and company, though. (It would be less plausible if Valeria Williams and ship's historian Kirk were posted aboard the
Endeavour and got to mee Spock's grandparents.)
Star-Crossed Lovers: Speaking of Williams and Kirk -- it seems Valeria has been avoiding him since her actions indirectly led to his abduction and torture in
Tower of Babel. Kirk doesn't even appear in this book. I hope we see some movement between them, though--granted, they haven't even established anything more than friendship, but I'd like to see them moving along the path towards James Tiberius Kirk great-grandsiring, soon.
Center and Periphery: One of the smart decisions of
Rise of the Federation is splitting the focus between the
Endeavour and the
Pioneer. ST traditionally does two basic kinds of stories: Exploration and politics. Having two ships lets
Rise of the Federation do both -- the
Endeavour characters get to do domestic political adventures, and the
Pioneer crew gets to go where no one has gone before and kill evil computers.
The USS
Essex keeps appearing as a sort of side-note ship, but I hope that changes. I really like this crew and their adventures, and I hope they take a larger role as
Rise of the Federation continues.
The Only Good Deltan: The culture clash between Captain Shumer and the Dhei was fascinating. It's understandable that he might feel that Mayor Semira and company sexually assaulted his officers, and that his officers were suffering from diminished capacity to consent. I don't necessarily
agree with him, but I can understand it. His attitude that there is no such thing as an innocent Deltan later in the novel was bigoted and off-putting, though--though, for me, that doesn't mean he's not still an intriguing character. Caroline Paris is also a far more interesting character to me, now that she's going through this issue of trying to find herself again after, essentially, having had a glimpse of ethereal bliss.
Homo Sapiens-Only Club: One of the things that often bugs me about ST is the tendency to depict a Human-centric Starfleet. (This bugs me in particular with things like, the naming schemes for the
Luna class--why do they all have to be named after Sol system moons? Where are the Vulcan moons, the Tellarite moons, etc.?) So I really like seeing all these Andorian ships in Starfleet, with the "USS" right before an insane-sounding Andorii name.
Ripped From the Headlines: Is it just me, or did the whole "the
Kira'Shara-was-faked" thing remind anyone of the conspiracy theories surrounding President Obama's birth certificate?
Let's Make It Interesting: I was thinking to myself the other day that, while I was really enjoying them, the
Rise of the Federation novels needed more pain and suffering. I think
Christopher's strongest novel so far was
TNG: The Buried Age, because so much of that novel was about pain and loss. So it was nice to see
Christopher up the stakes a bit and bring some real, lasting consequences to characters we've gotten to know and care about in the form of Kimura.
Also, it was nice to see some real focus and growth for both Hoshi and Travis. These characters were often neglected on the show--a particular shame for Hoshi, since Linda Park is a wonderful actor.
The Man Who Fell to Earth: Akharin is back again! It's only been a few years since we ran into him in 2384, but we meet his 2165 self. Poor guy is just
obsessed with robots. Seems they've been dominating his thoughts for at least two hundred years now.
Man on the Street: It was really nice to see the constant references to what the Vulcan public knew and how they felt. One of the things that drove me crazy about
The Fall was that even though it dealt with really important political developments for the Federation, it was all inside baseball--we never really got a strong sense of what the Federation public knew or when they knew it or how they felt. Public opinion is always vital to a political story, so it was good to see
Christopher make constant use of it, especially in the debate houses.
It's About Loyalty: Trip's arc is gratifying. We're starting to see Section 31 assume the more overtly sinister ethos it lives by in the later series, and we're getting a real sense of how trapped Trip really is these days, and how it's starting to corrupt him. We know from
To Brave the Storm that he and T'Pol are going to get their happily-ever-after -- but how...?
Many Blood-Sucking Insects: The focus is mostly moved away from Archer this time around, but it's good to see that Archer is both finally in a healthy relationship, and that someone is calling him on the fact that he's actually a very successful politician--whether he likes it or not.
Who Could It Be, Now? A Choice of Futures focused a lot on the Orions, the early Starfleet and UFP government, and on the Saurians.
Tower of Babel, of course, focused a lot on the Rigellians--the whole lot of them.
Uncertain Logic focuses on the Vulcans (plus the Ware, Deltans, and Vanot).
We've gotten plenty of books over the years focusing on Andor, most recently
A Ceremony of Losses.
So...
When do you suppose we might get a
Rise of the Federation book that focuses on the Tellarites? They're the one founding culture (with the possible exception of the Humans on Alpha Centauri and Mars) who've gotten the least amount of attention! We don't even know who their head of state or government, or what their legislature is. Has any ST story ever been set on Tellar? Inquiring minds want to know!
Conclusion: All in all, a really good, enjoyable effort! Looking forward to the next one!
I could have done without it. I did enjoy the Vukcan storyline. I really like the characters of T'Rama and Skon. 
If and when Dax makes it to Mak'Relle Dur (by either route, death or adulthood) its collected experiences are going to be an invaluable resource. I hope the Trill by that point are consenting to allow aliens access to the memory banks. I'd love to think in millennia to come of strange alien beings journeying to Trill and consulting the Annuated about the story of the Federation. Maybe long after the Federation has passed.