Full Circle Review Thread (Spoilers)
- Thread starter Kirsten Beyer
- Start date
Whoa there Sparky! I never called the authors self-serving liars. I know that given an opportunity to write a book they're going to write it within the boundaries that the editors have set. In the case of Voyager Janeway is dead. That's the rule and you write around it. Even if you think it's a bad idea you look for ways to make something good of it. You don't run around saying "It sucks that Janeway dies" even if that's what you think. You take what you're given and make the best of it.
That's called being a professional and doing your damn job and for that reason I don't hold a personal grudge against any of the writers. If in return, writers can stop making assumptions about every fan who is mad about that decision that would be splendid.
Kim, you are a moderator on this site. I would expect better of you than this kind of disingenuous bullshit.
The thing is I hadn't posted much in this thread until recently so it threw me off that you were making an assumption based on... beats me!
You've been posting to the Lit board expressing your opinion about the death of Janeway since January of 2008. 2008. And, over fourteen months, you've posted to at least eleven separate TrekLit threads either dedicated to this discussion, or redirected by individuals intent on continuing the discussion. As for this particular thread... if you've only started posted "recently" (actually, nine days ago), then you presumably read the earilest posts recently as well -- more recently than many others, and thus that information should be fresher in your mind. (Unless, of course, you want to admit to posting to the thread without reading it first.)
And you're now going to sit there and claim that you are at a complete loss as to what anyone else has been saying about how the current status came about? Please do not insult me.
I read it.
Well, that story explained why 8472 wouldn't be reappearing again, at least if I remember correctly. So I was confused that you mentioned that.
To be precise,
the novel explained why 8472 didn't appear after "In the Flesh," but left open the option that they might someday potentially return.
I just finished the book. I have to admit I hated the first part of the story. The B'Elanna/Miral story never held much interest for me and so I was dissapointed when the first half of the book was only about that. The way the storyline is setup it looks like it's going to continue in a sequel. I just hope it won't be as prominant again. That being that I really, really like everything that came after that storyline. I enjoyed the characters and the story. I could have done with less jumping from one point in time to another but all in all the book worked. It's going to be interesting to see how the storyline works in future books. There are definitley many possibilities.
Ok, cool. Thanks for the clarification. It would...
...still be difficult, though, right? Because multiple copies of them would keep coming back, every time the universe they were in diverged? So I would think it'd be unlikely.
^Yeah, the idea was that it would be unlikely, but I didn't want to close the door irreversibly, because you never know when someone might come up with a good idea for bringing them back.
Kim, you are a moderator on this site. I would expect better of you than this kind of disingenuous bullshit.
The thing is I hadn't posted much in this thread until recently so it threw me off that you were making an assumption based on... beats me!
You've been posting to the Lit board expressing your opinion about the death of Janeway since January of 2008. 2008. And, over fourteen months, you've posted to at least eleven separate TrekLit threads either dedicated to this discussion, or redirected by individuals intent on continuing the discussion. As for this particular thread... if you've only started posted "recently" (actually, nine days ago), then you presumably read the earilest posts recently as well -- more recently than many others, and thus that information should be fresher in your mind. (Unless, of course, you want to admit to posting to the thread without reading it first.)
And you're now going to sit there and claim that you are at a complete loss as to what anyone else has been saying about how the current status came about? Please do not insult me.
Again I've made no secret of how I jeel about this topic. What gets to me is the last few posts by writers like you who have gotten personal. If you don't agree with something I said then debate it logically. If you have a personal problem with me or any other poster you send a pm. Don't grandstand in the thread about how those "awful Janeway fans (and one of them is a mod!) are calling us names" and make assumptions about where they're coming from. If you don't know, ask. If you think you know and something upsets you then ask anyway. There's a chance you could be wrong.
I have made every effort not to let my anger over the situation become personal against Ms. Beyer or any other writer. Yes, I think it was a stupid call. I probably always will. I'm angry at the decision, not the people. Does that make sense to you?
^ ^ Personally, I have no problem with you sharing your opinion - in the proper thread. I've been avoiding all the other Janeway threads because they've become quite circular. THIS thread is a review of Kirsten's book.
Full Circle.
The book you have repeatedly and quite emphatically said you will not read. How can you partake in a discussion of a book you have not read?
Full Circle.
The book you have repeatedly and quite emphatically said you will not read. How can you partake in a discussion of a book you have not read?
Yes, very good question. Please do tell Kimc, if not, don't let the door hit you on the arse when you leave.
Just thought I'd say, I really am looking forward to getting Full Circle when it arrives on the shelves over here.
As for the Torres/Miral plot, which season seven episodes does that first feature in?
Prophecy
Got Full Circle on Wednesday, finished it this morning. Short version: I'm happy.
Very long version, from my blog:
Very long version, from my blog:
You could make a checklist of all the things this book has to accomplish.
As I've mentioned in the past, I tend to think of Voyager as a series of lost opportunities. All that groundwork laid in several Next Generation and Deep Space Nine episodes to create the opportunity for conflict between Maquis and Starfleet as Voyager struggles to survive far from home... pretty much ignored after a few episodes. Even Voyager's desperate position was often forgotten, as the crew had wacky hijinks on the holodeck, and new shuttles magically replaced all the shuttles destroyed over the years.
Then the series ended and everything the show was still about -- that is, getting home -- was resolved. It was time for a bold new rethink of what Voyager after Endgame could be about. Instead, we got Homecoming and The Farther Shore, which shuffled a couple of characters offstage as quickly as possible, showed everyone settling back in without much trouble, and went back to Voyager's last season for story ideas, doing yet another Borg crisis and the completely unthought-out holorevolution storyline. Throw in B'Elanna going nuts, Chakotay having magical adventures, and the crew getting a new counselor whose method of counseling is to get everyone together for a great big crying jag, and you've got a soggy spiritual mess of a lost opportunity.
And then there were no more relaunch novels for a few years. Golden was busy writing other books, and her editor, John Ordover, left Pocket. Handing Voyager over to a new editor and writer meant that it would take some time to rethink where the books should be going, and that took time. Meanwhile, other complicating factors came along: the book schedule was cut back, continuity between novel series was increasing, some big status quo-changing plans were in the works, and Voyager characters were appearing in other books. And Janeway died.
Full Circle is a novel of two halves: before Janeway dies, and after. There's an emotionally wrenching prologue in which Chakotay waits for Janeway to arrive for a long-planned dinner to mark the next stage of their relationship -- but she doesn't show up. Instead, her ex-fiance Mark Johnson arrives to tell him that Janeway's dead. After that, the first chapter moves back in time to a point shortly after Golden's novels. Much of the first half of the book wraps up her plotlines. Some things are done quickly and neatly; Astall, the new counselor, is replaced by Hugh Cambridge, who has a key role in the book that simply could not be performed by the hyperemotional Astall. The B'Elanna and Miral storyline, on the other hand, expands into an action-packed chase through Klingon space that could have been a novel in its own right. Meanwhile, we get glimpses into Starfleet's plans for Voyager and its crew through some new characters: Captain Afsarah Eden and Admiral Willem Batiste. Throughout all this, all of the Voyager regulars who returned to the Alpha Quadrant have a part to play.
Then Janeway dies. We don't see a recreation of what happens in Before Dishonor; instead, we see how this affects everyone left behind. And before the healing is done, Destiny's Borg invasion makes things worse. The ship is badly damaged, some people are killed or badly injured, and Seven finds herself in a strange new position again -- the Caeliar have removed her Borg implants and left her fully human, but they haven't taken her wherever the other former Borg and Caeliar have gone. And the person she had most depended on to help her find her way is dead.
Where much of the book's first half focuses on B'Elanna Torres and Tom Paris, Chakotay and Seven get much of the attention in the latter half, as the two people most damaged by their losses. Meanwhile, Starfleet's plans for Voyager -- equipping it with slipstream drive and sending it back to the Delta Quadrant with a fleet of slipstream ships to explore, to reestablish contact with friendly Delta Quadrant civilizations, and to ensure that the Borg threat really is gone -- continue to move forward. But how many of Voyager's key crew will go? And what happened to B'Elanna and Miral, whose names appear in a list of confirmed deaths in A Singular Destiny?
I've criticized Golden's Voyager relaunch novels for being driven by emotion; Full Circle is an emotional roller coaster ride, especially Chakotay's and Seven's very different descents into despair. But it's not cheap emotion. It's believable, raw, and real, and comes from a story that shows every sign of being composed with intelligence and thought rather than just gushers of feeling. That's where Cambridge comes in. Astall would have been utterly useless at helping Chakotay make sense of his problems. Cambridge helps Chakotay rebuild himself, to become once again the man who was Voyager's captain. But that's not where his future lies.
We've continued to learn more about Eden and Batiste through the novel, and it's not too surprising that Eden is to be Voyager's captain on its new journey. What is surprising is a revelation about Eden late in the book: she's not human, she doesn't know where she's from, but she recognized something from Voyager's files, and she's wondering if Voyager's departure from its home will lead her to her own. She's joined in her new mission by a few familiar faces in new roles.
But Chakotay and Seven are still on Earth, with their own new journeys. And it's probably just my shipper tendencies, but I could see this leading to a post-J/C pairing of C/7 that actually makes a degree of sense for these characters in their new lives. Not that Beyer is necessarily going there, but it could work better here than it did in Voyager's seventh season.
In other times, Full Circle might have been published as two or three separate books. It's a big book, but one that's compelling and well-written enough that I blazed through it. It does everything it needed to do: it ties off loose ends, it sets the stage for new stories, it tells a couple of complete stories of its own. And it pays tribute to Kathryn Janeway. It's a book for Voyager fans, because it respects the show's characters, and for its detractors, because it makes those characters more real and believable. It's a book that Voyager fans really should read, regardless of whether they like or dislike the idea of killing off Janeway, because it's a hell of a story. If there exists a Voyager fan who is centered exclusively on Janeway and actively dislikes every other character, that person might safely skip this book. Likewise anyone who insists it's not Voyager if Kes and Neelix aren't in it. But fans of the Janeway/Chakotay relationship should find this a powerful and devastating story, worth reading even if that relationship no longer has a future. So too should readers who like action rather than relationships, because there's a good amount of that, as well. Most importantly, despite so much happening in this book, it ends leaving the reader wanting to know what comes next. It's good to know that the follow-up is only a few months away, and that it's by Beyer, too.
- It has to resolve unfinished plot threads from Christie Golden's post-Endgame novels.
- It has to make up for a few years without any post-Endgame novels.
- It has to deal with what's happened to some of the Voyager characters in the Next Generation and Titan novels: Tuvok joining the Titan crew, Janeway being killed by the Borg.
- It has to deal with the events of the Destiny trilogy, and how the end of the Borg affects Seven of Nine.
- It has to establish a new direction for the Voyager novel line.
- Oh, and, ideally, it should be a hell of a read.
As I've mentioned in the past, I tend to think of Voyager as a series of lost opportunities. All that groundwork laid in several Next Generation and Deep Space Nine episodes to create the opportunity for conflict between Maquis and Starfleet as Voyager struggles to survive far from home... pretty much ignored after a few episodes. Even Voyager's desperate position was often forgotten, as the crew had wacky hijinks on the holodeck, and new shuttles magically replaced all the shuttles destroyed over the years.
Then the series ended and everything the show was still about -- that is, getting home -- was resolved. It was time for a bold new rethink of what Voyager after Endgame could be about. Instead, we got Homecoming and The Farther Shore, which shuffled a couple of characters offstage as quickly as possible, showed everyone settling back in without much trouble, and went back to Voyager's last season for story ideas, doing yet another Borg crisis and the completely unthought-out holorevolution storyline. Throw in B'Elanna going nuts, Chakotay having magical adventures, and the crew getting a new counselor whose method of counseling is to get everyone together for a great big crying jag, and you've got a soggy spiritual mess of a lost opportunity.
And then there were no more relaunch novels for a few years. Golden was busy writing other books, and her editor, John Ordover, left Pocket. Handing Voyager over to a new editor and writer meant that it would take some time to rethink where the books should be going, and that took time. Meanwhile, other complicating factors came along: the book schedule was cut back, continuity between novel series was increasing, some big status quo-changing plans were in the works, and Voyager characters were appearing in other books. And Janeway died.
Full Circle is a novel of two halves: before Janeway dies, and after. There's an emotionally wrenching prologue in which Chakotay waits for Janeway to arrive for a long-planned dinner to mark the next stage of their relationship -- but she doesn't show up. Instead, her ex-fiance Mark Johnson arrives to tell him that Janeway's dead. After that, the first chapter moves back in time to a point shortly after Golden's novels. Much of the first half of the book wraps up her plotlines. Some things are done quickly and neatly; Astall, the new counselor, is replaced by Hugh Cambridge, who has a key role in the book that simply could not be performed by the hyperemotional Astall. The B'Elanna and Miral storyline, on the other hand, expands into an action-packed chase through Klingon space that could have been a novel in its own right. Meanwhile, we get glimpses into Starfleet's plans for Voyager and its crew through some new characters: Captain Afsarah Eden and Admiral Willem Batiste. Throughout all this, all of the Voyager regulars who returned to the Alpha Quadrant have a part to play.
Then Janeway dies. We don't see a recreation of what happens in Before Dishonor; instead, we see how this affects everyone left behind. And before the healing is done, Destiny's Borg invasion makes things worse. The ship is badly damaged, some people are killed or badly injured, and Seven finds herself in a strange new position again -- the Caeliar have removed her Borg implants and left her fully human, but they haven't taken her wherever the other former Borg and Caeliar have gone. And the person she had most depended on to help her find her way is dead.
Where much of the book's first half focuses on B'Elanna Torres and Tom Paris, Chakotay and Seven get much of the attention in the latter half, as the two people most damaged by their losses. Meanwhile, Starfleet's plans for Voyager -- equipping it with slipstream drive and sending it back to the Delta Quadrant with a fleet of slipstream ships to explore, to reestablish contact with friendly Delta Quadrant civilizations, and to ensure that the Borg threat really is gone -- continue to move forward. But how many of Voyager's key crew will go? And what happened to B'Elanna and Miral, whose names appear in a list of confirmed deaths in A Singular Destiny?
I've criticized Golden's Voyager relaunch novels for being driven by emotion; Full Circle is an emotional roller coaster ride, especially Chakotay's and Seven's very different descents into despair. But it's not cheap emotion. It's believable, raw, and real, and comes from a story that shows every sign of being composed with intelligence and thought rather than just gushers of feeling. That's where Cambridge comes in. Astall would have been utterly useless at helping Chakotay make sense of his problems. Cambridge helps Chakotay rebuild himself, to become once again the man who was Voyager's captain. But that's not where his future lies.
We've continued to learn more about Eden and Batiste through the novel, and it's not too surprising that Eden is to be Voyager's captain on its new journey. What is surprising is a revelation about Eden late in the book: she's not human, she doesn't know where she's from, but she recognized something from Voyager's files, and she's wondering if Voyager's departure from its home will lead her to her own. She's joined in her new mission by a few familiar faces in new roles.
But Chakotay and Seven are still on Earth, with their own new journeys. And it's probably just my shipper tendencies, but I could see this leading to a post-J/C pairing of C/7 that actually makes a degree of sense for these characters in their new lives. Not that Beyer is necessarily going there, but it could work better here than it did in Voyager's seventh season.
In other times, Full Circle might have been published as two or three separate books. It's a big book, but one that's compelling and well-written enough that I blazed through it. It does everything it needed to do: it ties off loose ends, it sets the stage for new stories, it tells a couple of complete stories of its own. And it pays tribute to Kathryn Janeway. It's a book for Voyager fans, because it respects the show's characters, and for its detractors, because it makes those characters more real and believable. It's a book that Voyager fans really should read, regardless of whether they like or dislike the idea of killing off Janeway, because it's a hell of a story. If there exists a Voyager fan who is centered exclusively on Janeway and actively dislikes every other character, that person might safely skip this book. Likewise anyone who insists it's not Voyager if Kes and Neelix aren't in it. But fans of the Janeway/Chakotay relationship should find this a powerful and devastating story, worth reading even if that relationship no longer has a future. So too should readers who like action rather than relationships, because there's a good amount of that, as well. Most importantly, despite so much happening in this book, it ends leaving the reader wanting to know what comes next. It's good to know that the follow-up is only a few months away, and that it's by Beyer, too.
Dimesdan, I ordered the book from Amazon UK earlier this week - on the site it says to expect 1-3 weeks for delivery, but I received it in only a few days, so it looks like they have them in stock.
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Full-Circle...=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1239392189&sr=8-1
Just started Full Circle this morning and loving it so far. I've always liked B'Elanna though I'm not too fond of the prophecy thing. It's still interesting enough for me to want to know what happens.
I do agree that Harry's not getting enough attention so far. I suppose his reasons for breaking up with Libby do make sense and hope he finds the right person for him.
Not going to say too much more since I'm only up to page 66. Just that so far Full Circle looks like a great continuation of the series and I'm looking forward to the rest of the book.
Oh, and the jumping around in time doesn't seem too bad, but then I've reaad another even longer novel that sometimes contained multiple time and POV shifts per chapter. If I got through that without too much confusion and backtracking to remind myself of things then I think I can manage Full Circle.
No, the one I'm thinking of isn't Star Trek.
I do agree that Harry's not getting enough attention so far. I suppose his reasons for breaking up with Libby do make sense and hope he finds the right person for him.
Not going to say too much more since I'm only up to page 66. Just that so far Full Circle looks like a great continuation of the series and I'm looking forward to the rest of the book.
Oh, and the jumping around in time doesn't seem too bad, but then I've reaad another even longer novel that sometimes contained multiple time and POV shifts per chapter. If I got through that without too much confusion and backtracking to remind myself of things then I think I can manage Full Circle.
No, the one I'm thinking of isn't Star Trek.
Lately...in the other Janeway/poll thread. For the past eight months or so...name a thread on this topic. But if this is the first theory on the topic you personally have offered I do apologize for lumping you in with everyone else who is angry about this choice and has no intention of reading FC and has decided that the only way this could ever have happened was because...well, let's not go there.
That's very nice to hear. And I, for one, have made no assumptions about any fan who is displeased with the decision beyond that they probably won't be reading my books.
And I think I've stated repeatedly that I totally understand that choice and have no problem with it or anyone who feels this way.
How did we get from you and what you said to "those awful Janeway fans?" No fans of Trek are awful. None. At least not as far as I'm concerned.
Of course it makes sense. But it's a little hard to separate words like asinine and stupid from the people connected to the decision. Though I know you aren't arguing it here, I believe you have said elsewhere that whether you made the decision (in this case, Margaret) or you executed the decision (in this case, me and Peter) you have to share the responsibility so I sort of feel those words coming toward me.
If I'm wrong about that, I do apologize. I have no issue with you and wish you nothing beyond peace and long life.
Short reply: Woo-hoo!!!
Steve,
This was all so great to hear. Every time I think about that checklist, which reads like you stole it from my notes, I get tired. I'm pleased that the fact that some threads were resolved quickly and others were expanded upon worked for you. That's been tough for some readers.
Your previous reviews and comments have struck me in such a way that I can't help but feel you are a tough reader. I hoped the book would work for you but did not anticipate that your response would be so positive.
God knows, I'll take it.
And now...I am happy.
Wait... They killed Janeway????
Aaron McGuire
Aaron McGuire
Your previous reviews and comments have struck me in such a way that I can't help but feel you are a tough reader. I hoped the book would work for you but did not anticipate that your response would be so positive.
God knows, I'll take it.
And now...I am happy.
Glad you're happy! I just hope some of the diehard Janeway fans relent and give the book a chance.
There's a difference between having an opinion about an editorial decision to kill a Trek captain and having an opinion about a book that appears after that decision has been made. The fact I need to explain that to you doesn't speak well for your intelligence.
