"What did you get for Halloween, Jean-Luc Picard?"
Hands up who likes "The Devil's Heart?"
- Thread starter Gingerbread Demon
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Oh, possibly. I either didn't realize or had forgotten that there was no direct contact before "The Last Outpost". I had got the impression from "Encounter at Farpoint" that the Federation and the Ferengi were already familiar with each other.
But then, we also know from ENT that humans encountered the Ferengi long before "The Last Outpost" too. Granted, the Andorian/Ferengi contact described in the book was more than just "lone Ferengi ship encounters lone Andorian ship in deep space"... but maybe the Ferengi who, um, "made contact" with Andor didn't identify themselves, and it's only later that historians associated the Ferengi with that old encounter? The incident wasn't depicted in the book; rather, Picard told Troi about it in the "present" day.
All that said, I guess there were a couple other historical tidbits that I guess I'm not sure how well fit with canon or the novelverse. I'm not sure if it's necessary, but I'll spoiler-code them just in case:
- Romulans attacked Andor prior to the Ferengi contact mentioned above.
- Kessec founded the "First Empire" with the help of the Heart. The founding of the Klingon Empire is usually attributed to Kahless, so this could be a contradiction, but maybe Kahless's empire was limited to just Qo'nos, and Kessec took it to the stars, or something? Anyhow, I'm not sure how well this fits with either Kahless or the early Klingon history from Art of the Impossible.
- Kessec founded the "First Empire" with the help of the Heart. The founding of the Klingon Empire is usually attributed to Kahless, so this could be a contradiction, but maybe Kahless's empire was limited to just Qo'nos, and Kessec took it to the stars, or something? Anyhow, I'm not sure how well this fits with either Kahless or the early Klingon history from Art of the Impossible.
Thank you for that information; I didn't know that! And when I went to look up that city on Wikipedia, I learned that the Latin name for the city of Konya is... Iconium! So I guess we know where that "Vulcan" term comes from, and I guess the similarity in the names wasn't such a grand coincidence after all!I picked Rennan's last name based on a city in Turkey, as sort of a wordplay on "Troi" as a Betazoid surname.- I'm sure this is just a grand coincidence, but the Heart is called Ko N'ya in Vulcan, which of course is very similar to Rennan Konya's last name. Perhaps Picard should be keeping a closer eye on him!
Touché!
The UFP had heard of the Ferengi, and had interacted with worlds that had dealt with them. But "The Last Outpost" made it explicit that they'd never encountered the Ferengi face-to-face before.
.
Maybe. I don't recall the specifics from the book.
M
marlboro
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I read this one last night. Very good. In Voyages of Imagination, Carmen Carter mentioned that she missed a lot of deadlines while working on this book, and I can see why - there is a lot going on here. As others have mentioned, it really does have an epic feel. She could have doubled the length of the "dreaming" historical sequences and I don't think I would have become bored.
Yep.
(Spoilers for anyone who hasn't read this book)
Part of the brilliance of the book is that, for most of it, the reader thinks they are reading a rehash of Frodo's journey to Mount Doom. In the end, you find out that the motives of the "villains" were a lot more noble than we we assumed.
About the cover: Yeah, I had a chuckle over the way the artist depicted the stone. I'm not really crazy about the cover, or the title for that matter. With the gem having such a bloody history, I think the book needed a cover that reflected that. I do give them credit for painting 4 new characters though. I assumed that the guy on the bottom left was an UnDiWahn and not a Klingon. That doesn't explain why the other two males don't resemble him though since all three would be of Iconian descent.
On Ferengi/Federation first contact: is there anything that gets ignored more than that line in The Last Outpost? The editor of this book, David Stern, made a similar mistake in one of his own books, Children of Kings.
lol
Dr. Crusher after being repeatedly stood up by Picard: "After all, who am I to come between a man and his rock?”
Neat.
Some nitpicks:
- Worf was a real dick here. Particularly to Data. He's always been surly, but he goes too far here. I can't see Data, and especially Riker, letting him get away with some of his comments.
- The Enterprise crew are a bunch of degenerate gamblers! There were so many references to poker in the first quarter of the book that I'm surprised that the book didn't end with them hocking the Devil's Heart to cover their gambling losses.
- The action scenes were too short. They weren't bad, by any means, but they were over too quickly.
Final verdict: This is a good one. Carmen Carter only did three solo Trek books, and I think she saved her best for last. It's a shame that the writing process didn't go smoother, because I think she was a writer with a lot of potential.
Yep.
(Spoilers for anyone who hasn't read this book)
Part of the brilliance of the book is that, for most of it, the reader thinks they are reading a rehash of Frodo's journey to Mount Doom. In the end, you find out that the motives of the "villains" were a lot more noble than we we assumed.
Whenever these types of threads come up, I always say "I'll have to reread that"... and then I don't. But I had wanted to reread this one for a while now anyway, so I decided to go for it, and I reread it this weekend.
And yes, in my opinion, it does hold up!), but the good side of that is that it had been so long since I had originally read it, that I only remembered a very vague outline of the plot, so reading it now was pretty much like reading it new, anyway!
Some random thoughts:
- There didn't seem to be anything in the book that seriously contradicted later canon, although there was a reference to the historical first contact between Andorians and Ferengi, which may contradict the history of Ferengi spaceflight established in "Little Green Men".
- I don't think there was anything that conflicts with the current novelverse, either, with the usual exception of the Andorian genders, which we can usually handwave anyway. Actually, now that I think about it, in the Andorian historical section, there was a reference to a woman's "consort", and it was kind of implied he was the only spouse, so I guess this would contradict "Data's Day"... which aired a couple of years before the book's release.
- I really enjoy books that give us glimpses into the history of the Star Trek universe!
- I liked the prose style used here a great deal, and I also liked the "dreams within dreams" structure the author occasionally used.
- The resolution seemed to happen a bit too quickly, but it was set up well, and nothing feels like it was just pulled out of thin air or anything.
- I was kind of struck this time with the similarities between the Heart and the One Ring, which I wouldn't have known about when I first read the book.
- The three planets the Iconians fled to are all spelled differently in the book than their "official" spelling (assuming what's on MA is the "official" spelling): Ikkabar vs. Iccobar, DiWahn vs. Dewan, and Dynasia vs. Dinasia. However, since there was no MA back then, and this book predates the release of the first edition of the ST Encyclopedia, I'm willing to cut it some slack!
- On that note... I would have sort of assumed from "Contagion" that the Iconians fled to a larger number of planets, and these three were just the ones close enough that the Federation would have encountered them and been able to note the similarity of the languages, but the book stipulates the Iconians fled to ONLY these three planets. (And the descendants were all aware of their Iconian heritage, which makes it seem a bit odd that the Iconians were seen as mysterious in "Contagion".)
- I'm sure this is just a grand coincidence, but the Heart is called Ko N'ya in Vulcan, which of course is very similar to Rennan Konya's last name. Perhaps Picard should be keeping a closer eye on him!
- I kind of wonder who the people on the cover are supposed to be. Based on the glow around all their heads, I'm guessing they're all supposed to be past Gem Bearers. So, the Klingon would then be Kessec, but all the others look too... human. Perhaps the woman on the upper right is Halaylah, since I don't recall a description being provided for her (although I might just not remember it), but I'm really not sure about the others.
- Speaking of the cover, it's kind of funny that the cover artist drew the Heart based on Picard's speculation on what Crusher might have expected the Heart to look like ("A faceted ruby the size of a watermelon"), rather than what the Heart *actually* looked like: an unassuming rock.
So, yes, I still enjoy this book even now. I'm not sure yet whether I'd rate it "Outstanding" or "Above Average" if this was one of our "standard" voting threads... but since it's not, I don't have to make the decision!
About the cover: Yeah, I had a chuckle over the way the artist depicted the stone. I'm not really crazy about the cover, or the title for that matter. With the gem having such a bloody history, I think the book needed a cover that reflected that. I do give them credit for painting 4 new characters though. I assumed that the guy on the bottom left was an UnDiWahn and not a Klingon. That doesn't explain why the other two males don't resemble him though since all three would be of Iconian descent.
On Ferengi/Federation first contact: is there anything that gets ignored more than that line in The Last Outpost? The editor of this book, David Stern, made a similar mistake in one of his own books, Children of Kings.
lol
Dr. Crusher after being repeatedly stood up by Picard: "After all, who am I to come between a man and his rock?”
Neat.
Some nitpicks:
- Worf was a real dick here. Particularly to Data. He's always been surly, but he goes too far here. I can't see Data, and especially Riker, letting him get away with some of his comments.
- The Enterprise crew are a bunch of degenerate gamblers! There were so many references to poker in the first quarter of the book that I'm surprised that the book didn't end with them hocking the Devil's Heart to cover their gambling losses.
- The action scenes were too short. They weren't bad, by any means, but they were over too quickly.
Final verdict: This is a good one. Carmen Carter only did three solo Trek books, and I think she saved her best for last. It's a shame that the writing process didn't go smoother, because I think she was a writer with a lot of potential.
Not really a mistake, since TCoK was written around the time that the Bad Robot movie was about to come out, and it wasn't clear which timeline(s) Pocket would be doing books about going forward, so TCoK was written to be sort of in its own independent timeline that didn't quite fit with either Prime or Kelvin (there's an author's note about it at the end, saying basically that if there could be two Trek timelines, there could easily be more).
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