Finished the book last week and have been meaning to write up a review. It's probably no secret that I found The Good That Men Do ludicrous, and as such considered Kobayashi Maru to be make or break when it comes to the future of ENT fiction. It didn't exactly break... but it came nowhere near make, unfortunately. Insofar as KM had bipartite plots that was essentially two books in one, I'd say I liked--with reservations--one book, and didn't like the other.
The first book, centered around Archer and following the political and military machinations in the lead up to the Romulan, held my interest with sufficient amounts of intrigue and brisk pacing, even though most of the latter had more to do with the small, numerous chapters than the plot per se. I like that it flitted about a numbers of settings--Enterprise, Columbia, Earth (government, media and civilian), Horizon, Kobayashi Maru--to try and create a broad impression of how the path to war unfolded and how various people and political entities reacted to it. The opening salvoes of this conflict are not simple--nor should they be, considering that we have an opponent best known for guile than direct conflict--and the largess of the canvas across which it plays out helps illuminate the intricate sequences of moves and countermoves.
That said, however, I didn't think the scope was large enough, at least in terms of who was represented. Almost all perspectives in this portion of the book are human, and the imbalance creates a rather skewered picture of local politics and what motivates the other groups involved. The council scenes, in particular, are far too simplistic in that Samuels and al-Raschid, time and time again, appear to be the only sane and well-intentioned people in the room, trying to negotiate a fragile alliance of bumptious, pig-headed and paranoid aliens. So uni-directional is the protrayal here than one almost wonders why humanity bothers with this Coalition at all, when they spend most of their time appeasing the apparent whims of their insufferable allies. A few scenes written from the perspective of the Andorians, the Tellerites, the Draxlax(ians?) would have gone a long way towards combatting this human-centric and nigh-Manichean portrayal of the Coalition.
Related to this is the conceptual gap between Our Heroes and Starfleet Command. Seen from the perspective of Archer or Hernandez, Starfleet Command comes across as stubbornly ignorant, callous and mercenary in their motives. This is all the stranger in that I think a good case could be made for Starfleet's caution, given that humanity was embroiled in a manufactured conflict with the Xindi barely a year ago; it's not Starfleet's fault that Our Heroes' hunches always turn out correct, or that they have access to evidence that Archer and his conspirators are actively concealing from Starfleet. A few scenes from Command's perspective would have helped put their actions in context beyond Archer's righteous indignation.
Another scene I found puzzling is Columbia at Draylax. The ship is on it's way to Draylax, responding to the distress signal, when Admiral Someone comes onscreen and tells Hernandez that she has to defending the Draylaxians--which she was doing anyway--because it has a mutual defence treaty with Alpha Centauri and Draylax is a potential coalition partner. Suddenly everybody is bitching that they're being sacrificed for political expediency. Er, what? Never mind that they are potential allies or that you're helping uphold treaties (the analogy to the First World War here is somewhat spurious, since the Romulans are against everybody)--innocent people are in danger, and you don't want to help because there might be a political upshot to it? One gets the impression that some of the Columbia crew would have preferred to just sit on the outskirts of the system and watch if the battle had proved too daunting. You people call yourselves Starfleet officers? We're a far cry away from Rachel Garrett, that's for sure.
Another problem in both this and the other part of the book was language. The book is chok full of alien terminology; scenes written from Klingon or Romulan perspectives abound with italicized terms whose meaning one might guess at from context. Most of the time this is possible, but I really wish this book had carried a glossary, particularly for Romulan culture which is so radically different from what has been seen onscreen since the authors opted for a depiction of Romulans more aligned with that old Rihannsu series.
If the first book was largely interesting despite the aforementioned problems of persective, the second book--Charles '003' Tucker and his amazing friends--drags the entirety of the novel down. If I was expecting KM to make some motions towards explaining some of the absurdities and patching up the gaping plotholes of TGTMD, I would be disappointed. On the other hand, I thought that might actually have the benefit of not getting this particular novel mired in the inexplicable, Byzantine schemes of its predecessors--that one might start from a ridiculous premise, but what unfolds from there would still work in and of itself. Tucker as spy has already been established, however nonsensically, so a reader here doesn't have to worry about justifying it. Unfortunately, despite a good start, this Tucker storyline likewise degenerates into the absurd.
At first, things seemed to be going logical enough. I was pleased that Tucker had actually been discovered and was being used to feed misinformation back to the Coalition; when a person with zero intelligence experience is parachute-dropped into this kind of cloak and dagger world, my expectation would be that he'll soon be dead or he'll get played, which is what happens here. But from here we are soon entangled into another series of improbable events and impossible escapes, as Valdore decides to send the man he knows is a spy on a critical mission with only one chaperone. This reflects of pattern of thoroughly incompetent villains who cannot have possibly have gotten into the positions they are in now if they've always been this inept.
One of the near escapes Tucker pulls off is being rescued by T'Pol and Reed seconds before Terix blows him into his constituent atoms. This, apparently because T'Pol had a vision of him in danger back towards the beginning of the book. So not only does this super-duper psychic link traverse the better part of a quadrant, but it can also see the future. I hope we eventually get an explanation for what's going on between T'Pol and Tucker, like a mental version of quantum entanglement or something, because right now her psychic powers approach the magical (and magical plot device). As a testament to how the idiocy of the Tucker storyline infects everything it touches, T'Pol, on the basis of a bad dream that could be nothing more than bad plomeek soup that day, decides she'll abandon her post, steal a shuttlepod and go wandering about deep in enemy territory in the hope of bumping into a person who, for all she knows, is already dead. Oh, and Reed finds out and decides to tag along, likewise abandoning his post even as the stormclouds of war begin to gather, because he feels guilty over placing Tucker in this situation to begin with (as well he should, coming up with that nonsense and then presenting it to an emotionally vulnerable man), but two acts of lunacy do not make a right. So T'Pol and Reed manage to miss out on most of the incipient conflict brewing amonst the major spacefaring powers... and for what? They save Tucker's bacon, he promptly proceeds to throw a hissy fit because he's worried about his cover (how do you maintain your cover when you're dead, you ungrateful asshole?), then, because whining immaturity is such a turn-on, a quickie in the shuttlepod and they just as soon part ways, Tucker deciding that his inept performance as a spy is just too valuable to face the fact that he ought to return home. All of those crimes, favours called in, and risks, just for a few hours of interaction--from a reader's perspective, entirely unsatisfying. And it makes Archer look like a complete buffoon in the process, from his senior officers conspiring against him and absconding without him even realizing it until something like a day later, so his receiving his wayward officers with hugs and kisses--not even a slap on the wrist for their deceit and dereliction of duty.
Star Trek is, admitedly, action/adventure; I neither expect nor ask for strict realism, and those kinds of close shaves are a staple of genre. And there are some characters for which a tendency towards blind luck is an endearing characteristic, à la Han Solo. But it doesn't work for a bumbling, juvenile character like Tucker, and the suspension of disbelief that his misadventures demand goes too far beyond the bounds of what can reasonably be expected for the genre--something well demonstrated by his climatic scene. At this point, I'm looking at any chapter that involves Tucker with a rather jaundiced perspective, it's true; but I feel like dashing my head against a wall when Sopek rescues him for no apparent reason, then, on demonstrating his ill-intentions towards Enterprise and the Coalition, decides that Tucker is perfectly fine on the bridge of his starship--rather than a brig, or even a non-critical area like a cargo bay--not standing off to the side, where he could do nothing but watch, but rather sitting at a console--not a console that's been disabled, but one that's active because it's non-essential and surely a proficient engineer couldn't do any harm from there--and who has a guard, not standing next to him but clear across the bridge where he can't see what Tucker is doing (or else thinks it's fine for Tucker to be looking over the ship's systems in the middle of a crisis) and too far away to stop him with any expediency. It's absolutely mind-numbing. We're supposed to believe that Sopek is playing a three-way spy game between the V'Shar, Valdore and the terrorist cell, but apparently he doesn't have two neurons to rub against each other. Of course, Tucker manages to use his console to get a message out to the Enterprise, and on being discovered, then manages to leap across a bridge full of armed Romulans, pusher the navigator aside, steer the warbird into a nearby asteroid before anybody can stop him or reverse what he's done, not only survives the crash but wakes up before anybody else, allowing him to shoot his way off the ship and into an escape pod while carrying Sopek's unconscious form. When the fuck did 'Trip' Tucker become Jack Bauer, precisely? I hope--though I know it'll never be the case--that the gravimetric mine towards which he is spiralling will be the death of him, because honestly I don't think I can take another episode of super agent Tucker.
I can't help but think, in 'that' discussion we've been having lately, of the complaint about a living/dead character's potential continued participation in the book line requiring contrived scenarios. Hello! What's this tripe if not contrived? Meanwhile, in order to make room for the continued adventures of Tucker, superstar, the rest of the cast other than Archer winds up taking a backseat. T'Pol and Reed are in the book only to the extent that they serve to facilitate the Tucker storyline; Phlox has a few good scenes, but is largely secondary; and Mayweather and Sato are practically non-entities, with only a few bones thrown their way. Part of the two latter characters' lack of involvement must be the fact that they are outside the conspiracy that has essentially hijacked the post-series ENT line.
As a final bit of criticism, I would also mention that there are a few scenes in the book that seem to go nowhere. V'Shar T'Pol vs. the mutants, although ironically the most thrilling sequence in the book, never gets any follow-up. Then there's Mayweather's esrtwhile girlfriend, who pops up for a pointless scene just to get outscooped later on in the book. Perhaps this are meant to be plot points that will get pick up on later books--Mayweather, in particular, demands more development given what happened to his family--but as they stand, they're empty diversions in a book already of considerable length. I do hope those mutants get brought up again, because I found that sequence interesting, but I don't think I'll be around to find out.
Why? Because, ultimately, looking towards the Romulan War, I don't think I'll be picking it up. Part of the reason is that I find the move towards trade paperbacks even for regular novels damnably mercenary and not really something I want to support, but mostly because I don't think the ENT Relaunch books so far justify the expense. KM was better than TGTMD, but is unfortunately afflicted by the same absurdities of plot and favouritism in characters, and if that's how future novels are going to be, then I see no reason to persist in the hopes of some kind of improvement.
Fictitiously yours, Trent Roman
