Open Secrets, very open spoliers- you're warned

[wew]

As I noted in a non-spoiler thread, I really enjoyed Open Secrets.

The action starts off with an prologue discussing a major Klingon attack against the station; with an attack about ready to commence when the Organians put a stop to the attack. It ties in nicely with the Original series and with the Errany of Fury books.

The Organians stop the attack, make their pronouncement, and the book then jumps back a year to pick up with events very shortly after Reyes arrest.

Quinn gets very limited time, essentially an extended cameo, written as a message to Pennington. Nicely done, it sets up Pennington's role in the story.

Pennington, M'Benga, and T'Prynn are the focus of one subplot. Lacking any major story or other matters, Pennington joins with M'Benga as they take T'Prynn back to Vulcan in an attempt to cure her. She will be subjected to an ancient Vulcan ritual which is rarely ever done. Although never a fan of ancient rituals, Ward builds a consistent theory for a cure and works within his self-imposed boundaries. The group goes to a village which operates with a great deal of independence on Vulcan and acts as a sanctuary, since Starfleet still wants to get their hands on T'Prynn. We meet at least one member of T"Prynn's family. T'Prynn is cured, but Starfleet is thwarted by T'Prynn's actions to avoid being taken into custody. I'd give this a B/B+

The Reyes court-martial is extremely well done and covers most of the remaining Vanguard staff we've come to know. Reyes, desires to get information out to the public, but also realizes he's pretty much guilty on most of the charges, since the charges are actually quite straightforwards. The one exception being the conspiracy charge, which he has gone out of his way to avoid involving others. Desai eventually becomes his lawyer, since she obviously can't serve as the prosecuting attorney due to her interactions with Reyes. In fact, while her staff is preparing for prosecution, she already knows she will be replaced and is working on his defense. The Tellarite prosecutor is well protraryed and does a good job. But in a sense, it isn't a tough case to prosecute.

Reyes essentially incriminates himself on the release of classified information charge and had pleaded guilty to the disobeying orders charges. Although not guilty of conspriing, he's given up to 10 years in prison in New Zealand and stripped of rank and privileges and essentially put out of starfleet after serving his time. He's transported back to earth, but on the way, his ship is destroyed by pirates. This is an easy A/A+

In regards to the metagene subplot, the station is benefitted from a defecting Tholian who wants to cooperate with the Federation at certain level. This partly relates to the decision in the previous book to ask the Shedai Apostate to help the Tholians. While revisiting Erilon (sp?) Ming and a tholian are captured by the Klingons and forced to work on another planet. Ming is eventually recoverd.

Nogura is given command of the station and makes an immediate impact; he orders Ganz to leave the station, unless Ganz provides certain assistance. Ganz doesn't so his ship is order away.

Will additional information later.

However,

Spoiler: Ending epilogue

Reyes death might be a ruse, since in the end when wrapping up the book, another epilogue looks at the Klingon attack on Vanguard and the book ends with Reyes commenting about the Organians

.

 

[Timo]

Umm... How does a ten-year jail sentence jibe with the TOS insistence that the treatment of criminals has been revolutionized by Dr. Adams and his colleagues so that mental reconditioning is the end-all solution ("Dagger of the Mind"), leaving only a tiny handful of incurables in all of Federation ("Whom Gods Destroy")? Did that revolution happen after Vanguard but before TOS?

Come to think of it, it probably did. McCoy knows of it in "Dagger" already, but Kirk apparently doesn't. And in "Dagger", prisons certainly still exist, even if they are "clean, decent hospitals for sick minds" as McCoy puts it.

One wonders... Would Reyes really have benefited from ten years in a hospital for sick minds?

Thanks for the spoilers, BTW. I hope the book hits the shelves here soon - rest assured that no economic loss to Pocket Books resulted from your revelations.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[wew]

You are welcome. Well remember Tom Paris also was sentenced to a penal institution (or rehabilitation institute)

 

[Randor]

i'm behind in raeding, why did reyes get relieved of command?

 

[wew]

Reyes let Pennington report Order 24, the loss of the Jintour system- thereby releasing classified information, disobeying orders, and for conspiracy.

 

[LutherSloan]

I have mixed feelings about this book after just finishing it last night. Much of it is the same problem that I felt affected 'Fearful Symmetry' in the DS9-Relaunch series. Both books come off like nothing more than bridging novels, where the story contained within is only a prelude to a future book.

My thoughts on the various plot points:

-T'Prynn arc: Well done until the end, when T'Prynn has about two pages of dialogue and then disappears. No clues as to what she is doing beyond escaping Starfleet judgment for her actions on Vanguard. We also don't really get much out of Pennington beyond "I don't know why I'm here with her." This gets a bit old after awhile.
-Reyes arc: Probably the strongest part of the book. Reyes seems somewhat more fleshed out than he did in the first three books of the series. I think part of this is because the way the Vanguard series is, there are 5-6 different story arcs at once, plus some minor ones as well. This leaves less time to cover each one. However, I thought it was a bit wrong to suddenly, without warning, place Reyes on a Klingon ship in the last three sentences of the book and then end like that. I would have liked some hints about this, but obviously it's being saved for the next novel (which again ties into my criticism at the top of this post).
-Nogura arc: The new commander of Vanguard gets very little face time in this book. He has some great moments, especially when he stares down Ganz on his ship in the first half of the novel. After this he fades into the background and only appears at a few points. It's really difficult to tell what the future holds for him in this series, as I just get the nagging feeling that he won't be around for much longer before disappearing again.
-Quinn: I guess his character is being taken out of the equation? There is one line mentioning that he is leaving to do other things, and that's all.
-Klingon researchers/Ming Xiong/Carol Marcus arc: This whole arc is a teaser for another book, as we only learn a few more things about the Shedai this time, and it's not much. One of the best things about this arc, and probably the book, is the appearance of the defecting Tholian scientist Nezrene, and the brief appearance of the other Tholian who was a Klingon prisoner working with Xiong. I am always pleased to see more of the Tholians.
-Shedai Wanderer arc: She gets almost nothing to do in this book, except continue to be all emo over the events of 'Reap the Whirlwind'. Towards the end we find out that there is some kind of threat coming that even scares HER, but it is once again really vague and unresolved at the end of the book. There are hints that the Shedai Apostate is still communicating with her, although it is not clear if this is just in her mind, or an actual message.
-Ganz/Nilric arc: Ganz leaves the station at the beginning after refusing Admiral Nogura's offer. He has a few scenes, but has about the least number of scenes of any other character. Things do get interesting when Klingon commander Chang (yes, that one) contacts Zett Nilric about working with the Empire, but it is still unclear what Chang wants by the end of the book.

Overall I am giving this book a B-/C+ rating.

 

[Rat Boy]

Chang wanted Reyes and he got him.

 

[LutherSloan]

Chang wanted Reyes and he got him.

But he wanted him DEAD. Did someone intervene?

 

[Cicero]

I have mixed feelings about this book after just finishing it last night. Much of it is the same problem that I felt affected 'Fearful Symmetry' in the DS9-Relaunch series. Both books come off like nothing more than bridging novels, where the story contained within is only a prelude to a future book.

My thoughts on the various plot points:

-T'Prynn arc: Well done until the end, when T'Prynn has about two pages of dialogue and then disappears. No clues as to what she is doing beyond escaping Starfleet judgment for her actions on Vanguard. We also don't really get much out of Pennington beyond "I don't know why I'm here with her." This gets a bit old after awhile.
-Reyes arc: Probably the strongest part of the book. Reyes seems somewhat more fleshed out than he did in the first three books of the series. I think part of this is because the way the Vanguard series is, there are 5-6 different story arcs at once, plus some minor ones as well. This leaves less time to cover each one. However, I thought it was a bit wrong to suddenly, without warning, place Reyes on a Klingon ship in the last three sentences of the book and then end like that. I would have liked some hints about this, but obviously it's being saved for the next novel (which again ties into my criticism at the top of this post).
-Nogura arc: The new commander of Vanguard gets very little face time in this book. He has some great moments, especially when he stares down Ganz on his ship in the first half of the novel. After this he fades into the background and only appears at a few points. It's really difficult to tell what the future holds for him in this series, as I just get the nagging feeling that he won't be around for much longer before disappearing again.
-Quinn: I guess his character is being taken out of the equation? There is one line mentioning that he is leaving to do other things, and that's all.
-Klingon researchers/Ming Xiong/Carol Marcus arc: This whole arc is a teaser for another book, as we only learn a few more things about the Shedai this time, and it's not much. One of the best things about this arc, and probably the book, is the appearance of the defecting Tholian scientist Nezrene, and the brief appearance of the other Tholian who was a Klingon prisoner working with Xiong. I am always pleased to see more of the Tholians.
-Shedai Wanderer arc: She gets almost nothing to do in this book, except continue to be all emo over the events of 'Reap the Whirlwind'. Towards the end we find out that there is some kind of threat coming that even scares HER, but it is once again really vague and unresolved at the end of the book. There are hints that the Shedai Apostate is still communicating with her, although it is not clear if this is just in her mind, or an actual message.
-Ganz/Nilric arc: Ganz leaves the station at the beginning after refusing Admiral Nogura's offer. He has a few scenes, but has about the least number of scenes of any other character. Things do get interesting when Klingon commander Chang (yes, that one) contacts Zett Nilric about working with the Empire, but it is still unclear what Chang wants by the end of the book.

Overall I am giving this book a B-/C+ rating.

My thoughts largely agree with yours. Very little happened in the novel after the quick and generally well-executed beginning. A theme through the various threads of the novel was the perfunctory transpiration of events. Aside from Admiral Nogura's brief and excellent presence, the odd disappearance of Cervantes Quinn, and the drawn-from-the-blue ending, the events of nearly every storyline in Open Secrets were required developments from Reap the Whirlwind.

There were no surprises in the novel (aside from the aforementioned, and some relatively fun, if rote, material regarding Xiong, Marcus, and the Tholians, which I did enjoy), and we learned nothing new about the characters or their motivations. We didn't even learn anything more of how they deal with new circumstances, beyond Ganz's reaction to Admiral Nogura.

I suspect that the novel contained an excellent first third of a new Vanguard novel, drawn out (not literally, but in effect) to the length of a full novel. We were treated to the cleanup of the previous novel's (surprisingly few) loose ends, but not to the new and unknown developments almost certain to follow them. Open Secrets contains an excellent, if slow, beginning, but nothing else.

I, too, was reminded of Fearful Symmetry when I finished Open Secrets, and was reminded of it for similar reasons. The first five years of the Deep Space Nine relaunch saw 17 volumes published (the first four years saw 15, if you discount the pre-relaunch year which produced A Stitch In Time and The Lives of Dax), a year's worth of in-story time was covered, and a number of stories came, went, built, and fell upon each other. But in the last four years, only two books have been published, in-story time has moved forward a matter of weeks, and essentially nothing new in story terms has developed. (Many readers guessed at the eventual reveals immediately after the publication of the second Worlds of Deep Space Nine volume.)

We've been fastened to the same few weeks of Deep Space Nine time for roughly half of the almost ten years for which the relaunch has existed, and the events of those weeks, like the events of Open Secrets, were largely required by the closing volumes of Worlds of Deep Space Nine. I hope that Vanguard will progress more quickly than Deep Space Nine has for the last almost half-decade. After two years, Open Secrets proved to be little more than an epilogue to its antecedents, or an overture to its successors.

 

[Nerroth]

You are welcome. Well remember Tom Paris also was sentenced to a penal institution (or rehabilitation institute)

The same one in New Zealand as Reyes was sent to, no less.


But Tom actually got to spend time there...

Umm... How does a ten-year jail sentence jibe with the TOS insistence that the treatment of criminals has been revolutionized by Dr. Adams and his colleagues so that mental reconditioning is the end-all solution ("Dagger of the Mind"), leaving only a tiny handful of incurables in all of Federation ("Whom Gods Destroy")? Did that revolution happen after Vanguard but before TOS?

Come to think of it, it probably did. McCoy knows of it in "Dagger" already, but Kirk apparently doesn't. And in "Dagger", prisons certainly still exist, even if they are "clean, decent hospitals for sick minds" as McCoy puts it.

One wonders... Would Reyes really have benefited from ten years in a hospital for sick minds?

I suspect that leaving such talk aside, there is still a healthy dose of realpolitik involved, when a case is as politicised as the Reyes one is - and that Tom Paris' one was, albeit to a far smaller extent.

In both cases, the crimes were not 'domestic' in scope - say, mugging someone in the street, or killing a jilting lover, or some such.

I'd imagine that to the Cardassian envoy looking for any sign that the UFP was in breach of its treaty commitments, the idea of a Maquis activist being given some holistic treatment in lieu of actual incarceration would make for a pretty hard sell...

...not least since the Feds refuse to simply execute all of their convicts as a matter of course.


And in the case of Reyes, trying to sate the demands of the Klingons would be even harder than it was already if they thought that the former Commodore wasn't goingto actually see any prison time - even if the Tera'ngan idea of what constitutes a prison might be far removed from the welcoming embrace of Rura Penthe.



The 'revolution' - assuming it wasn't hyperbole to begin with - may be used for 'domestic' cases, but I would not be at all surprised to see other options used for ore politically-charged convictions.

 

[DWMarch]

I enjoyed this novel a lot and read it quickly. For some reason the T'Prynn storyline was the most enjoyable for me but all the other plot threads were good too. Although T'Prynn's problem is basically resolved by a long mindmeld and a bunch of Matrix style Vulcan combat, it was told in such a way that it didn't get boring. Adding Pennington's perspective to the Vulcan village made it interesting as well and added some mystique back into one of Trek's stalwart planets. I even liked the bits with Carol Marcus and her different perspective despite the fact that I've never been a fan of hers.

My only disappointment was the almost complete lack of Ens. Theriault, whom I was hoping would be clad in a leather miniskirt for a scene. However, I have faith David Mack will incorporate this into "Precipice" as he certainly seemed open to the idea in the "Reap the Whirlwind" thread.

 

[Timo]

In both cases, the crimes were not 'domestic' in scope - say, mugging someone in the street, or killing a jilting lover, or some such.

Then again, Kasidy Yates collaborated with nasty infidel terrorist rebels, delivering medicines to them, and got six months. Garak attempted genocide with prejudice and an armed starship, and got six months. Quark smuggled kemacite and got, what, six months? So apparently, imprisonment in the TNG/DS9 era is not for punitive reasons, or else the length of the sentence would better reflect the severity of the crime.

Even in the case of Tom Paris, the Adams model of criminal treatment might be in use: the "prison term" is merely a means of forcing the criminal to undergo the therapy that will erase his or her potential for further crime of the sort.

All that could still be in the future of Vanguard, though. And if I understand correctly, Reyes wasn't even convicted of a crime per se, but of breach of Starfleet regulations - and the latter sort of offense typically carries much harder and more "conventional" consequences than a civilian crime even in the TNG era. Genocide? Six months of therapy. Failing to properly salute a superior? Physical labor and public humiliation. Failing to obey an order, including a range of inhumanely evil ones? Demotion and longterm confinement, in many cases solitary confinement in a tiny cell lacking in privacy or stimuli.

Timo Saloniemi