And where you can become chief engineer without knowing how to talk to women.
I have finished Coming of the Terraphiles, and I really liked it. I found myself most liking it at its most Moorcock-ian, when it was all
about Order and Chaos. I didn’t love the first fifty or so pages, when it was a Wodehouse pastiche, but I got it. I thought Moorcock really captured Matt Smith quite well, though. I certainly liked it enough to move straight onto The Dreamthief’s Daughter.
about Order and Chaos. I didn’t love the first fifty or so pages, when it was a Wodehouse pastiche, but I got it. I thought Moorcock really captured Matt Smith quite well, though. I certainly liked it enough to move straight onto The Dreamthief’s Daughter.
I would guess approximately an hour. I think some of the books I don't have a lot to say about would be more like 30 minutes, whereas the Coda ones or anything by Una McCormack, probably as much as two hours. But on average, I'd guess an hour.
There's a lot of mental prewriting, though; when I read a book, I'm often reading it through the lens of how I am going to write it up, so I am planning points as I go.
There's a lot of mental prewriting, though; when I read a book, I'm often reading it through the lens of how I am going to write it up, so I am planning points as I go.
I am missing these, they were a wonderful series and enjoyable to go back to read again @Stevil2001
I keep wondering what you could do next (would you be tempted to read the Horus Heresy? That would be a fascinating review series! Even includes some of Mr Swallow's work. I guess star wars is another world that could be fascinating. Or for trek, maybe early, pre tng, novels?)
I keep wondering what you could do next (would you be tempted to read the Horus Heresy? That would be a fascinating review series! Even includes some of Mr Swallow's work. I guess star wars is another world that could be fascinating. Or for trek, maybe early, pre tng, novels?)
That way madness lies...
Thank you very kindly!
I am doing the Kelvin timeline comics in another thread, though I have not been very diligent about keeping up with those reviews; they are such quick reads that I get through them quite fast! I have read a lot more than I have written up, I need to try to catch up on them.
The End of This Day's Business by Eleta Preloc
Released: February 2026
Time Span: Spring 2390 (this stated placement is more consistent with the late 2388 setting of Enigma Tales than its supposed late 2386 placement), up to Spring 2393
Short review:
Gonna tell my kids this was Coda.
Long review:
I was tipped off to the existence of this piece of fanction by top ten TrekBBS poster @David cgc; this is a story by a mysterious writer known only as "Eleta Preloc" that ties off many of the threads of Una McCormack's Deep Space Nine novels. Who wrote it? Your guess is as good as mine. You can download the whole thing there in Kindle format, which is what I did. There are few Star Trek authors where the promise of their fanfiction would send me scrambling for Archive of Our Own; in fact, Una McCormack has caused me to do this twice, as a long time ago I read her Lord of the Rings fanfiction, A Game of Chess.
I have railed before—in my reviews of Una's work, in fact!—against the existence of "cozy" fiction. I don't like it, it seems to undercut everything that makes fiction good in my mind, which is its depiction of how people can overcome problems. I don't need to read about a world with no conflict; I need to read about a world where people can overcome conflict. That's reassuring.
And yet... there's something undeniably "cozy" about The End of This Day's Business. I mean, there's definitely conflict here, in terms of what's going on with Garak, both in the present and the past, and what's happening on the Tzenkethi, but a lot of the novel feels like it's about chilling with Julian Bashir as he tries to reorient himself in the world, having woken up from his coma, or following what's up with Garak and his boyfriend, or seeing Mhevet figure out if she actually can be happy, or whatever. There are stakes, but they don't feel like they're particularly high. I think the answer to this is partially in something Una herself points out in her end notes, that what she originally planned as the emotional core of the novel, the story of the terrible thing Garak did on Bajor, ended up in Second Self, and nothing replaced it here. (Even though Second Self takes place in a totally different continuity, I think The End of This Day's Business very much benefits from you having already read Second Self.)
I enjoyed this anyway. It's not my favorite Cardassian novel by Una (is that Enigma Tales? good question), but I had a good time. Why is this? Well, I think there are a few reasons. One is that the conflict did happen. On screen and in any other number of Una McCormack novels, we saw the hard work these characters had to put in, and the suffering they had to endure. This isn't so much a novel on its own but the last thirteen chapters of a very long novel—one of those Cardassian epics but with, you know, a happy ending. It's cozy not because these characters exist in a world with no conflict (and there very much is some here in any case) but because these characters have made a better world and now get to live in it. Garak and Bashir and Mhevet and Peter have all suffered, and now they get their rest.
This is by Una, so of course it's full of sharply observed character moments, and the themes are deep and interesting. But I'm too lazy to go into them this time out; just trust me bro. But if you've read all my other Una reviews, you'll know I speak the truth.
The other reason it works is because it's not just the last gasp of Una's Cardassian strand, it's also the last gasp of the entire "novelverse," and in particular, the DS9 relaunch, which I still think of as the "real" version of what happened to all the DS9 screen characters (well, up to Worlds of Deep Space Nine or so, anyway). As I have said, I think Coda was fundamentally misjudged (except perhaps as a way for the writers to exorcize their own grief): instead of having the stories of all these characters abruptly cut off without the resolutions we wanted, we got a story where... the stories of all these characters abruptly cut off without the resolutions we wanted! What would happen to Picard and Riker and Sisko and Bashir and so on? Coda didn't tell us, which to my mind was the whole reason to do it.
But The End of This Day's Business. It mostly focuses on Garak and Bashir, but we get cameos from the O'Briens among others, and we even get a resolution to the Pulaski/Alden strand, which delighted me no end. If the book is gentle, that's because it's the wish fullfillment I think I wanted to begin with: a finite ending to the infinite story of the version of Star Trek I grew up with. It's something that serves to round out, conclude, and summarize what we've been reading.
You might call it... a coda.
Released: February 2026
Time Span: Spring 2390 (this stated placement is more consistent with the late 2388 setting of Enigma Tales than its supposed late 2386 placement), up to Spring 2393
Short review:
Gonna tell my kids this was Coda.
Long review:
I was tipped off to the existence of this piece of fanction by top ten TrekBBS poster @David cgc; this is a story by a mysterious writer known only as "Eleta Preloc" that ties off many of the threads of Una McCormack's Deep Space Nine novels. Who wrote it? Your guess is as good as mine. You can download the whole thing there in Kindle format, which is what I did. There are few Star Trek authors where the promise of their fanfiction would send me scrambling for Archive of Our Own; in fact, Una McCormack has caused me to do this twice, as a long time ago I read her Lord of the Rings fanfiction, A Game of Chess.
I have railed before—in my reviews of Una's work, in fact!—against the existence of "cozy" fiction. I don't like it, it seems to undercut everything that makes fiction good in my mind, which is its depiction of how people can overcome problems. I don't need to read about a world with no conflict; I need to read about a world where people can overcome conflict. That's reassuring.
And yet... there's something undeniably "cozy" about The End of This Day's Business. I mean, there's definitely conflict here, in terms of what's going on with Garak, both in the present and the past, and what's happening on the Tzenkethi, but a lot of the novel feels like it's about chilling with Julian Bashir as he tries to reorient himself in the world, having woken up from his coma, or following what's up with Garak and his boyfriend, or seeing Mhevet figure out if she actually can be happy, or whatever. There are stakes, but they don't feel like they're particularly high. I think the answer to this is partially in something Una herself points out in her end notes, that what she originally planned as the emotional core of the novel, the story of the terrible thing Garak did on Bajor, ended up in Second Self, and nothing replaced it here. (Even though Second Self takes place in a totally different continuity, I think The End of This Day's Business very much benefits from you having already read Second Self.)
I enjoyed this anyway. It's not my favorite Cardassian novel by Una (is that Enigma Tales? good question), but I had a good time. Why is this? Well, I think there are a few reasons. One is that the conflict did happen. On screen and in any other number of Una McCormack novels, we saw the hard work these characters had to put in, and the suffering they had to endure. This isn't so much a novel on its own but the last thirteen chapters of a very long novel—one of those Cardassian epics but with, you know, a happy ending. It's cozy not because these characters exist in a world with no conflict (and there very much is some here in any case) but because these characters have made a better world and now get to live in it. Garak and Bashir and Mhevet and Peter have all suffered, and now they get their rest.
This is by Una, so of course it's full of sharply observed character moments, and the themes are deep and interesting. But I'm too lazy to go into them this time out; just trust me bro. But if you've read all my other Una reviews, you'll know I speak the truth.
The other reason it works is because it's not just the last gasp of Una's Cardassian strand, it's also the last gasp of the entire "novelverse," and in particular, the DS9 relaunch, which I still think of as the "real" version of what happened to all the DS9 screen characters (well, up to Worlds of Deep Space Nine or so, anyway). As I have said, I think Coda was fundamentally misjudged (except perhaps as a way for the writers to exorcize their own grief): instead of having the stories of all these characters abruptly cut off without the resolutions we wanted, we got a story where... the stories of all these characters abruptly cut off without the resolutions we wanted! What would happen to Picard and Riker and Sisko and Bashir and so on? Coda didn't tell us, which to my mind was the whole reason to do it.
But The End of This Day's Business. It mostly focuses on Garak and Bashir, but we get cameos from the O'Briens among others, and we even get a resolution to the Pulaski/Alden strand, which delighted me no end. If the book is gentle, that's because it's the wish fullfillment I think I wanted to begin with: a finite ending to the infinite story of the version of Star Trek I grew up with. It's something that serves to round out, conclude, and summarize what we've been reading.
You might call it... a coda.
Well, I had no idea such a thing existed, but I will definitely track it down now. Thanks for the heads up!
.
Shouldn't a fanfic review be posted in the fanfic forum instead of Trek Lit?
This is something of a special case. It's more like the pre-publication versions of A Flag Full of Stars and Music of the Spheres/Probe that were put online by their authors (which have been discussed in Trek Lit in the past) or other "lost" novels than a "normal" fanfic. It'd probably be going too far to make it its own review and discussion thread as if it were a published novel, but I ran it by @Avro Arrow before I first posted about it and he agreed that talking about TEoTDB within an existing thread where it might be relevant made the most sense.
Una's LOTR fanfic on AO3 is under the name Altariel.
Oh, I remember now.
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