Reading Marathon: The Typhon Pact... and Beyond!
- Thread starter Stevil2001
- Start date
Yes, Enigma Tales is coming up. I'm following a placement @Jinn suggested to me, which is after Available Light and Collateral Damage.
Right on schedule! I will start Available Light today.
Phase Twelve: 2386 to the Beginning of the End
56. The Next Generation: Available Light by Dayton Ward
57. The Next Generation: Collateral Damage by David Mack
58. Deep Space Nine: Enigma Tales by Una McCormack
59. Coda, Book I: Moments Asunder by Dayton Ward
60. Coda, Book II: The Ashes of Tomorrow by James Swallow
Last edited:
The Next Generation: Available Light by Dayton Ward
Published: April 2019
Time Span: late 2386 (a month since Control/Hearts and Minds)
It's so... big! This is the first Destiny-era book to come out after quite a long hiatus, the previous one being almost a year and a half prior (Titan: Fortune of War). Goodbye mass market paperbacks, hello trades! I think this is also the first to make references to Discovery; Georgiou is included among a list of famous explorers. It's also an important last—this is the last-ever use of the (not my favorite) Rotis Serif TNG logo. (Thank goodness.)
Other than that, though, it half feels like business as usual. This book essentially has two totally separate plotlines. One is very familiar; this is our fourth Dayton Ward–penned exploring-the-Odyssean-Pass-after-The Fall novel, and so you'll know the vibe by now. The Enterprise comes across an interesting situation, there's some conflict, T'Ryssa Chen is in it a lot, Taurik is there. Ward is good at coming up with premises that feel like lost TNG episodes; in this one, the Enterprise and a group of scavengers come upon a derelict spaceship that seems like it ought to have a lot of people aboard... but where are they? There are some clever concepts here and interesting spins on Star Trek technology.
As I have with almost all of these books, I found myself thinking about how I would adapt it to serve as a Star Trek Adventures scenario, which is always a good sign. (I say this a lot, but if my current campaign gets a third season, I think I will actually do it.)
I don't think there's anything bad about these four books per se, but they have felt a bit... stasis-y. Like, all the characters are present and correct, but there's not the vibe you got back at the height of the Deep Space Nine relaunch or in the early days of New Frontier and Titan, that you were watching these characters evolve and grow. It almost reads like a tie-in to a tv show that doesn't exist, like all the characters have to be maintained as they are. Worf does Worf things, La Forge does La Forge things, T'Ryssa Chen does T'Ryssa Chen things, Joanna Faur continues to exist, Beverly isn't in it except as Picard's wife. I don't think I would say I disliked any of the post-Fall TNG novels on their own merits, but unfortunately I do feel like the best one was the first, Armageddon's Arrow; it had a sense that we were moving forward and going somewhere that ended up missing from Headlong Flight, Hearts and Minds, and this book.
The other half of the book is the fallout from Section 31: Control, which is really the fallout from A Time to Heal, a book that came out fifteen years prior! Section 31's existence is now public, but along with this, so is Picard's role in the coup that deposed President Min Zife. This half has its own two halves. In one, we see what's going on back on Earth: how are the politicians and the people dealing with all the revelations about 31, particularly that everything that everything the Federation has ever accomplished in its utopia-building was really the result of unsanctioned black ops? Mostly this is told from the perspective of Philippa Louvois (of "Measure of a Man" fame), now Federation Attorney General, as she begins carrying out investigations and prosecutions. It's fine; I did have the feeling that maybe the revelations of Control were a bit too big to realistically be accommodated into a tie-in book series at all, much less as a B-plot. The Federation has had yet another existential shock but I just don't think you can adequately deal with that and maintain the status quo needed for this to also be a series of books about people having fun space adventures. At this point, is it even realistic that the Federation continues to function? Akaar gives like five different speeches about how human choices do matter but they all feel a bit hollow.
I'm not sure about a couple choices here, like one where a trained Starfleet officer turns into a cold-blooded killer trying to get Admiral Ross because her husband died due to a Section 31 op. Also what's up with all the characters' insistence that Ross was a key player in 31? To the extent that an organization like 31 has formal members, I never had the sense that he was one; I certainly didn't feel like he was guiding policy. He was more just a guy the real players knew they could count on to throw things their way when needed.
The other half of this half is the personal fallout for Picard himself. This I found profoundly disappointing. What is the reaction of every key character finding out that Picard had a role in the illegal takedown of a democratically elected leader. Basically everyone shrugs and says, "oh well sometimes you just have to do a coup i guess." I could buy this of some characters (I can certainly imagine it of Worf, a man who previously killed a democratically elected leader)... but everyone? No one is upset to learn that the principled Jean-Luc Picard totally abandoned his principles? Not Beverly, not La Forge, not T'Ryssa, not Will Riker? I found this disappointing because 1) so much for Federation ideals, and 2) it seems a bizarre dramatic choice. This thing happens that could totally upend your characters' relationships, and you basically just ignore it?
The book ends with Picard deciding to be accountable for his decision and return to Earth, which I appreciate, but it feels pretty random; I wish it had been a natural outgrowth of the way something from this storyline intersected with the A-plot.
Continuity Notes:
Other Notes:
Published: April 2019
Time Span: late 2386 (a month since Control/Hearts and Minds)
It's so... big! This is the first Destiny-era book to come out after quite a long hiatus, the previous one being almost a year and a half prior (Titan: Fortune of War). Goodbye mass market paperbacks, hello trades! I think this is also the first to make references to Discovery; Georgiou is included among a list of famous explorers. It's also an important last—this is the last-ever use of the (not my favorite) Rotis Serif TNG logo. (Thank goodness.)
Other than that, though, it half feels like business as usual. This book essentially has two totally separate plotlines. One is very familiar; this is our fourth Dayton Ward–penned exploring-the-Odyssean-Pass-after-The Fall novel, and so you'll know the vibe by now. The Enterprise comes across an interesting situation, there's some conflict, T'Ryssa Chen is in it a lot, Taurik is there. Ward is good at coming up with premises that feel like lost TNG episodes; in this one, the Enterprise and a group of scavengers come upon a derelict spaceship that seems like it ought to have a lot of people aboard... but where are they? There are some clever concepts here and interesting spins on Star Trek technology.
As I have with almost all of these books, I found myself thinking about how I would adapt it to serve as a Star Trek Adventures scenario, which is always a good sign. (I say this a lot, but if my current campaign gets a third season, I think I will actually do it.)
I don't think there's anything bad about these four books per se, but they have felt a bit... stasis-y. Like, all the characters are present and correct, but there's not the vibe you got back at the height of the Deep Space Nine relaunch or in the early days of New Frontier and Titan, that you were watching these characters evolve and grow. It almost reads like a tie-in to a tv show that doesn't exist, like all the characters have to be maintained as they are. Worf does Worf things, La Forge does La Forge things, T'Ryssa Chen does T'Ryssa Chen things, Joanna Faur continues to exist, Beverly isn't in it except as Picard's wife. I don't think I would say I disliked any of the post-Fall TNG novels on their own merits, but unfortunately I do feel like the best one was the first, Armageddon's Arrow; it had a sense that we were moving forward and going somewhere that ended up missing from Headlong Flight, Hearts and Minds, and this book.
The other half of the book is the fallout from Section 31: Control, which is really the fallout from A Time to Heal, a book that came out fifteen years prior! Section 31's existence is now public, but along with this, so is Picard's role in the coup that deposed President Min Zife. This half has its own two halves. In one, we see what's going on back on Earth: how are the politicians and the people dealing with all the revelations about 31, particularly that everything that everything the Federation has ever accomplished in its utopia-building was really the result of unsanctioned black ops? Mostly this is told from the perspective of Philippa Louvois (of "Measure of a Man" fame), now Federation Attorney General, as she begins carrying out investigations and prosecutions. It's fine; I did have the feeling that maybe the revelations of Control were a bit too big to realistically be accommodated into a tie-in book series at all, much less as a B-plot. The Federation has had yet another existential shock but I just don't think you can adequately deal with that and maintain the status quo needed for this to also be a series of books about people having fun space adventures. At this point, is it even realistic that the Federation continues to function? Akaar gives like five different speeches about how human choices do matter but they all feel a bit hollow.
I'm not sure about a couple choices here, like one where a trained Starfleet officer turns into a cold-blooded killer trying to get Admiral Ross because her husband died due to a Section 31 op. Also what's up with all the characters' insistence that Ross was a key player in 31? To the extent that an organization like 31 has formal members, I never had the sense that he was one; I certainly didn't feel like he was guiding policy. He was more just a guy the real players knew they could count on to throw things their way when needed.
The other half of this half is the personal fallout for Picard himself. This I found profoundly disappointing. What is the reaction of every key character finding out that Picard had a role in the illegal takedown of a democratically elected leader. Basically everyone shrugs and says, "oh well sometimes you just have to do a coup i guess." I could buy this of some characters (I can certainly imagine it of Worf, a man who previously killed a democratically elected leader)... but everyone? No one is upset to learn that the principled Jean-Luc Picard totally abandoned his principles? Not Beverly, not La Forge, not T'Ryssa, not Will Riker? I found this disappointing because 1) so much for Federation ideals, and 2) it seems a bizarre dramatic choice. This thing happens that could totally upend your characters' relationships, and you basically just ignore it?
The book ends with Picard deciding to be accountable for his decision and return to Earth, which I appreciate, but it feels pretty random; I wish it had been a natural outgrowth of the way something from this storyline intersected with the A-plot.
Continuity Notes:
- We get a little recap of Phillipa Louvois's career on p. 43 that tells us she left Starfleet after "Measure of a Man," then came back later, than left again. Is this a reference to something? I don't see any likely candidates on Memory Beta, but it seems like a pretty random detail otherwise.
Other Notes:
- I didn't totally buy that Nechayev would go on the run. She comes across as principled to me, not self-serving—they're just not great principles!
- Ward does this thing I'm of two minds about, which is he's always diligently establishing members of the Enterprise-E crew. I like that the book does this thing that's hard to do on tv, make it clear that the crew consists of people who aren't main characters. But on the other hand, most of them are just names on the page; they don't have personalities or anything, just names (always human, which is a little boring, though I'm guessing they're mostly Tuckerizations) and jobs. Sometimes, though, he's a little too diligent about it; it'll be like, "so-and-so was being covered by the beta shift Engineering supervisor so-and-so, but she was on the away team, so she was being covered by the gamma shift supervisor." (At one point, Šmrhová leaves the bridge to get a rest, but she comes back before as soon as something interesting happens but we're still told who covers for her while she's gone.) It's like that bit from Parks and Rec about NPR hosts all substituting for each other.
- Gratuitous Recap Watch: We get a recap of "Paradise Lost" (pp. 51-2), which I can see the relevance of, but goes into an awful lot of detail for some reason, with characters wondering whatever happened to Admiral Leyton, but I don't know why. Also recapped for seemingly little purpose: "The Best of Both Worlds" (p. 213) and Headlong Flight (p. 287).
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