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
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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).
The Next Generation: Collateral Damage by David Mack
Published: October 2019
Time Span: January 2387
Being a consumer of tie-in fiction is weird, to be honest. If you are a "normal" reader, you read books that interest you... and well, you don't read ones that don't interest you. Why would you? Why would anyone spend time and effort reading and reviewing something you don't think you'll like? Yet you do! I consume Big Finish audio dramas, and I used to review them for Unreality SF. I often knew going into a release written by (for example) Matt Fitton or Nicholas Briggs knowing I wouldn't like it. I had learned I usually wouldn't like these writers' work, yet I would slog through it anyway.
The reason is, of course, that no offense to the writers, but you're not there for the writers. People largely don't consume tie-in fiction because they care about who writes it. They consume tie-in fiction because they like the characters from tv and want to know what happens to them next. I may feel fairly certain I might not enjoy the next Matt Fitton audio drama featuring the eighth Doctor... but if the eighth Doctor is my favorite Doctor, I'm hardly going to listen to all sixteen parts of Doom Coalition but not parts 1, 8, 10-11, and 14-15, am I? I want to know what happens to the Doctor and Liv and Helen, even if I have to listen to a bunch of scripts by a writer I don't like to do it.
Thus, what may be a bad thing from the perspective of the reader is actually a good thing from the perspective of the publisher and writer. Sure there are writers who's work I've learned I don't like... but I buy it anyway! I certainly don't do that for John Scalzi. But I need to know what happens next to Captain Picard, and I'm hardly going to skip over a book by a writer I don't like and thus miss a chunk of the story. If you were to scroll back through this thread, I think you would see that I have fairly consistently not enjoyed the work of David Mack. But, you know, I keep buying his books anyway (I own twenty-four of them according to LibraryThing, plus fourteen other books including contributions by him), so it's working out for him regardless. (But no one worry, I am not going to read and review Picard: Firewall.)
That was sort of a long intro into what is the second-last Destiny-era David Mack novel I will ever read... but I think this is quite probably my favorite David Mack novel? Certainly it's the one I've enjoyed the most of all the ones I've read in this project. Let's break it down.
Like Available Light, Collateral Damage features two parallel plots, one focused on the Enterprise, and one focused on the Section 31 revelations from Control and Hearts and Minds, specifically about Captain Picard's role in the Min Zife coup. The difference here is that Picard is in the S31 plotline on Earth, instead of the Enterprise plot; thus, Worf is acting captain, and we also get a lot of focus on Aneta Šmrhová.
Thadiun Okona from "The Outrageous Okona" is doing an op with a Husnock weapon from Titan: Fortune of War that goes wrong, and the weapon ends up in the hands of a band of Nausicaan marauders, disenfranchised following the destruction of their home planet in Destiny. The Enterprise must try to recover the weapon while working alongside the obnoxious Okona, battling not just the Nausicaans, but Starfleet's own Intelligence apparatus, and also trying to save a research outpost called Stonekettle Station whose solar shield is failing. It's
It's quick, action-focused stuff, the kind of stuff that David Mack can do in his sleep, and which rarely works for me. And though I didn't love everything about it, I think there are two things that really did work for me here. The first is the decision to tell chunks of the story from the first-person perspective of Okona and Kinogar (the Nausicaan leader). Back when I read Mack's Cold Equations: The Persistence of Memory, I really enjoyed the section told in the first person from Noonien Soong's perspective there... these sections communicate character and tone in a way that I just don't see in Mack's use of the third person.
I discussed earlier how tie-in fiction kind of traps you as a reader, but I wonder if it hasn't trapped Mack as a writer too, forcing him to use a technique (the fairly affect-less third-person limited perspective of most Star Trek novels) that just doesn't play to his strengths. I found these sections lively and engaging, and I wish there had been more of them. (I did find the bit in the afterword where Mack explains his choices a bit insulting to the reader's intelligence, though. Let the work speak for itself! I do appreciate that the book doesn't label the sections, though.)
The other thing I liked about the plotline is how it all wraps up. What one watches (and reads, and even plays) Star Trek for, I would argue, is clever problem solving, situations where characters do something unexpected that ties everything up. The Enteprise plot has this in its resolution, with Worf coming up with a way to stop the Nausicaans without resorting to violence... and yet in a way that is entirely in-character for Worf. I thought this was clever, and I really enjoyed the ending, and it made me sad that we've never really gotten any more "Captain Worf" stories.
The other plotline is necessary but ultimately kind of humdrum. Picard is kind of a passive observer to his own legal proceedings, which is probably fairly accurate but also not very dramatic; the solution to his problem comes from other characters. Overall this is fine... but I really did not like what we see of Philippa Louvois, Picard's prosecutor. In Available Light, she came across as principled and aghast at the violation of Federation values; here, she seems to be on a witchhunt, wanting to get Picard because she wants someone to pin the blame on. I feel like the book very much misses the mark here; I wish she had been portraayed as an antagonist, but not a villain, it seems to me that two people can be acting out of good principles but still come into conflict, and I think that would have been 1) more consistent with Available Light, and 2) much more interesting. Overall, I found the legal plotline a bit too twenty-first-century; one might have hoped the Federation's legal system might be more interested in actual truth.
My big complaint, though: anyone who though the Šmrhová/Okona subplot was a good idea is bad and should feel bad. C'mon, really???
Continuity Notes:
Published: October 2019
Time Span: January 2387
Being a consumer of tie-in fiction is weird, to be honest. If you are a "normal" reader, you read books that interest you... and well, you don't read ones that don't interest you. Why would you? Why would anyone spend time and effort reading and reviewing something you don't think you'll like? Yet you do! I consume Big Finish audio dramas, and I used to review them for Unreality SF. I often knew going into a release written by (for example) Matt Fitton or Nicholas Briggs knowing I wouldn't like it. I had learned I usually wouldn't like these writers' work, yet I would slog through it anyway.
The reason is, of course, that no offense to the writers, but you're not there for the writers. People largely don't consume tie-in fiction because they care about who writes it. They consume tie-in fiction because they like the characters from tv and want to know what happens to them next. I may feel fairly certain I might not enjoy the next Matt Fitton audio drama featuring the eighth Doctor... but if the eighth Doctor is my favorite Doctor, I'm hardly going to listen to all sixteen parts of Doom Coalition but not parts 1, 8, 10-11, and 14-15, am I? I want to know what happens to the Doctor and Liv and Helen, even if I have to listen to a bunch of scripts by a writer I don't like to do it.
Thus, what may be a bad thing from the perspective of the reader is actually a good thing from the perspective of the publisher and writer. Sure there are writers who's work I've learned I don't like... but I buy it anyway! I certainly don't do that for John Scalzi. But I need to know what happens next to Captain Picard, and I'm hardly going to skip over a book by a writer I don't like and thus miss a chunk of the story. If you were to scroll back through this thread, I think you would see that I have fairly consistently not enjoyed the work of David Mack. But, you know, I keep buying his books anyway (I own twenty-four of them according to LibraryThing, plus fourteen other books including contributions by him), so it's working out for him regardless. (But no one worry, I am not going to read and review Picard: Firewall.)
That was sort of a long intro into what is the second-last Destiny-era David Mack novel I will ever read... but I think this is quite probably my favorite David Mack novel? Certainly it's the one I've enjoyed the most of all the ones I've read in this project. Let's break it down.
Like Available Light, Collateral Damage features two parallel plots, one focused on the Enterprise, and one focused on the Section 31 revelations from Control and Hearts and Minds, specifically about Captain Picard's role in the Min Zife coup. The difference here is that Picard is in the S31 plotline on Earth, instead of the Enterprise plot; thus, Worf is acting captain, and we also get a lot of focus on Aneta Šmrhová.
Thadiun Okona from "The Outrageous Okona" is doing an op with a Husnock weapon from Titan: Fortune of War that goes wrong, and the weapon ends up in the hands of a band of Nausicaan marauders, disenfranchised following the destruction of their home planet in Destiny. The Enterprise must try to recover the weapon while working alongside the obnoxious Okona, battling not just the Nausicaans, but Starfleet's own Intelligence apparatus, and also trying to save a research outpost called Stonekettle Station whose solar shield is failing. It's
It's quick, action-focused stuff, the kind of stuff that David Mack can do in his sleep, and which rarely works for me. And though I didn't love everything about it, I think there are two things that really did work for me here. The first is the decision to tell chunks of the story from the first-person perspective of Okona and Kinogar (the Nausicaan leader). Back when I read Mack's Cold Equations: The Persistence of Memory, I really enjoyed the section told in the first person from Noonien Soong's perspective there... these sections communicate character and tone in a way that I just don't see in Mack's use of the third person.
I discussed earlier how tie-in fiction kind of traps you as a reader, but I wonder if it hasn't trapped Mack as a writer too, forcing him to use a technique (the fairly affect-less third-person limited perspective of most Star Trek novels) that just doesn't play to his strengths. I found these sections lively and engaging, and I wish there had been more of them. (I did find the bit in the afterword where Mack explains his choices a bit insulting to the reader's intelligence, though. Let the work speak for itself! I do appreciate that the book doesn't label the sections, though.)
The other thing I liked about the plotline is how it all wraps up. What one watches (and reads, and even plays) Star Trek for, I would argue, is clever problem solving, situations where characters do something unexpected that ties everything up. The Enteprise plot has this in its resolution, with Worf coming up with a way to stop the Nausicaans without resorting to violence... and yet in a way that is entirely in-character for Worf. I thought this was clever, and I really enjoyed the ending, and it made me sad that we've never really gotten any more "Captain Worf" stories.
The other plotline is necessary but ultimately kind of humdrum. Picard is kind of a passive observer to his own legal proceedings, which is probably fairly accurate but also not very dramatic; the solution to his problem comes from other characters. Overall this is fine... but I really did not like what we see of Philippa Louvois, Picard's prosecutor. In Available Light, she came across as principled and aghast at the violation of Federation values; here, she seems to be on a witchhunt, wanting to get Picard because she wants someone to pin the blame on. I feel like the book very much misses the mark here; I wish she had been portraayed as an antagonist, but not a villain, it seems to me that two people can be acting out of good principles but still come into conflict, and I think that would have been 1) more consistent with Available Light, and 2) much more interesting. Overall, I found the legal plotline a bit too twenty-first-century; one might have hoped the Federation's legal system might be more interested in actual truth.
My big complaint, though: anyone who though the Šmrhová/Okona subplot was a good idea is bad and should feel bad. C'mon, really???
Continuity Notes:
- Does it make any sense that Naomi Wildman is already a lieutenant in Starfleet Intelligence? She's fifteen! Even accepting that Ktarians age faster, Voyager only got back to the Alpha Quadrant nine years before this book, and she didn't seem to be of Academy age in "Endgame," and she would have had to go through the whole program and become an experienced officer! I haven't read any of the Voyager relaunch following Full Circle; is this consistent with that?
- I was a bit surprised when there was a reference to Section 31: Rogue. Ranul Keru aside, I had totally forgotten about that book and that that was Picard's first interaction with S31.
- Given how in Picard we learned that Chateau Picard burned down but was rebuilt exactly the same way, it was interesting to see a very different approach taken here. There's also a whole thing here about the location of Chateau Picard which I think must be there to reconcile the location of the real vineyard of that name with the location of the fictional one.
- Dygan is usually (though not quite always) called "lieutenant" in this novel instead of his usual rank of "glinn."
- I appreciate the idea of the cover, but don't actually like it in execution. Ugly colors.
- The characters in this book: Section 31's use of extralegal force is bad.
Also the characters in this book: Starfleet Intelligence has a hidden black site where it imprisons Federation citizens without trial. I guess that's okay. - It is a little disappointing that the Sarai subplot James Swallow introduced in the Titan novels gets wrapped up as a side thing in a completely different series... but I guess when this book was written, it was probably a reasonable expectation that there would never be a Titan novel again.
- It seems to me that David Mack has never known what to do with T'Ryssa Chen, to the extent of overlooking moments where a contact specialist would very obviously have something to contribute (e.g., Cold Equations: Silent Weapons). Here, she does a lot of generic science lab stuff, when it would have been nice to have her contribute to Worf's understanding of the Nausicaans.
- Intellectualy, I understand that Naomi Wildman, the cute kid from Voyager, must someday become an adult and have all the drives and interests that adults have. But still I don't think I needed to read a Star Trek book where Naomi Wildman says, "A straight shot at the sweetest booty I've seen in years. Mm-yeah!"
- No one is every going to make me believe that Geordi of all people can be in an open relationship with two attractive women. He is just not that smooth.
I really loved what Dave did with Worf in Collateral Damage. It really showed how he's matured and grown over the years. I find it consistent with how Worf was characterized in Picard season 3, despite being in a different continuity. That was one of the only things I liked about season 3 (that and the way Data/Lore was handled).
Haven't gotten to Picard season three yet (I am dreading it, speaking of media I consume because I love the characters but don't think will be good) but yeah, I think Mack did a great job here of threading the needle of making him recognizably Worf but also plausibly the captain of a Starfleet vessel. Some good one-liners, too.
When you go into Picard season 3, just know that you're watching it to see what the characters are up to 20 years down the line and try not to focus too much on the plot, especially since the people writing it didn't focus too much on the plot, either......................................
While I remember the book as the "Terra Prime" of the litverse (take that how you will) and the broad strokes of the plot, I have no memory of my reaction, and had to reacquaint myself with the review thread, where I expressed next to no opinions on the actual book. Well, I guess that adds up.
I will say that your comments here and in the "Late Star Trek" book have had me pondering if there are authors where the things I like best about their books aren't necessarily the things they like best about their books. Unfortunately, that hasn't really developed beyond the
stage.
You know, I just always assumed real emojis wouldn't work here and we were restricted the the board's smallish library of smilies. Oh, but the board has its own emoji library and doesn't use the viewer's system emojis. That's unfortunate.
I will say that your comments here and in the "Late Star Trek" book have had me pondering if there are authors where the things I like best about their books aren't necessarily the things they like best about their books. Unfortunately, that hasn't really developed beyond the
stage.You know, I just always assumed real emojis wouldn't work here and we were restricted the the board's smallish library of smilies. Oh, but the board has its own emoji library and doesn't use the viewer's system emojis. That's unfortunate.
Picard 3 is the "90s post-Claremont X-Men comics" version of Star Trek.
Thank the Great Bird of the Galaxy for small mercies.
OMG, yes, this.....
Deep Space Nine: Enigma Tales by Una McCormack
Published: July 2017
Time Span: late 2386, weeks after Section 31: Control (according to the Historian's Note) or late 2388, three years after The Fall (according to internal chronological clues)
Sometimes, one might find it easier to write a negative review than a positive one. To write a negative review, one can simply lapse into a catalogue of grievances, and there's a certain terrible joy in that, even if it doesn't necessarily make for a good review. A good negative review, I think, articulates what a book wanted to do and then analyzes how and why it fell short of that—or perhaps even explains why that wasn't a good thing to attempt in the first place.
Similarly, a positive review might simply say again and again, "well here's a good bit about the text." We could start, for example, by mentioning that Enigma Tales is just a joy to read on a word by word basis; there's none of the purposefully beige prose one finds in most Star Trek novels. In my review of Collateral Damage, I discussed the limitations of that third-person limited perspective that most Star Trek tie-ins are written in, and thankfully, McCormack sets out her stall almost immediately in this regard, with a touch of delightful third-person omniscient about Pulaski and Alden on pp. 7-8: "There was a pool on the ship (neither of them knew this) as to how soon she would make him the fourth Mr. Pulaski. There was also another pool (they perforce knew nothing about this either) as to how quickly she would divorce him."
But if you do this, at a certain point a kind of tedium sets in. Oh this was good and this was good and this was good, the end. A good positive review articulates what a book wanted to do and then analyzes how it accomplished that. I'm going to do my best here.
What did this book want to do? Well, if you ever sit through one of my lectures about literature (3 stars on Rate My Professor), you'll know that in fiction, one of the most important things to pay attention to is when the book you're reading starts talking about books, because that's usually when the book is trying to tell you how to read it. (See my discussion of Sinclair Lewis's Arrowsmith for an example I use a lot.) Enigma Tales tells us how to read it quite early on, on pp. 11-12, when we get a discussion of, well, enigma tales from Natima Lang:
"The problem with Cardassian enigma tales is that they all end the same way. All the suspects are always guilty." "Yes, but the challenge is determining exactly who is guilty of what." (This itself picked up from what we learned about the Cardassian legal system in "Tribunal.")
Okay, but so what? Part of the joy of science fiction is that it allows us to explore imaginary worlds, to, as Isaac Asimov puts it in the introduction to More Soviet Science Fiction (1962) ask "what if—" and then build up a whole world:
In that essay, however, Asimov goes on to say something I find completely wrongheaded: "such a story has no lesson to teach with respect to the advanced societies of the here and now" (8). Here, I must part ways with the grandmaster of science fiction and say that I am much more sympathetic to the claims of China Miéville in his introduction to H. G. Wells's The First Men in the Moon: "Science fiction is not, whatever its advocates may sometimes claim [...] 'about' the future. It is, like any worthwhile literature, 'about' now, using a technique of rationalized (rather than free-for-all) alienation from the everyday to structure its narratives and investigate the world" (xvii). So, if we believe Miéville, this filigree work (and everything in the novel) shouldn't be telling us stuff about the totally made up world of Cardassia, but also the world we live in.
Again, Una's book lays this out for us from the very beginning. Sure, we get the (confusing) Historian's Note telling us the book is set in late 2386, but the very next page of the book tells us that's not true, that Enigma Tales is "[a] novel about the past, the future, and everything in between"—i.e., the present. The book came out in July 2017, shortly after the election of Trump, though I would guess the manuscript was probably entirely or at least mostly finished before that, but of course the book certainly was being written during the election campaign. Probably more relevant from the perspective of a UK author would be the Brexit referendum, in June 2016.
Just like Una's The Fall: The Crimson Shadow, it unfortunately feels like it is about the future, in that the book's discussion of nationalism and authoritarianism are even more relevant in 2025 than they were when the book was written. One suspects that Una probably feels like Emily Tesh, who said this of her novel Some Desperate Glory: "It still shakes me that so many people have picked up the book I started in 2017 based on the worst things I could see in contemporary politics, and responded: yes, this is what's happening right now. I would rather the book were an irrelevant historical curiosity. I hope it becomes so one day." Alas, that hasn't been the case. As an academic in Florida, it was pretty tough to read the discussion here of what happened at the University of the Union when Dukat and the Dominion took over: "Directives came down stating what could and could not be studied. Some teachers complained and were promptly suspended. The shelves in the library thinned once again. Outlandish topics such as [Elima's] were sidelined, with the grants and prizes going to more traditional accounts of great guls and battles won" (p. 70).
In Una's hands, "everyone is guilty" is not just a joke about how bad Cardassians are, though, but a commentary on what it's like to live under an authoritarian regime. In such a society, everyone is guilty, because there's no way to survive without doing something wrong. (Shades of the oft-repeated maxim "There is no ethical consumption under capitalism." Shades also of Audre Lorde's line, "the master's tools will never dismantle the master's house," which is slightly misquoted on p. 215.*) In the book, this appears primarily in a subplot about whether, when serving on a U of U appropriations committee during the old regime, peace activist Natima Lang approved some horrific experiments on children (p. 107). Did she? Even if she did, was it wrong? Lang is a little bit guilty because there is no way to not be a little bit guilty.
So, Enigma Tales is (as per what Natima Lang herself told us on pp. 11-12) is not just about the U of U and Cardassia, but "the crimes and misdemeanors of the wider world"—that is to say, our world. We all do things to protect ourselves and our loved ones. Unfortunately, in the world we live in, we will increasingly see this everyday. Even if Lang didn't do what she was accused of, she wasn't always the best she could be; she didn't return when the civilian government briefly took power on Cardassia (2372-73) because she was afraid.
But Enigma Tales offers us hope, too. At the beginning of the novel, Lang asks, "Is it possible that in the future an enigma tale might contain a character who is—I can hardly imagine it—innocent?" This enigma tale does. As comes out in a conversation late in the novel, we can't only focus on guilt. Everyone might be guilty to some degree... but this also means we're also innocent to some degree. This develops a line of thought McCormack began in The Crimson Shadow: all we can do in an unethically constructed world is attempt to act ethically ourselves. Of course, this is a sentiment baked into the detective novel, as highlighted by Raymond Chandler: "Down these mean streets a man must go who is not himself mean." Natima Lang may have been guilty. Garak may have been guilty. (He certainly was!) But also they were innocent, and they can be innocent. Even Garak can be innocent, as he reflects that for once, he was (pp. 343-4). Maybe it's hard to imagine you really can be innocent. But as Garak himself notes, that's why we read enigma tales, that why we read Enigma Tales: "Garak [...] savor[ed] [...] the joy of a fiction in which innocence was not only possible but brought reward" (p. 347).
It also offers us hope in the future. A recurrent theme throughout the novel is that rise of the new generation of Cardassians, who carry with them hard work and determination to not repeat the crimes of their ancestors. Garak will give way to Natima Lang someday, but Lang in turn will give way to people like Elima, who spent their childhood under the old regime but most of their adulthood under the new, and thus can see a way to make it better. Elima, in turn, will give way to her own children, who will never know a world where a part-Bajoran Cardassian couldn't openly wear a Bajoran earring. This, too, is the hope we see in our world, a hope that the future will be better because of those who come after us. This doesn't (as the book highlights) mean that we stop working, because our descendants will fix it, but that we have a reason to keep working, because we know that if we can leave our descendants a world better than we found it, they can make it even better than that.
It's a hard hope to believe in, at times. I've briefly discussed here before that I'm currently running a Star Trek Adventures RPG campaign where the players are contending with a friendly alien race sliding into authoritarianism. I think they will end up losing to the authoritarians, because in 2025, it's not very clear to me how one wins against them. Enigma Tales gives us hope, because the Cardassians, as the novel explicitly reminds us a couple times, are us: Garak, for example, points out that when he was ambassador to the Federation, they gave him a residence in Paris where Nazis used to live (p. 155); Garak writes to Bashir, "I loved Paris, Doctor, but I knew Berlin. I pass through a city like that every day" (p. 100); later Garak opines that probably only humans have as brutal a history as the Cardassians. If the Cardassians can do it, so can we.
But it's not a naïve hope. I have come to very much despise so-called "cozy" fantasy (two "good" examples: Legends & Lattes and Someone you can Build a Nest in), and an essay I recently read by Abigail Nussbaum did a great job of highlighting the issue I have with it:
There's a very powerful scene near the end of the novel, where Garak confronts Gul Telek, a member of the Cardassian military opposed to the investigations into what crimes Cardassian committed during the Occupation. Garak realizes that Telek is one of the children who was experimented on; the son of a Cardassian soldier and a Bajoran comfort woman, Telek was subjected to procedures to expunge his Bajoran DNA because his father wanted an heir. As Garak says, "you can't wipe away history like that. Something always breaks through" (p. 310). At first this almost seems like a repeat of the Alden scene, with Garak using his psychologically insight to disable an opponent, but then Garak extends Telek the compassion no one else ever has. It's beautiful, and had me misting up a little. Similarly, Peter has to help out the rogue SI agent even though he'd rather not: "I can't escape my past, Kitty. Those experiences made me who I am. I can only live with the consequences" (p. 343).
I'm glad I positioned Enigma Tales where I did, as the last novel of the Destiny era before Coda. I don't think there was a better one. If there was, it could only have been a different one by Una. I loved this book, I tore through it in a day and a half, and I didn't want it to end. I think someday I'll just do a reread of all the Una/Cardassia stories from the relaunch era.
If there's a flaw to this book, it's that it made me imagine another book that we will never get. I think Una would write a brilliant campus murder mystery starring Kate Pulaski with Peter Alden as her hapless sidekick. Just imagine it! Pulaski comes to give a guest lecture somewhere, someone dies in mysterious circumstances, local authorities are baffled, Pulaski's keen eye for scientific detail and willingness to trammel over social niceties solves the case while Alden runs around apologizing for her and getting her out of scrapes. So good!! I'm sure we could contrive a way to make this fit into the Picard continuity, figure it out, Simon & Schuster.†
Continuity Notes:
† Wait, wait, I've got it! Story ideas for a story no one will ever publish: What if it was set between seasons one and two of Picard, when he's the chancellor of Starfleet Academy! "That bloody woman!" C'mon, it'd be brilliant!!
Published: July 2017
Time Span: late 2386, weeks after Section 31: Control (according to the Historian's Note) or late 2388, three years after The Fall (according to internal chronological clues)
Sometimes, one might find it easier to write a negative review than a positive one. To write a negative review, one can simply lapse into a catalogue of grievances, and there's a certain terrible joy in that, even if it doesn't necessarily make for a good review. A good negative review, I think, articulates what a book wanted to do and then analyzes how and why it fell short of that—or perhaps even explains why that wasn't a good thing to attempt in the first place.
Similarly, a positive review might simply say again and again, "well here's a good bit about the text." We could start, for example, by mentioning that Enigma Tales is just a joy to read on a word by word basis; there's none of the purposefully beige prose one finds in most Star Trek novels. In my review of Collateral Damage, I discussed the limitations of that third-person limited perspective that most Star Trek tie-ins are written in, and thankfully, McCormack sets out her stall almost immediately in this regard, with a touch of delightful third-person omniscient about Pulaski and Alden on pp. 7-8: "There was a pool on the ship (neither of them knew this) as to how soon she would make him the fourth Mr. Pulaski. There was also another pool (they perforce knew nothing about this either) as to how quickly she would divorce him."
But if you do this, at a certain point a kind of tedium sets in. Oh this was good and this was good and this was good, the end. A good positive review articulates what a book wanted to do and then analyzes how it accomplished that. I'm going to do my best here.
What did this book want to do? Well, if you ever sit through one of my lectures about literature (3 stars on Rate My Professor), you'll know that in fiction, one of the most important things to pay attention to is when the book you're reading starts talking about books, because that's usually when the book is trying to tell you how to read it. (See my discussion of Sinclair Lewis's Arrowsmith for an example I use a lot.) Enigma Tales tells us how to read it quite early on, on pp. 11-12, when we get a discussion of, well, enigma tales from Natima Lang:
That's it, that's the book given to you in a nutshell right there! (The book comes back to this on pp. 53-4 and basically says it for a second time, so McCormack really doesn't want you to miss it.) This book uses the University of the Union as a microcosm of Cardassian society, exploring the way that guilt and innocence work. As we see here, the book consistently comes back to an idea from the Deep Space Nine episode "Distant Voices":
"The problem with Cardassian enigma tales is that they all end the same way. All the suspects are always guilty." "Yes, but the challenge is determining exactly who is guilty of what." (This itself picked up from what we learned about the Cardassian legal system in "Tribunal.")
Okay, but so what? Part of the joy of science fiction is that it allows us to explore imaginary worlds, to, as Isaac Asimov puts it in the introduction to More Soviet Science Fiction (1962) ask "what if—" and then build up a whole world:
Una is very good at this kind of filigree work; Cardassia always comes alive in her books, and this one is no exception, filled with little details about what life is like there in general, and how it's changed since the end of the Dominion War ten years prior. There's a neat subplot, for example, about how some of the part-Bajoran descendants of the so-called "comfort women" raped by Cardassian soldiers are learning how to live with their inheritance in the open.
In that essay, however, Asimov goes on to say something I find completely wrongheaded: "such a story has no lesson to teach with respect to the advanced societies of the here and now" (8). Here, I must part ways with the grandmaster of science fiction and say that I am much more sympathetic to the claims of China Miéville in his introduction to H. G. Wells's The First Men in the Moon: "Science fiction is not, whatever its advocates may sometimes claim [...] 'about' the future. It is, like any worthwhile literature, 'about' now, using a technique of rationalized (rather than free-for-all) alienation from the everyday to structure its narratives and investigate the world" (xvii). So, if we believe Miéville, this filigree work (and everything in the novel) shouldn't be telling us stuff about the totally made up world of Cardassia, but also the world we live in.
Again, Una's book lays this out for us from the very beginning. Sure, we get the (confusing) Historian's Note telling us the book is set in late 2386, but the very next page of the book tells us that's not true, that Enigma Tales is "[a] novel about the past, the future, and everything in between"—i.e., the present. The book came out in July 2017, shortly after the election of Trump, though I would guess the manuscript was probably entirely or at least mostly finished before that, but of course the book certainly was being written during the election campaign. Probably more relevant from the perspective of a UK author would be the Brexit referendum, in June 2016.
Just like Una's The Fall: The Crimson Shadow, it unfortunately feels like it is about the future, in that the book's discussion of nationalism and authoritarianism are even more relevant in 2025 than they were when the book was written. One suspects that Una probably feels like Emily Tesh, who said this of her novel Some Desperate Glory: "It still shakes me that so many people have picked up the book I started in 2017 based on the worst things I could see in contemporary politics, and responded: yes, this is what's happening right now. I would rather the book were an irrelevant historical curiosity. I hope it becomes so one day." Alas, that hasn't been the case. As an academic in Florida, it was pretty tough to read the discussion here of what happened at the University of the Union when Dukat and the Dominion took over: "Directives came down stating what could and could not be studied. Some teachers complained and were promptly suspended. The shelves in the library thinned once again. Outlandish topics such as [Elima's] were sidelined, with the grants and prizes going to more traditional accounts of great guls and battles won" (p. 70).
In Una's hands, "everyone is guilty" is not just a joke about how bad Cardassians are, though, but a commentary on what it's like to live under an authoritarian regime. In such a society, everyone is guilty, because there's no way to survive without doing something wrong. (Shades of the oft-repeated maxim "There is no ethical consumption under capitalism." Shades also of Audre Lorde's line, "the master's tools will never dismantle the master's house," which is slightly misquoted on p. 215.*) In the book, this appears primarily in a subplot about whether, when serving on a U of U appropriations committee during the old regime, peace activist Natima Lang approved some horrific experiments on children (p. 107). Did she? Even if she did, was it wrong? Lang is a little bit guilty because there is no way to not be a little bit guilty.
So, Enigma Tales is (as per what Natima Lang herself told us on pp. 11-12) is not just about the U of U and Cardassia, but "the crimes and misdemeanors of the wider world"—that is to say, our world. We all do things to protect ourselves and our loved ones. Unfortunately, in the world we live in, we will increasingly see this everyday. Even if Lang didn't do what she was accused of, she wasn't always the best she could be; she didn't return when the civilian government briefly took power on Cardassia (2372-73) because she was afraid.
But Enigma Tales offers us hope, too. At the beginning of the novel, Lang asks, "Is it possible that in the future an enigma tale might contain a character who is—I can hardly imagine it—innocent?" This enigma tale does. As comes out in a conversation late in the novel, we can't only focus on guilt. Everyone might be guilty to some degree... but this also means we're also innocent to some degree. This develops a line of thought McCormack began in The Crimson Shadow: all we can do in an unethically constructed world is attempt to act ethically ourselves. Of course, this is a sentiment baked into the detective novel, as highlighted by Raymond Chandler: "Down these mean streets a man must go who is not himself mean." Natima Lang may have been guilty. Garak may have been guilty. (He certainly was!) But also they were innocent, and they can be innocent. Even Garak can be innocent, as he reflects that for once, he was (pp. 343-4). Maybe it's hard to imagine you really can be innocent. But as Garak himself notes, that's why we read enigma tales, that why we read Enigma Tales: "Garak [...] savor[ed] [...] the joy of a fiction in which innocence was not only possible but brought reward" (p. 347).
It also offers us hope in the future. A recurrent theme throughout the novel is that rise of the new generation of Cardassians, who carry with them hard work and determination to not repeat the crimes of their ancestors. Garak will give way to Natima Lang someday, but Lang in turn will give way to people like Elima, who spent their childhood under the old regime but most of their adulthood under the new, and thus can see a way to make it better. Elima, in turn, will give way to her own children, who will never know a world where a part-Bajoran Cardassian couldn't openly wear a Bajoran earring. This, too, is the hope we see in our world, a hope that the future will be better because of those who come after us. This doesn't (as the book highlights) mean that we stop working, because our descendants will fix it, but that we have a reason to keep working, because we know that if we can leave our descendants a world better than we found it, they can make it even better than that.
It's a hard hope to believe in, at times. I've briefly discussed here before that I'm currently running a Star Trek Adventures RPG campaign where the players are contending with a friendly alien race sliding into authoritarianism. I think they will end up losing to the authoritarians, because in 2025, it's not very clear to me how one wins against them. Enigma Tales gives us hope, because the Cardassians, as the novel explicitly reminds us a couple times, are us: Garak, for example, points out that when he was ambassador to the Federation, they gave him a residence in Paris where Nazis used to live (p. 155); Garak writes to Bashir, "I loved Paris, Doctor, but I knew Berlin. I pass through a city like that every day" (p. 100); later Garak opines that probably only humans have as brutal a history as the Cardassians. If the Cardassians can do it, so can we.
But it's not a naïve hope. I have come to very much despise so-called "cozy" fantasy (two "good" examples: Legends & Lattes and Someone you can Build a Nest in), and an essay I recently read by Abigail Nussbaum did a great job of highlighting the issue I have with it:
This book shows that though there is hope, it is also hard. Pulaski, Garak, Elima, Mhevet, Alden, Lang, even the anonymous Starfleet Intelligence spook Pulaski confronts near the end of the book, are all well-intentioned people "only trying to do right in this wicked world," but that still brings them into conflict with each other, in ways both small and big. I found particularly devastating a scene where Garak needles Peter Alden, who still has PTSD from his time as an SI agent among the Tzenkethi (pp. 202-3). It's very cruel, but it unfortunately rings true for Garak. Similarly, Garak and Mhevet are working to the same end, but they come into conflict regardless, partially because of Garak's long-standing inability to trust others (p. 244). Because it is hard, it is hope I can believe in.
There's a very powerful scene near the end of the novel, where Garak confronts Gul Telek, a member of the Cardassian military opposed to the investigations into what crimes Cardassian committed during the Occupation. Garak realizes that Telek is one of the children who was experimented on; the son of a Cardassian soldier and a Bajoran comfort woman, Telek was subjected to procedures to expunge his Bajoran DNA because his father wanted an heir. As Garak says, "you can't wipe away history like that. Something always breaks through" (p. 310). At first this almost seems like a repeat of the Alden scene, with Garak using his psychologically insight to disable an opponent, but then Garak extends Telek the compassion no one else ever has. It's beautiful, and had me misting up a little. Similarly, Peter has to help out the rogue SI agent even though he'd rather not: "I can't escape my past, Kitty. Those experiences made me who I am. I can only live with the consequences" (p. 343).
I'm glad I positioned Enigma Tales where I did, as the last novel of the Destiny era before Coda. I don't think there was a better one. If there was, it could only have been a different one by Una. I loved this book, I tore through it in a day and a half, and I didn't want it to end. I think someday I'll just do a reread of all the Una/Cardassia stories from the relaunch era.
If there's a flaw to this book, it's that it made me imagine another book that we will never get. I think Una would write a brilliant campus murder mystery starring Kate Pulaski with Peter Alden as her hapless sidekick. Just imagine it! Pulaski comes to give a guest lecture somewhere, someone dies in mysterious circumstances, local authorities are baffled, Pulaski's keen eye for scientific detail and willingness to trammel over social niceties solves the case while Alden runs around apologizing for her and getting her out of scrapes. So good!! I'm sure we could contrive a way to make this fit into the Picard continuity, figure it out, Simon & Schuster.†
Continuity Notes:
- The doctor-loving soccer-playing Cardassian shop owner who helps Pulaski while she's on the run (pp. 172-4) is Rugal, right? It has been fifteen years since I read The Never-Ending Sacrifice but doesn't he open a shop in the country?
- Lots of good lines. I like this bit from Elima about the Federation's presence on Cardassia during the reconstruction that really captures Star Trek utopianism in a very casual way: "I loved having you here. All your people—they were so young, so friendly. They laughed a lot, like there was something to laugh about, like they could see that the future was going to be okay. After a while it sort of rubbed off on you. You started to believe them when they said it would be okay. And one day it was" (p. 141).
- Lots of good moments of characterization, especially of Garak. Take this little internal aside from Gark about how he could charm even Bajorans: "Not Kira Nerys. Charm had not been key to winning over Kira. Killing other Cardassians had been necessary to prove himself to Kira" (pp.156-7). Or this bit, when Garak discusses how beneficial Bashir was to him during his exile. "'It was everything he represented. His capacity to see good—even in me—his capacity to strive, to seek to find and not to yield...' He could hear his voice catching. I am delivering a eulogy, he thought, for a man who is not yet dead" (p. 63).
- The book is also quite funny. I loved the bit where Pulaski has to use the comm but says she has no money and the Cardassian who might be Rugal grumbles, "You lot never do." Or when Pulaski goes on a Cardassian 'cast and causes a diplomatic incident. Pulaski is great throughout, as I've alluded to. Or the Or the bit where Pulaksi tells Alden she's been violating the Prime Directive since he was in diapers (p. 255). Or the bit where Mhevet goes "That bloody woman!" and Garak says that when he wrote Picard to ask about Pulaksi, he said the exact same thing (p. 273).
- McCormack has a Ph.D. in sociology, and worked as a professor in higher ed for many years. For that reason, the details of academia always ring true in a way I very much appreciated, such as the recounting of Elima's academic career thus far on pp. 20-21. She knows exactly the scope of a doctoral thesis, knows what kind of work early career academics do and how it gets recognized.
- I enjoyed the occasional comments about human literature Garak read and enjoyed, which includes Douglas Adams (p. 156). Garak even goes on to claim that if he needs to a new career, he'd like to be a book reviewer!
- The book is filled with unsent letters from Garak to Bashir, comatose since the events of Section 31: Control. (This is one of the details that makes the 2388 setting more compelling than the 2386 one; the way everyone talks about Bashir makes it seem like he's been unconscious for years, not months.) In the letters, Garak rues that he has finally gotten Bashir to Cardassia, and Cardassia is the most beautiful it's ever been... and Bashir can see none of it. I was originally a little grumpy that McCormack couldn't write, that no one could write, a story of Bashir and Garak together on postwar Cardassia because of the events of a novel I liked much less, but I came around on this because as much as we might want things to work out perfectly, of course they don't. I myself said it earlier; the book works because making a better world is difficult. The letters are beautiful and they're sad. I'm sure there's an perfectly serviceable audiobook of this novel read by Robert Petkoff, but it's a shame there's not one read by Andrew Robinson.
- The two scenes at the bedside of the comatose Bashir are quite moving: Pulaski's is (p. 298) but particularly Garak's (p. 346-7).
† Wait, wait, I've got it! Story ideas for a story no one will ever publish: What if it was set between seasons one and two of Picard, when he's the chancellor of Starfleet Academy! "That bloody woman!" C'mon, it'd be brilliant!!
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