Finished reading this a few weeks ago but only now found the time to write up some reviews; hopefully the gap won't affect my memory of the stories too strongly. I thought this was a nice, solid anthology--almost all the stories are well-written, interesting and enjoyable, despite some quibbling. It did feel like something was missing overall--usually in these anthologies there's one or two stories that really stand out, that make me sit up and take notice, but nothing struck me as remarkable in this book; though, as I've said, it was still a quite pleasant read though. Suppose I've been spoiled by some of the great stuff that been put out in the past.
Onto the individual stories themselves:
Dave Stern,
Nobunga: What to do when the survival of your evil dynasty has already been assured? Scramble things up by toying with time and perspective. Although it’s pretty obvious from the start that someone is screwing with Tucker to get at something they want, there’s enough recursion and red herrings to keep one guessing until the end who is manipulating Tucker—the Empress or the rebels. Fun enough as “Frame of Mind”-type mystery, but doesn’t quite provide the bang other stories do.
Wardilmore,
Ill Winds: I have no idea who April or the rest of his crew are, but in this kind of anthology—where even familiar names are essentially new characters—that really made no difference to my enjoyment of this story, which was consistent across most of its length. April provided a good glimpse into the kind of person who would be considered reasonable, by the standards of this universe; most of the time, MU characters just strut about sneering and dominated by their impulses, so it is nice to meet a character whose villainy arises not so much from character flaws as by social circumstance and bloody pragmatism, social calculating and ruthless without being cruel. I’ve had problems with pacing in some other
Wardilmore collabos, but none here: the narrative picks up quickly and moves along at a dynamic pace; while the scope of the threat posed by the Klingons’ new weapons is sufficiently daunting to make one want to root for these otherwise contemptible individuals. My only problem with this story is the ending, which feels tacked-on in the sense that it bears too little to do with the main plot, but seems to be betrayal and darkness simply for the sake of reminding one that this is the MU and relatively ‘good’ characters (in this context, not psychotic) must ultimately lose. Perhaps if we had more insight into April’s wife’s motivations and plans, it wouldn’t feel like we ended with a knife in the back for shock value alone.
Garamet,
The Greater Good: The very entertaining story of how Mirror-Kirk gains his command, the story uses relatively small sections and a series of brief deflections and suspended knowledge to propel itself along as it explores the variations largely surrounding (I think) the events of “The Cage”. As with the previous story, there’s a sufficiently daunting foe (the Talosians) to actually make one root for the protagonists—and history, too, I suppose, since we know Kirk is meant to be in that chair. This story aptly addresses two questions I didn’t even know I had: firstly, why, if Kirk had such a powerful weapon at his disposal, did he never seem to use it to the extent that Spock eventually would; and second, what is life like beyond the ranks of the military? I really enjoyed the glimpses into the civilian domain of the Empire; it was a question whether the majority of the populace is, indeed, as vile and murderous as the examples we’ve seen in Starfleet, or whether this was a sort of military dictatorship with a more decent, but oppressed humanity below. The answer is the former, with the same kind of cruelty and perfidiousness held up as prime values, and we begin to understand how such a society functions; not a top-down kind of fascism, which, to me, would be inevitably overthrown; but rather a hungry, bottom-up, Darwinian emphasis on extreme competition, which in many ways reminds me of some of the better explorations of Sith philosophy.
James Swallow,
The Black Flag: Another story where the characters are largely unknown to me, since I only read the first Vanguard book—and once, again it makes little difference: Swallow drops you in the middle of the action and never relents. Even largely expository scenes, like the tour of the station given to the Klingons, where one might expect the pacing to wane, are crisp with overt tensions and undercurrents of conspiracy, betrayal and the looming threat of the Taurus Reach, of which I had a vague awareness but could still be surprised when it was revealed. By this time Spock’s plan is finally in effect, so nominally there’s a protagonist to root for, although her methods—like her patron’s (and, from what I recall, her “616” counterpart)—take a very long view of morality; perhaps more effectively, there’s a contrast set up between Zhao as a kind of “honour among thieves” (or brutes) type, and the notion that he’s fighting less for personal advancement (though there is some of that) and more for love, and Reyes, a more typical embodiment of the cruelty and self-serving attitude of the Mirror Universe (also not altogether different from his main universe counterpart, as I recall). The action of the story builds to a quite tense, climatic battle that nicely unifies all the various plot threads. (It seemed to me that the Tholians were actually more reasonable in this universe than our own—I wonder if they ‘trust’ the overt hostility of the Terran Empire more than the friendly expansionism of the Federation.) However, there seemed to be an intermittent ‘pirate’ theme to the story, but it cut in and out, and didn’t really fit with the rest of the rather political tale, finally appearing more as an artifact than anything else. Distracting more than anything, it probably would have been best to cut that out and present Zhao as a straight-up, mildly honourable captain than some kind of retro buccaneer.
Michael Jan Friedman,
The Traitor: The first entry in the rebellion era is by a veteran author who, unfortunately, disappoints. While I have issues here and there with other stories in this collection, this is the only one I actually disliked. The story itself is largely pedestrian, but its true flaws lie in a series of pointless, left-field ‘twists’ which are so underwhelming one wonders whether the author is taking lessons from M. Night Shyamalan. The name of the primary character is withheld for pages on end, which gets old fast and isn’t even well concealed, given that the ship is named the
Lakul; and when we do confirm that the captain is Guinan, there’s really no reason provided that would make us care that it is one person over another. Pacing is off, with a lot of short scenes that add little to the narrative and make the story seemed puffed up. The traitor is, predictably, not ‘Picard’ but the contact they had come to meet. Picard turns out to not be Picard, but a shapeshifter we’ve never heard of before—and then Guinan turns out not to be Guinan, but another shapeshifter we’ve never heard of. The astounding coincidence aside, having the two main characters not be themselves already feels like both the twist and the preceding story have been futile, to say nothing of doing so after having already spent so long playing with Guinan’s identity. The shapeshifting revelations wouldn’t have been so bad if they’d actually had something to do with the plot, but their backgrounds are coincidental, and the way their respective shapeshifting abilities are suddenly deployed—without much prior hints to their nature—to solve plot points just feels cheap. It wasn’t all bad—it was nice to see some of the characters from what I imagine is the now conclusively defunct Stargazer series, but overall quite the uninspired story.
Rudy Josephs,
The Sacred Chalice: This is an otherwise good story that suffers somewhat from its length and languor. Exploring the survivors on devastated Betazed and how they’ve parlayed their skills to survive is interesting, and gives us a glimpse into how the bottom rung lives, but at the same time it feels like the description of the setting and the plot could have been better integrated. The story only really begins when Picard shows up several pages in, and I can’t help but feel that the way the Sacred Chalice works didn’t require a devoted introduction, but could have been shown even as the plot unfurled. The story is careful to stay close to Deanna, and though she comes off rather naïve for someone who works in a brothel, we can believe that being kept under the heel of Lwaxana has infantilised her enough to believe the awakening, of sorts, to her own abilities and the universe at large, that she undergoes across the breadth of the story. The narrative does so carefully, patiently, although I times I did wish the pace would pick up somewhat. Being mainly an odd sort of ‘coming of age’ story, the ending comes on rather suddenly, all the more so for arising from a spontaneous act rather than the careful schemes which the story had previously put forth. And I can’t help but feel some disappointment at the supposed death of Kestra; I was intrigued by the possibility of seeing the Troi sisters in action together, something that could never have happened in the main universe, yet the opportunity of the premise is taken away almost as soon as it is introduced. Still, the story does provide an interesting next step for the characters and the cause of the rebellion as a whole.
Susan Wright,
Bitter Fruit: This story, in broad strokes, in similar to the last, in its concerns with telepathy, psychological development and the often callousness of the methods the rebellion feels it must employ. It might have been better not to juxtapose them, despite the internal chronology, but that’s a relatively minor concern as the writers are different enough in tone and approach to make both unique despite their similarities. I was curious to see what Wright would bring to the table, considering this most recent iteration of the Mirror Universe overrode her own
Dark Passions duology, but Wright had no problems sinking her teeth into these versions of the characters. As I recall, Wright has a thing for BDSM themes, so
KRAD’s dominatrix Torres probably made a natural fit, and Wright does a very good job exploring Torres’ psychology, explaining without excusing the origin of her sadism as outwardly directed self-loathing stemming from her relationship with her mother and hybrid status. Wright also tries to extend such themes to a sexually submissive Crell Moset, which did not work for me in terms of the character or story, but I’ve admittedly always found BDSM a turn-off. Fortunately it was a minor subplot. Torres’ true counterpart is Kes, forced to used their shared DNA to crawl into Torres’ psyche; she too has an interesting inner story as she struggles to retain a sense of herself while immersed in Torres’ cruelty and violating her own principles by using her telepathic abilities as a weapon. In a way, this is a story all about cruelty, whether Torres’ irrational sadism or Tuvok’s rational variant as he holds the promise of being re-united with Neelix over Kes, always holding it in abeyance and testing her loyalty with it. The deconstruction of the relationship between Tuvok and Kes, sacrificed to betrayal on the altar of pragmatism, juxtaposes nicely with the struggle between Torres and Kes; the story has an open-ending which I’d be interested in seeing pursued further.
Keith R.A. DeCandido,
Family Matters: This story does two interesting things. First and most obviously is the format, which I would call epistolary except half of it is told in the form of transcripts and I’m not sure those qualify as epistolary (although, I don’t know what that style would be called, so I suppose epistolary is as good as anything). As format experiments go, I think this one is largely successful. While it doesn’t enable the author’s usual strengths the way traditional prose might, one can still see a lot of that skill shining through, in the way that the story balances a multiplicity of perspectives, from the seemingly objective reality of the transcripts to first-person accounts of the various concerned individuals (and their particular slant on what was seen in the transcripts). The contrast between individual accounts also permits a goodly amount of humour to shine through, enhanced by how freely the insults flow in certain missives. The other interesting aspect of the tale is that it gives us a look into the workings of the Alliance from their own perspective, unmediated by human or other rebel interpreters.
KRAD doesn’t neglect the backstabbing and power-hungry aspect that we’ve come to associate with the MU, but also provides us with alternative views—individuals like Klag and Macet, who see the Alliance as the legitimate victor and serve it foremost rather than themselves, a reliable element in a dysfunctional system. My one problem with this story would be that it throws out a lot of (similarly-named) characters at the reader which, written as it is, doesn’t give the reader a grasp of who many of these characters are and sometimes requires flipping back to make sure what the relationships in this version of reality are.
Peter David,
Homecoming: Not much to say about this one—it’s a fairly typical outing for a New Frontier, in that it is quite indulgent but written in such a fashion that one really doesn’t mind that Calhoun is the Alpha and the Omega, or at least defeats all foes, looks badass, and manages to get himself appointed head of what remains of the Romulan civilization (this story, like many others, seems to assume that the empire is comprised of one world, but perhaps in this universe that’s actually the case). Between the astonishing feats of heroism and badassitude, the story still hits some interesting or at least amusing notes. McHenry as the ship could have just been a repeat of Morgan from the regular New Frontier line, but it gets spun in an interesting new direction; the involvement of MU-Jericho and of a (now liberated) MU-Selar also play well in the overall dynamics; the conflict between Selar and Soleta plays itself out nicely, and Jericho maintains his personality without being an inept blowhard (that role is reversed for the cookie-cutter Klingon and Cardassian villains, who fate is sealed essentially from the moment they arrive). That said, Hiren’s character is taken in a direction I didn’t expect, ditto Romulus itself (I’m beginning to wonder if the fate of that word might not be a multiversal constant).
Jim Johnson,
A Terrible Beauty: This tale is basically made up of two storylines, past and present, detailing Keiko’s actions as part of the resistance and Memory Omega. One is more interesting than the other. The portions detailing Keiko’s life in the slave camps is the one I preferred; I liked being able to follow the scheme over a long period of time, watching the painstaking manner in which Keiko manoeuvres into position, the delicate balance between servility and secret progress which she must strike—these portions of the story really convey what it is like living under a regime like the Alliance, and the harsh limits any rebellion faces before an entrenched, superior foe. Life is hard, victories are few, but one is nonetheless impressed by the determination and ingenuity of Keiko, Tasha and the others. The storyline in the present I found less involving, perhaps because I simply never picked up any of the supposed sense of urgency motivating the plot. Where the scheming in the past portions feels organic and straightforward, the conspiracies in the present seem needlessly byzantine and amount to little. I’m perfectly inclined to agree with O’Brien’s feelings of betrayal at the end. Also making the sequences in the present more bumptious is all the musing Keiko indulges in regarding her relationship with O’Brien; I think it was supposed to come across as a dilemma—love vs. duty—but the effect on me was to make Keiko look indecisive, like she didn’t know what she wanted or how to pursue it, and clashes with the hard-nosed characterization of her in past sequences. I wonder if this story was hamstrung by being set after the events of
Saturn’s Children but before
Rise Like Lions—it felt more like an interlude than a progression of the MU’s overall narrative.
Christopher L. Bennett,
Empathy: My reaction to this story was a bit odd, and reminded me of how I felt reading
Greater than the Sum, insofar that I was more interested in what was happening in the background of the story—in this case, revisiting the curious ecology of Irriol, this time subject to the experiments of the Alliance—and in the particular character psychologies sketched out than in what’s happening in the foreground with those characters, along the plot. The characters make this tale, particularly Vale and Jaza. Vale is a strangely compelling portrait of pragmatic self-loathing self-interest as a woman who seeks not to change the status quo, but to secure a position within it that is comfortable, and damn the rest. One imagines there must always be such individuals who willingly support their own oppressors, but it is morbidly fascinating to ‘meet’ such a person. As a counterpoint, we have Jaza, the ‘nice oppressor’, a willing part of an abominable system and experiments yet reasonable enough to abjure cruelty and potentially serve as an agent of reform. The affection between them is twisted but believable. Other characters have good pieces, and I particularly liked Ree’s predatory glee and actually getting to see (a version of) Ian Troi in action. Given all this, I felt like the ball was dropped when it came to Riker, who is little more than a brutish thug. It’s not Riker’s morality that bothered me, however, but his simplicity: the character is a cobbled cliché of the violent flunky, without depth, who never does anything unexpected, and when he predictably dies, the only question is how—considering his consistent, unthinking aggression—it hadn’t happened earlier. Perhaps there was a point to making Riker this way: that sometimes people are just brutes without the layering that goes into the cruelties of psyches like Vale and Jaza, or that just because a character is important in our universe doesn’t mean they can’t just be a nobody on this side, but it feels like a waste of a character. The plot, by and large, was as predictable as Riker himself (except Vale’s betrayal, which is a good twist), and is interesting mainly for the conversations and airings of different points of view that it permits. A nice point about
Empathy is the way it touches of a number of plot threads that arose earlier—the Alliance’s research into telepathy, the history of the Trois, Tuvok’s role in the resistance—so that it feels like something of a capstone for the anthology, even though nothing is concluded yet.
