... at SimonSays.com, in Adobe, MSReader, and Palm formats! Go! Read! Enjoy! (And no, I have no idea when it'll be available as a print book.)
Thanks for the info. I looked last night at the Slings and Arrows series page, but the first book was not included, and I couldn't remember which Shakespeare phrase to search for.
I actually kinda like it personally. It's cool to see hand drawn cover in an era where the majority of them are photoshopped.
I signed up for an e-mail announcement for this ebook and I also have not received any word that it's out other then here.
A Sea of Troubles is just over the line of being dull, predictable, and forgettable. I like the sense of paranoia when the crew realizes that they have an impostor aboard, but "The Adversary" did it first and better. It's not a bad story, but I can't recommend it, either.
I finished reading this yesterday. I always felt changeling paranoia was one of the most dramatic themes in DS9 and that holds true for this book as well. However, the changeling's motivations (or lack thereof) and Picard's incessant babble tended to take away a bit from the drama. At times, Picard seemed a bit out of character. One scene that really stands out is when he was talking with the Changeling and bursts out laughing. Has Picard ever laughed at a deadly opponent before? The one thing that really settled it for me as far as believability factor was when the Changeling ejected himself out into space and then went to warp. The Changeling went to warp... Do they come equipped with their own personal dilithium matrix? Back to the more positive side, it was great seeing Hawk take on a major role and I enjoyed learning more about what brought him to the Enterprise. Exploring Picard's feelings of war with the Dominion and how his encounter with the Borg makes chances for peace seem more hopeless to him was another positive character element. Similar to this book, I see that book 2 also seems like a reactionary story to events from Deep Space Nine. While I love seeing series cross-continuity, for a TNG anniversary collection, I hope that later books will rely some on the series' own history as well.
Slings and Arrows is treating the year leading up to First Contact as if it were (sort of) a season of TNG airing at the same time as the late fourth/early fifth season of DS9. So the events are to some extent dictated by what was going on on DS9 at the time. Part of the point of the miniseries is to show what the Big E was doing during this timeframe -- and also picking up on some of the TNG hits we got on DS9. So Book 1 shows them dealing with a changeling infiltrator and spotlights Hawk. Book 2 shows what the Enterprise was doing during Leyton's coup attempt -- but also has Data dealing with his emotion chip and how it affects his ability to create art (and introduces the character of Padraig Daniels as the new security chief/tactical officer). Book 3 deals with one of DS9's TNG hits, to wit, Lwaxana's pregnancy in "The Muse," and also shows how and why La Forge switched from the VISOR to the optical implants. Book 4 focuses on Crusher and explains her animosity for the EMH as expressed in First Contact. Book 5 is another of DS9's TNG hits, showing how Riker deals with the Maquis and the betrayal of his "twin" Tom in "Defiant." And finally, Book 6 is a full-bore crossover, with the Enterprise going to Deep Space 9 and the two crews working together, and uses Picard's relationship with Gowron in the context of the animosity with the Klingons during this timeframe.
While I don't really take issue with it, looking at it broken down like that, it really does look like an answer to DS9.
For me, the concept just all seems a bit too reactionary to DS9 as well as other story tidbits we catch elsewhere (do we really need entire stories devoted to exlaining why Geordi changed from his VISOR or Data wanted to be able to turn off his emotion chip, or why Crusher doesn't like the EMH??). Has there already been a story detailing Worf leaving for DS9? I understand that one of the big attractions of media tie-in literature is to fill in the gaps of unanswered questions; I enjoy it occasionally too, but where are all of the original story concepts a la Mere Anarchy and direct follow-up to TNG events? Surely there was more going on during that year than the Dominion War and What DS9 Did. And could someone explain where all of these tactical/security officers came from? I haven't read many other books in this time period but wasn't Christine Vale the security chief before later moving off to the Titan? Or did she not come on until after? I know that she was at least still there at the time of the first SCE book. Is Daniels the guy we see in First Contact and Insurrection?
Maybe, but those were certainly the big driving events in the AQ at the time. It's reasonable to expect that the E-E would be involved in them, affected by them. Daniels was the security officer played by Michael Horton in FC and INS, yes. Vale showed up later; her first appearance as E-E security chief was in The Belly of the Beast, the first SCE tale, set in 2376 after the end of the war. Various other Enterprise-E novels feature various other security chiefs who served in the interim.
Define "too reactionary." As KRAD mentioned, this period was a pretty eventful one in the Alpha Quadrant. War with the Dominion was looming, the Klingon Empire cut off relations with the Federation, there was nearly a military coup on Earth, hundreds of officers were defecting to the Maquis... it wouldn't make a lot of sense to set up a miniseries in this period, and not address some of these things. And, it's not as if there are S&A stories about Rom's workers' union or Kira's romance with Shakaar. No; technically, you don't need anything but bread, water, and a few dog-earred Hardy Boys mysteries. But, if you're going to question there being stories drawing on DS9 events, and question stories drawing on TNG elements... what does that leave for us poor bastards to write about? Triangle: Imzadi II by PAD covers Worf's choices from the crash of the E-D to his decision to go to Boreth; "The Way of the Warrior" picks up from there.
Need? No, but as Bill pointed out, we don't need fiction at all. It's a luxury item. We didn't need to tell the year leading up to Nemesis, or try to tie all of Q's appearances together, or do follow ups to any number of episodes in various places. And don't underestimate the story potential of La Forge's switch from VISOR to implants. Sure, but that wasn't what I chose for this miniseries. I didn't want to just do a carbon copy of Mere Anarchy, because we already did that, and besides, TOS is better suited to that kind of long-range storytelling, since it's so clearly divided into different eras. For TNG, I wanted something with a tighter focus, especially since the year leading up to First Contact was practically virgin territory. Daniels is, in fact, the guy we see in First Contact and Insurrection. He comes on board in Book 2 of Slings and Arrows and stays through to the end of the Dominion War. However, he took paternity leave during the war, which is by way of explaining all the other security chiefs we saw at various times (Immortal Coil, The Q-Continuum trilogy, Forgiveness). Vale took over after the war ended.
My definition of "too reactionary" is that of the six ebooks in the miniseries, it appears that every single one of them is drawing directly on the Dominion War and DS9 threads. Sure the war was a big event and I love reading war stories, but does it have to be so all-encompassing that every tale told during those years should be a direct reaction to it? Even DS9 itself managed numerous completely unrelated episodes such as "Take Me Out to the Holosuite", Worf & Dax's marriage, etc. I don't know... perhaps unique story ideas that aren't simply based on a pathological need of media tie-in literature to explain every minimal detail such as why Data had more wrinkles on his face in Nemesis than he did in Encounter at Farpoint? Now I know that response is a little rude and excessive in exageration but that's about the same direction yours was going in. No where did I say don't reference DS9 or don't reference TNG, but of the ebook plots that KRAD pointed out (about 2 per book) not a single one dealt with a totally unique issue or was a follow up to previous events from TNG. I'm not at all saying that these won't be good stories - I plan on reading them myself, but entire stories based on individual throw-away lines such as Crusher's reaction to EMHs or Data deactivating his emotion chip just comes across to me as a bit... fanboyish (for lack of a better word). Don't get me wrong; I think that the idea of covering this missing time period aboard the E-E is a great idea for a miniseries. As I said above though, I just wish that even a little of the time would have been spent on unique story ideas or coming back to some plot threads from the TNG series. However, this is of course, simply based on the brief outlines provided. Hopefully there will turn out to be more of this than I realize.
I don't think that's true. I think you're mistaking the shorthand way they're being described in this thread for the actual content of the stories. Looking them over, based on the plot summaries: Book 1 involves a Changeling infiltrator, which is a Dominion War thread, but is one that would logically have affected the entire Federation. But based on the cover painting and the blurb, it appears to be a Sean Hawk-centric story, and Hawk is a character from FC, not DS9. Book 2 involves Admiral Leyton's coup, which I wouldn't call specifically a DS9 event, but an event that occurred on Earth and was participated in by DS9 characters. Again, it stands to reason that everyone in Starfleet would be affected by Leyton's coup. The story also focuses on Lt. Daniels, who, again, is a character who has nothing to do with DS9. Book 3 does involve Geordi's loss of the VISOR, but that's a storyline that builds off of GEN, not off of DS9. As for the Lwaxana subplot, yes, that's based on an event that occurred in a DS9 episode, but Lwaxana is mainly a TNG character and it stands to reason that Deanna would be affected in some way by her pregnancy. Book 4 has no DS9 connection at all that I can see, and doesn't seem to be directly war-driven either. It's a story driven by Beverly Crusher's professional and personal lives. Book 5 is about Tom Riker and the Maquis, but the Maquis are not unique to DS9. They were created as backstory for VGR and showed up in both TNG and DS9. And the Tom Riker character originated in a TNG episode before guest-starring in a DS9 episode. Book 6 is a full-on TNG/DS9 crossover, but it's about Picard being sent to negotiate for peace with Gowron. That follows up on the established TNG threads about Picard's relationship with the Klingon leadership. So I wouldn't say this series is exclusively driven by DS9 or Dominion-related concerns. It touches on a wide range of story and character threads. It looks to me like only the first two installments directly relate to the Dominion conflict. It's in the background in a couple of others, but it's hardly the driving force behind the entire series. Book 1 focuses on Hawk from a TNG movie. Book 2 focuses on Daniels from two TNG movies. Book 3's Geordi plot is a followup to events from the previous TNG movie. Book 4 builds on aspects of Crusher's personality established in the TNG series. Book 5 follows up on Tom Riker, a character introduced in TNG. Book 6 follows up on Picard's relations with Gowron as established in TNG.
And how, exactly, do you know these stories are not "unique" when you have yet to read the majority of them? All you're working with here is Keith's thumbnail descriptions. So pardon me if I get a little miffed when you start baselessly slamming my work (and the work of others) with such deeply thoughtful comments as "A story about Geordi's VISOR? Eeeewww!" and "A Lwaxana story? But she has DS9 cooties all over her!"