So What Are you Reading?: Generations

[Sakrysta]

While I'm on a bit of a rant, I get it. Keru is a "hulking" unjoined Trill. Ree has sharp teeth. Troi is an empath. People, at book number 7 in the series, you don't need to tell us these things every single time the characters appear in a scene. Titan suffers the most from this need to define each character's species and/or appearance nearly every time they appear.

Any book has the potential to be some reader's first book in the series. Since Titan is just about the most episodic of the 24th-century series, that's particularly the case there. Writers shouldn't assume that every last person who reads a particular book is familiar with the earlier ones. Even people who have read the earlier ones may need a reminder about who's who, especially in a cast this diverse.

Very true. In fact, your own Over a Torrent Sea was the first Titan novel I read (with the exception of Destiny). I really appreciated being introduced to the characters in a way that didn't make me feel lost. It was that positive experience reading Over a Torrent Sea that made me go back and read the rest of the series. The re-introductions may seem tedious and unnecessary to long-time readers, but from both a creative and marketing standpoint they make a lot of sense.

I guess I'll just have to agree to disagree. There's a directory in the back of the book that tells who everyone is, which is more than a lot of book series do. Of all the book series I've read over the years, the vast majority don't go to the extremes the Titan series has gone to to reintroduce every character and then reinforce basic physical traits nearly every time they appear.

I finished Fallen Gods this morning. I liked the Andorian story line, but that was about it.

Next up, I'm picking up Forgotten History again. I started it a few months ago but got distracted from it. I really enjoyed the first DTI book, so I'm looking forward to this one.

 

[WarsTrek1993]

Bond, James Bond in "Moonraker"

Fleming at his best right there!

 

[Greg Cox]

Bond, James Bond in "Moonraker"

Fleming at his best right there!

Just don't expect Jaws to show up!

 

[Lonemagpie]

Bond, James Bond in "Moonraker"

Fleming at his best right there!

Just don't expect Jaws to show up!

He is in The Spy Who Loved Me, though, sort of - he has a different name (Horror)

 

[WarsTrek1993]

Bond, James Bond in "Moonraker"

Fleming at his best right there!

Just don't expect Jaws to show up!

Don't expect Bond in space firing a laser gun, either! Hahaha!

 

[Sci]

Have finished David Mack's Cold Equations trilogy and Ron Suskind's Confidence Men, and did a quick re-read on Una McCormack's brilliant DSN novel The Never-Ending Sacrifice.

I'm currently about halfway through John le Carré's The Spy Who Came in From the Cold. I'm really enjoying it so far.

Not sure where I'll go from here. There are a number of possible directions I might go, reading-wise -- I might:

• go back and try to finish American Gods by Neil Gaiman;
  
• pick up le Carré's Tinker, Tailor, Solider, Spy (and, from there, its sequels The Honourable Schoolboy and Smiley's People);
  
• read Game Change: Obama and the Clintons, McCain and Palin, and the Race of a Lifetime by John Heilemann and Mark Halperin;
  
• check out The Casual Vacancy by J.K. Rowling; or
  
• read Capital: Critique of Political Economy by Karl Marx (and possibly pair it up with The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith?).

Still not sure yet. What do you guys think?

 

[USS Firefly]

I knew before hand that Bond didn't go into space otherwise I wouldn't have bought the book, the book was much better than the movie.
I've just started "Thunderball", Bond in a health clinic, I only hope that Bond don't meet all the bad guys accidently, like Drax and now in a clinic

 

[Allyn Gibson]

Bond, James Bond in "Moonraker"

Fleming at his best right there!

Just don't expect Jaws to show up!

Unless one's reading Christopher Wood's novelization of Moonraker, that is.

 

[DaveR]

I just finished Barrayar, the second book in the Miles Vorkosigan series (or at least, the second I read; reading order is a bit malleable.)

...based on the first two, I have a strong suspicion my next consecutive 13 novels will be the remaining 13 Miles Vorkosigan novels.

Wow.

They are all wonderful.

I'm in the middle of Bujold's latest book, and it's about Cousin Ivan. It's called Captain Vorpatril's Alliance.

 

[WarsTrek1993]

Just finished reading DS9: Avatar: Book one.

...damn, that was good!

 

[Thrawn]

Wasn't it? That level of quality stays, too, the whole way through. There might be 3 at most mediocre books in the DS9 series. It's pretty amazing.

 

[WarsTrek1993]

Wasn't it? That level of quality stays, too, the whole way through. There might be 3 at most mediocre books in the DS9 series. It's pretty amazing.

I'm just about to start book two!

What's really amazing, is that many events took my by surprise despite them probably being talked about in the DS9-Typhon Pact books, which I read first!

EDIT: Thrawn, with Section 31: Abyss, am I to expect an edge-of-my seat adventure, as the description sounds?

 

[BritishSeaPower]

Breezed through the Doctor Who 50th Anniversary eBook A Big Hand for the Doctor. I'd read one or two of the Artemis Fowl books way back when, but was never a big Eoin Colfer fan. This was an enjoyable little romp and I picked up on the "nod" the story was making towards a famous British children's story. That said, Colfer really presents a take on the First Doctor that's very unique and quite at odds with Hartnell's personality. It was fun, but I am a little annoyed that with three different media tackling the 50th Anniversary (BBC eBooks, Big Finish-AudioGO audio collaboration & IDW's Comics) that two of the three Hartnell-era stories would tell pre-Series stories. Alas. I do look forward to the rest of them, especially with rumors of Neil Gaiman and JK Rowling down the pike!

I've stalled out a bit on Death in Winter, I'm finding it to be fairly boring (about 1/4 of the way through) and the writing to be a little flat.

 

[Thrawn]

Wasn't it? That level of quality stays, too, the whole way through. There might be 3 at most mediocre books in the DS9 series. It's pretty amazing.

I'm just about to start book two!

What's really amazing, is that many events took my by surprise despite them probably being talked about in the DS9-Typhon Pact books, which I read first!

EDIT: Thrawn, with Section 31: Abyss, am I to expect an edge-of-my seat adventure, as the description sounds?

Oh yes, I'd say that's just about right.

 

[Cap'n Crunch]

I finished Star Trek: Mere Anarchy yesterday. Then I read Rightful King, a short story ebook tie-in to Call of Duty: Black Ops II, that I got free for pre-ordering the game from Amazon. It was pretty horrible, it was like reading something written by a middle-schooler and it didn't really add anything to the story of Black Ops II. I'm now reading Star Trek: The Lost Era: The Sundered.

 

[Markonian]

Yesterday, I finished The Next Generation: Kahless. Except for the misspelling of bat'leth it was an enjoying read. It was thrilling to dive into Klingon mythology and to have a historical setting within Star Trek.

I wonder whether it is still part of the current continuity? While the events themselves fit neatly, the revelation about the truth of Kahless should have more lasting repercussions one would think.

Without taking a break, I began The Left Hand of Destiny, Booke One. After the duology, I'll finally read Diplomatic Implausibility and the subsequent GKN/KE series.

 

[Christopher]

Yesterday, I finished The Next Generation: Kahless. Except for the misspelling of bat'leth it was an enjoying read.

Well, the spelling of that word has changed over the years. Originally it was supposed to be batlh'etlh, a mashup of the pre-existing Okrand-Klingon words for "honor" and "sword." Since that's a tongue-twister for English speakers, it ended up being pronounced "bat-leth" onscreen -- yet somehow the early scripts and reference sources rendered it as "bat'telh." It was a number of years before the official sources started writing it as "bat'leth" to match the pronunciation -- probably not until the 1997 edition of the Encyclopedia came out. So at the time Kahless was written, the "bat'telh" spelling was officially "correct," even though it made no sense.

 

[Garrovick]

Currently Reading:
Indistinguishable From Magic by David McIntee
Game of Thrones by George R. R. Martin
Imzadi by Peter David
Metamorphosis by Jean Lorrah

Over the last week, I completed:
Typhon Pact: Paths of Disharmony by Dayton Ward
Typhon Pact: The Struggle Within by Christopher L. Bennett
Dragon's Honor (TNG #38) by Kij Johnson and Greg Cox
The Better Man (TOS #72) by Howard Weinstein
Rules of Engagement (TOS #48) by Peter Morwood
A Roch and a Hard Place (TNG #10) by Peter David
Killing Kennedy by Bill O'Reilly

I just have to say, Dragon's Honor was the funniest ST book I read since How Much For Just The Planet?

 

[Markonian]

Well, the spelling of that word has changed over the years. Originally it was supposed to be batlh'etlh, a mashup of the pre-existing Okrand-Klingon words for "honor" and "sword."

[snip]

Thanks for the explanation, I didn't know that!
I'm not proficient in Klingon but this also explains the name of Emperor Kahless's flagship IKS Batlh in STO: Fek'Ihri Return Ep.2: Destiny.

 

[Greg Cox]

I just have to say, Dragon's Honor was the funniest ST book I read since How Much For Just The Planet?

Thanks so much! That's not a book I hear much about anymore, so I'm genuinely tickled to find out that people are still enjoying it. I'll have to tell Kij.