I recently finished Diane Carey's Dreadnought as part of my read through of the ST "eighties novel continuity" and a month before that I properly read through the novelization of The Wrath of Khan (never quite managed it from beginning to end before). Khan was a pretty good book, for developing Saavik's personal history, a lot of interesting little additions. McIntyre had some interesting ideas about the Genesis team and would like to have read more about Vance Madison and Del March. I consoled myself with the thought that maybe their Kelvin-universe counterparts have longer lives and more of their kind of whimsical, everyday adventures.
I knew going in to Dreadnought some of the criticisms the book catches flack for. And so, forewarned, I felt ready. And it worked out ok. I can see how the character of Piper is a target for being labelled a Mary Sue, and I saw some of the author's intentions to speculate about what Kirk might have been like early in his career as well. Don't really care about the argument that much, Piper is quite annoying at times. There was a problematic section of a few pages where Piper preaches and her Vulcan tagalong sychophantically enables her with one word affirmations after a paragraph or two's worth of monologuing. Later Piper compounds her sin by demonizing the rogue vice-Admiral for sermonizing...was Diane Carey trying to be ironic about Piper's flaws? Despite Piper's problems, Dreadnought still managed to be a fun space opera adventure.
I was struck by how much Dreadnought seems to be a predecessor of the first two Kelvin timeline ST movies. I liked Piper's journey from a cadet who crashes the test simulation, to getting thrown into an emergency situation where she accumulates an entourage of colleagues that sometimes help her and sometimes conflict with her, with the story ending with her in the chair, figuring out how to command a starship and save the day. It boggles the mind how much of Into Darkness is there, too, with a rogue admiral, corrupt elements in Star Fleet, and a new super-Starship (that's called a Dreadnought, no less) that is going to be used to start a war in order to justify the consolidation of a repurposing of Starfleet and the Federation.
Anyway, enjoying my read through of the "eighties novel continuity" books, even though it's slow going for a slow reader.
