SPOILER ALERT -- Review Myriad Universes: Infinity's Prism

how much is 'too much'?

 

That's for me to know, and you to find out.

 

Well, for my part and truth be told, when it's proffered in such fashion, I have no choice but to let my hands play across my keyboard like a master musician, and see what happens.

 

Please... I'm being decimated with laughter...

 

But be carefull, you don't want to sparks to start flying out of your keyboard.

 

you forgot 'picayune'...

 

^If you picayune-ose, it'll bleed.

davidh

 

Good one.

 

You can picayune friends
And you can picayune-ose
But you can't picayune friend's nose.



(You know what? That was horrible....even for me.)

 

Hang on a minute. I'll think of some more Eav'oq jokes.

 

I terms of Khan being the best of the Eugenic Leaders. Best does not mean nice historical I could say that Italy of WWII was the best of the Axis powers without the genoside or as gross of War crimes as either Japan or German yet that does not mean that Italy was a nice country during the war

 

I finished Places of Exile last night, and it was probably one of the best Voyager stories I've seen or read. Reading this story, all I could think was that I wished the show could have gone more in a direction like this. I think in this one story alone we probably got a lot more development for a lot of the characters than they got in the entire seven years of the show. Now don't get me wrong, I do like Voyager, but I've always felt that there was alot of stuff that the show could and should have done, and I think you did alot of the kind of stuff I wanted to see in the story. Probably one of my biggest disapointments with the show was the fact that it seemed like once they got to a certain point, it pretty much turned into the Doctor/Janeway/Seven show. But you finally corrected that mistake in this story by giving us a lot of development for everybody, and not only that, but in most of the cases you actually took them in more interesting directions than they did in the show. I also really liked the way that you developed Species 8472, you took them from being pretty much just monsters, and actually gave them and name and culture, which I really liked. But not only did you do all of that, you did all of that in the midst of a very interesting story. I the ways that all of the characters, and the Coalition developed over the course of the story. I especially like getting to see the Voth again, IMO they really are great villains and I hope that we get to see more of them in the future. I really can't think of any more specific comments about story itself, other than to say that I really liked it.
So overall I would probably give it a 9.5/10.

 

Thanks very much!

 

Too much is never enough, except when it's just about right.

 

it's all too much for one James Bond!

 

This is my review of "Places of Exile". It contains spoilers:


When I watched Voyager I was never questioning the idea that Voyager should find its way home but I very much got fed up with it that the authors kept dumbing down the Borg and especially the Queen so that one single star ship that is not even that powerful can not only run away from them but even defeat them. I kept wondering why this ship so far away from home keeps looking like a clean shiny luxury hotel in which replicators produce everything, even flowers for holographic lovers. I was also wondering why not introduce allies and also use what TNG showed us, namely sentient Borg who would make the series so much more realistic and interesting. (The sentient Borg came eventually but much too late and not in a way I would have liked.)

When I read “Places of Exile” I kept thinking it is a shame that the Voyager TV series didn`t follow this direction. With one exception: I don`t mind some of the deaths in a “Myriad Universes” story but on TV, it would have been a different matter, at least to me. Nevertheless, I was very pleased how positive this story was. It is nice to read an alternate universe story that is for the most part uplifting and hopeful for a change.

Not only did Voyager find interesting allies in this story. It went so much further than that. When I read the last sentence, the request of the Delta Coalition to join the Federation of Planets, my reaction was “wow”. I could see how much further Voyager could have gone, further than I imagined. I was amazed and fascinated, I must admit that.

I found myself nodding and smiling at each open and not so open comparison between the Voyager “canon” universe and the one of “Places of Exile”. The development of this Janeway and Chakotay was what I hoped for until the arrival of Seven when watching the series. Kes and Neelix – same here, although the development of Kes went so much further than I imagined but I am very happy with it. B`Elanna`s journey was more painful, very much in character and understandable but still, also with a hopeful, positive ending. Seven or more accurately, Annika and Kim – I like it. I found the differences between “our” Seven and this Annika very interesting as well as a Kim who is competent and matured. Also the Doctor found a potential I wouldn`t have been able to imagine.

I am very impressed. This is one of the best Voyager stories I have read so far.

 

^^Thanks!

 

I finally got around to getting the two Myriad Universe books -- I needed something good to read in between Destiny books, and these shorter stories are great for that instead of tangling up another heavy serial in my head.

I just finished the "Places of Exile" and, while not being the biggest Voyager fan, I loved it. This is the way Voyager should have been -- so Christopher, when I found your annotations for the story and you said "I didn't want this timeline to be unambiguously better than the main one, so there had to be a serious cost", I'm sorry, but you failed. It is a lot better Killer job.

One thing did stick out to me that made me laugh: When Janeway is explaining some technobabble to other folks in the Coalition, she says this:

"That energy creates a force of expansion that counters the tendency of gravity to pull things together—a bit like the way heating the air in a balloon can make it expand."

Please tell me that was an intentional homage to Bender from Futurama: "like putting to much air in a balloon!"

 

^^No, it's actually a reasonably good analogy for the phenomenon in question. However, more generally in the novel, I was intentionally using that Futurama formula to make the technical talk accessible by adding familiar analogies, though for real rather than as a joke.

 

I've just read "A Less Perfect Union," and all I can say is WOW! Story is excellent, and the characters are dead on.
I honestly laughed my ass off at the mention of:

Spoiler: A Less Perfect Union

Vulcans suppressing the Russian Warp-five development efforts, back when Henry Archer was still in short pants.