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Sword of Damocles -- comments & opinions ****SPOILERS*****

Re: Sword of Damocles -- comments & opinions ****SPOILERS***

I presume a variation of Tuvok's uniform as depicted on the cover of THE RED KING.
 
Re: Sword of Damocles -- comments & opinions ****SPOILERS***

Yeah, thats what I thought it would be but the description confused me.

They could have had a change just before they set off into the unknown after Red King???
 
Re: Sword of Damocles -- comments & opinions ****SPOILERS***

RedJack said:

I will take your crits under advisement in terms of future Trek work, should any come my way. I certainly don't like to have ANY of my readers confused or left with impressions I didn't intend which seems to have happened here. That's my fault, of course. Next time, better clarity.
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Thank you for your interesting comments. I hope I wasn`t too harsh but I also thought, especially because you asked for detailed reviews, it is better to be open and honest.

As I said, although I wasn`t happy with some aspects, I certainly enjoyed others. I am hoping you will be writing more Star Trek in future.
 
Re: Sword of Damocles -- comments & opinions ****SPOILERS***

I, too, had always presumed the Luna was destroyed.
 
Re: Sword of Damocles -- comments & opinions ****SPOILERS***

Baerbel Haddrell said:
RedJack said:

I will take your crits under advisement in terms of future Trek work, should any come my way. I certainly don't like to have ANY of my readers confused or left with impressions I didn't intend which seems to have happened here. That's my fault, of course. Next time, better clarity.
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Thank you for your interesting comments. I hope I wasn`t too harsh but I also thought, especially because you asked for detailed reviews, it is better to be open and honest.

As I said, although I wasn`t happy with some aspects, I certainly enjoyed others. I am hoping you will be writing more Star Trek in future.
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No prob.

We're all fans of this stuff. We all have our versions of what's "right" for Star Trek. As long as people are honest about their enjoyment or lack of enjoyment I'm fine with all of it.

It's supposed to be for fun. And for me SoD very much was. I do hope to get at least one more shot at Star Trek. There are lots of fun things going on in the lit-verse and no possible way to get to them all.

(and I'm glad people like Modan. She's awesome)
 
Re: Sword of Damocles -- comments & opinions ****SPOILERS***

RedJack said:
I presume a variation of Tuvok's uniform as depicted on the cover of THE RED KING.
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So their just wearing the TNG movie/DS9 era uniforms then right?

I must edmit to being very intrigued by these comments about the story jumping around in time, because I've always loved stuff like that for some reason.

And I'm dying to find out what Jaza's fate is. So I guess I need to get back to reading soon.
 
Re: Sword of Damocles -- comments & opinions ****SPOILERS***

I just finished it, and my complements to the Author. I really enjoyed the way you flushed out the interior of the sensor pod, it is pretty close to how I imagined it myself. You sure now how to wreck a starship. Great work.
 
Re: Sword of Damocles -- comments & opinions ****SPOILERS***

^YAY. Now, back on your feet, Doc. you have more ships to design.
 
Re: Sword of Damocles -- comments & opinions ****SPOILERS***

Okay, my review of SOD now.

Like others, I'd say good, not great. I really don't want to offend Geoffrey, but I didn't find myself getting along with it quite so much. I certainly wouldn't go so far as to say "bad," nowhere near the loathing people are having for Before Dishonor.

Tech-wise, I was one of those who found it a little difficult to follow at times. I could kinda-mostly figure out what was going on, if I stopped to think about it, but I don't think I should have had to stop to think about it. Complex and scientific is all well and good as long as it's eventually boiled down to tesseracts-for-dummies.

Having said that, I saw echoes of many TNG and VOY plots in the tech aspects. Many of the concepts here have been used before - When the Bough Breaks, Meridian, Blink of an Eye, Parallax and quite a few others occurred to me. They're just all combined in new ways.

Character stuff was great. I thoroughly enjoyed the friction at the beginning and throughout. It was no mystery to me what Troi and Riker's argument was about - it was well written and presented, but it was no mystery. The baby was after all the very last character point the pair was left with at the end of Orion's Hounds, so it made sense that it would be the first point picked up on here. What I hadn't picked up on until it was pointed out was that Troi and Riker's friction was what was causing everyone else's friction by way of psychic bleed-out - or at least exacerbating it.

Jaza and Ra'Havreii - loved em. The bitching back and forth was good fun, especially as Ra-Havreii is becoming the love-to-hate character. Quite annoyed that Jaza has been effectively killed off - I thought he had a lot of potential as a character and was got rid of too soon in the series.

I got almost all of the un-named characters in the "found them" section, apart from one. Was Radowski making his move on Keru, at the end there? Because we know they caught each other's eye in Red King and I did notice that Radowski said "Keru and the others are back" when protocol should have had Vale first as the senior officer, which showed Radowski was worried about him.

What I did especially enjoy was, in amongst all the sound and fury, the fascinating treatise on the effects of religion, how belief in a benevolent (or otherwise) god affects the development of a culture for good or ill, and what happens when faith is shaken, and how it can be re-established. As a totally non-religious person, I found that insight quite intriguing.

I'm afraid I hit upon at least a dozen editing errors, mistakes the writer presumably made but the editor should have caught, and for some reason didn't.

* Torvig becoming an Ensign instead of a Cadet during his big Engineering scene.
* Jaza getting out of his chair on the shuttle, then getting out of his chair again in the very next line.
* Hriss being on the ghost-ship security team at beam-out, then Rriarr being there at arrival.
* Roakn's name spelled differently in two different places.
* Cethente's name spelled wrong in his one mention.
* Some others I'm forgetting at the moment.

Also, the POV character was muddled on many occasions. Half-way through a paragraph many times, the "inner dialogue" would suddenly be from a different character. We'd be in Tuvok's head at the beginning of the paragraph, then without any change suddenly we'd be in Riker's, for example. Or it simply wasn't clear whose head we were in at all.

So all in all, good but not great. On realizing you also wrote "Chiaroscurro" from Prophecy and Change, Geoffrey, I remembered that I didn't especially get along with that one either. I would never say it's because you're a bad writer, per se, because I don't think you are. Just that your style doesn't mesh with my own.
 
Re: Sword of Damocles -- comments & opinions ****SPOILERS***

Hmm

That's a thoughtful review and I take it as such. There were some errors, typos, that will be corrected should there be a second edition.

It doesn't make me angry at all when people don't enjoy some aspect of something I write. You can't please everyone and shouldn't try, really. I just want to be sure everyone is on the same page. Sometimes people have problems with things that aren't present in the text or miss things because they skipped over them rather than them actually being there.

As for the similarity to other paradox-related Trek stories, well, what can I say? Star Trek does paradoxes from time to time. The idea here was to do something that didn't end in a complete reboot and which would have actual lasting consequences for the crew. I really thought I had adequately explained the tesseract thing but, as it seems to be a bone of contention for a couple of people, it's something I'll look to in any future work, Trek or not.

I didn't lift the paradox idea from Star Trek or cobble it together from anything in the canon. I did take the inspiration from a classic scifi story but even that is pretty obscure and bears no resemblance to my treatment.

I do hope my name won't turn you off other projects. In both these cases I was trying to straddle "real" scifi with Star Trek as the others in the TITAN series did. For what it's worth, at the end of the day both Marco and I thought CHIAROSCURO would have been better served as a novel.

So, I'll take "good" over "hated it" any day. Thanks!

I'm VERY pleased that the faith stuff came through as that, too, was very much a reason for writing this thing. I myself am not a Believer but I have problems with people who are intolerant of belief as if the act of having faith is somehow substandard in every case. That's just not true and there doesn't need to be friction between Faith and Reason.

Plus, since you did enjoy the character stuff and that was the largest portion of the book, you may well find you liked it more than you think.

;)
 
Re: Sword of Damocles -- comments & opinions ****SPOILERS***

Oh, yes, I have no problem with going back and reading again in the future, and now knowing how the tech stuff works, I will probably enjoy it more the second time through.

Sooooo... who was that other un-named character? It goes Hsuuri and Dakal, Ra-Havreii and Y'Lira, Vale and Huilan, Riker Troi and Ree, and the don't-knows. I wanna know if Keru got some!
 
Re: Sword of Damocles -- comments & opinions ****SPOILERS***

:)

That's not for me to say.

edit:

To the person who PMed me, I tried to respond but the system wouldn't let me for some reason. So my responses are, "Yeah. Pretty smart cookie" and "Wow. Cool."

And, of course, I'm interested in your own personal thoughts.
 
Re: Sword of Damocles -- comments & opinions ****SPOILERS***

"Sword of Damocles" (plus "Forged in Fire") was my holiday reading for my trip to Brisbane over Christmas/New Year. I was able to devote whole slabs of time to journey through both novels. I found they both moved at a great page-turning rate, and the authors managed to tick almost all my boxes of expectation.

A brief but welcome interlude with Pava (from the Paramount/Marvel "Starfleet Academy" comic) again this time, but the author managed not to indicate that she was actually an Andorian, IIRC.

I know many people like to complain that the Titan's crew diversity is a distraction, but I was riffling a regular novel the other day and the author was making no attempt to remind us about whether human characters were tall, short, dark, fair, old, young, strong or frail in most scenes, so I find that the "Titan" authors do make sure we remember inportant attributes of its unique cast of characters whenever necessary. Mostly.

Well done!
 
Re: Sword of Damocles -- comments & opinions ****SPOILERS***

Pava got a nod specifically because a fan of the TITAN series emailed me and asked that she please get some face time.

I loved the Academy comics and hope others do more with her than I did. Yay, Pava!
 
Re: Sword of Damocles -- comments & opinions ****SPOILERS***

RedJack said:
Pava got a nod specifically because a fan of the TITAN series emailed me and asked that she please get some face time.
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Yes, I know! They beat me to asking the same thing!

RedJack said:
and I'm glad people like Modan. She's awesome
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Hey, was Kory/Starfire of "New Titans" an inspiration? Not only tall and golden but weird eyes? I had her in my head, and then - what a surprise when the novel got going!
 
Re: Sword of Damocles -- comments & opinions ****SPOILERS***

RedJack said:
Pava got a nod specifically because a fan of the TITAN series emailed me and asked that she please get some face time.

I loved the Academy comics and hope others do more with her than I did. Yay, Pava!
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The same fan e-mailed me, and I was able to let him know that Pava will be seen again in the final book of the Destiny trilogy. I'll try to remember to mention that she's an Andorian shan.
 
Re: Sword of Damocles -- comments & opinions ****SPOILERS***

The inspiration for Ensign Y'Lira Modan and for Captain Y'Lira Medoxa (same creche, same basic attributes) is the lovely Angela Bassett. But, if you see Princess Koriand'r, by all means, consider hers to be the correct appearance.

That's the best thing about these books anyway. It's all in your miiiiiinnnnnnnd!
 
Re: Sword of Damocles -- comments & opinions ****SPOILERS***

David Mack said:
RedJack said:
Pava got a nod specifically because a fan of the TITAN series emailed me and asked that she please get some face time.

I loved the Academy comics and hope others do more with her than I did. Yay, Pava!
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The same fan e-mailed me, and I was able to let him know that Pava will be seen again in the final book of the Destiny trilogy. I'll try to remember to mention that she's an Andorian shan.
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Oh dear. I hope she makes it out alive! ;)
 
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