Spoilers TF: Revelation and Dust by DRGIII Review Thread

[Scout101]

I've actually liked DRG3's books, just felt like this one was a 'miss'. Best case, he sacrificed too much of HIS book to try and make later books in the series work better, and took one for the team.

Still poor writing/plotting to not have SOMETHING for this book to do, a reason to exist. You need to do something to move things along even at a smaller level, while contributing to the overall arc. otherwise, the editors would have been better suited just tacking an extra chapter to the front of book 2 with the condensed version, because there's no reason for book 1 to stand alone, or even exist. If there's only enough plot for 4 books, don't make it a 5 book series...

 

[JeBuS]

Speaking of Rough Beasts, I had to go look it up, because it turns out, it was also entirely forgettable.

Rough Beasts was one of the worst books that I have ever read...I wish it were forgettable.

You'll just have to face it that it's down to taste. I thought Rough Beasts was great (as were its follow ups Plagues of Night and Raise The Dawn). Out of those first four Typhoon Pact novels I really didn't like Zero Sum Game and Seize The Fire. ZSG in particular seemed popular with other readers.

No doubt. I can't say that Rough Beast of Empire was bad, because I really don't remember it. After reading its description, I remember the main events, but that's all. I can't even say it was a bad book, because it apparently just leaked right out of my brain. RaD, in comparison, I shall remember.

I went back to take a look to see if I rated any of them, and it seems I forgot to rate Typhon Pact 1-4. That probably just means they were average reads. Plagues of Night, however, I gave just 2 stars and the review:

Spoiler: Short Review of PoN

Disjointed. That's the best way to describe this book. It's as though half the book was meant to fill in the cracks of the other books in the series. Reminded me of the Appendices of The Lord of the Rings.

But remember, I try to review each book as its own entity. Filling in the cracks is fine, in a serial novel. Not so much in a full novel.

Raise the Dawn I apparently gave 3 stars. So, maybe DRGIII's style is poor enough that I consistently get hung up on it. Can't say I ever noticed until now. Until now, I've never really noticed who wrote which Trek novel.

 

[Masiral]

I notice that people looking for character arcs and the like are looking in the DS9 part of the story. I think that part was setting up for the other 4 books. The Kira/Keev part is where the story of Revelation and Dust is, almost like Keev's story is Kira's "Far Beyond the Stars".

 

[JeBuS]

I notice that people looking for character arcs and the like are looking in the DS9 part of the story. I think that part was setting up for the other 4 books. The Kira/Keev part is where the story of Revelation and Dust is, almost like Keev's story is Kira's "Far Beyond the Stars".

So your argument would be that RaD was about Keev. I'm not saying I disagree with you, because that storyline was the only complete arc in the book, but I have to play devil's advocate here.

If RaD was about Keev, how did the other 3/4 of the novel advance the plot? I don't see that the rest of the book has anything to do with the Keev story. If that is the case, it makes the book even worse under the criteria of its critics, not better. The other portions of the book, having no bearing on the Keev plot, would best be used in the other novels of The Fall series in that case.

 

[Kertrats47]

Just posted my review. It is a difficult one to review without seeing the payoff in the rest of The Fall, but I enjoyed it. It definitely made me eager to read the next chapter in this series.

 

[Masiral]

I notice that people looking for character arcs and the like are looking in the DS9 part of the story. I think that part was setting up for the other 4 books. The Kira/Keev part is where the story of Revelation and Dust is, almost like Keev's story is Kira's "Far Beyond the Stars".

So your argument would be that RaD was about Keev. I'm not saying I disagree with you, because that storyline was the only complete arc in the book, but I have to play devil's advocate here.

If RaD was about Keev, how did the other 3/4 of the novel advance the plot? I don't see that the rest of the book has anything to do with the Keev story. If that is the case, it makes the book even worse under the criteria of its critics, not better. The other portions of the book, having no bearing on the Keev plot, would best be used in the other novels of The Fall series in that case.

First, I'd say that the Kira/Keev part was more like 1/2 the novel than 1/4.

The other portions are setup for the rest of The Fall - new DS9, Bacco, where are the characters now. Their character arcs are more character "a"s right now. The "r" and the "c" come in the later books, so their arcs are over the 5-book miniseries. And not every single bit of story is about advancing the plot - not every B-story is incredibly important.

 

[JeBuS]

First, I'd say that the Kira/Keev part was more like 1/2 the novel than 1/4.

The other portions are setup for the rest of The Fall - new DS9, Bacco, where are the characters now. Their character arcs are more character "a"s right now. The "r" and the "c" come in the later books, so their arcs are over the 5-book miniseries

The reason character arcs were brought up originally is because a claim was made that this was a superb character study. The rebuttal, of course, was to ask how it could be a superb character study if there were no character arcs. You can see that there is no arc here.

The next question was to the story arc. It was argued that this book needn't have a complete story arc of its own, because it was some sort of serial novel. This was proven wrong by the author's own words in the back-matter. DRGIII said that it is a full novel in a series of full novels, not a serial novel. The only way you can get away with not having a full plot and character arcs of your own is to have a serial novel, because it is then explicit that the full novel has been broken into pieces.

And not every single bit of story is about advancing the plot - not every B-story is incredibly important.

Not every portion of a book has to service the same plot. It would, however, be nice if most of this book serviced any plot. Now, before you go jumping down my throat for that statement, just think about my previous argument. The novel was missing its story arc. Events occurred, but serviced no plot. They were simply there, taking up pages.

From a literary perspective, this novel was poorly done. Not only did it not have a complete plot, it did not have character arcs, and it set up a hook that it did not payoff on.

 

[jaime]

See, the thing is, I like the authors other books. I love the literary ds9 for the most part. But this is half a book. My wife read a few typhon pact books and Destiny, and was going to use this as a jumping on point to become a regular reader....she isn't going to now. Stories like 'beyond the stars' work on tv because you can see familiar faces playing the prophet echo characters. They do not work in books because you can't. 'Our man Bashir' would be an awful book, a bond pastiche, but it works on tv because it's funny to see our familiar faces. The only equivalent in book form is to work within the setting of literature (something doctor who did well in its novels...the adventuress of Henrietta street for example) and tell the story that way. I am not sure that would work in trek literature except in the way some of the typhon pact books worked like the tng episode 'first contact' told from the alien perspective, or the...never-ending sacrifice I think it was...where we are in first person perspective with a character who is not one of our regulars. As it stands we get a clumsy underground railroad parable, starring not-kira, which whilst fitting with some of ds9s subjects, just doesn't gel with the story told back on the station. All for the orb fake out at the end....guess he's gonna go work in sector General, and an up replacing Bashir when he leave to go be with Dax after it turns out Sarina is section 31 (that's my conjecture, but am using it her to illustrate how much this book feels like massive set ups fir further in....I might be wrong, probably am, I hope I am not wrong because I pretty much don't like Sarina)

 

[Scout101]

Can certainly use this as a jumping in point, I'd just have her wait until a couple more books in the series come out.

It's not a 'bad, put it down in disgust' kinda book. And when you can keep reading the next one, may even be ok in that light. It's just bad (or really, just pointless) when viewed alone. Tough to describe that way, but that's the closest I can come. There's just really no reason it needed to be written that couldn't have been covered by making book 2 twenty pages longer. Or making all 4 books a little longer if you want to wedge a little more into the new first book.

 

[Sci]

Given how review threads usually go in here, the general tone and comments in this thread are a pretty good indication that it was not as well received as some of the previous books.

Don't mistake a few people talking more than others for a general consensus.

The fact remains that 2/3rds of the people here who rated it gave it a positive rating.

 

[JeBuS]

Given how review threads usually go in here, the general tone and comments in this thread are a pretty good indication that it was not as well received as some of the previous books.

Don't mistake a few people talking more than others for a general consensus.

The fact remains that 2/3rds of the people here who rated it gave it a positive rating.

By that metric, every TrekLit novel is the epitome of literary art.

 

[Zedferret]

-Description of new DS9
-Re-telling of the Emissary
-Meet the whole cast of DS9 again
-Galactically important event.

all intercut every other chapter with a mildly boring hard to relate to Bajoran backstory about Kira? Or maybe not, I'm still not sure. that pays off at the end with an appearance by somebody out of nowhere who might be known or important but I'm not sure because I have never heard of the character, and Kira meeting with some other character who I assume was in other books that I haven't read. (I've read a lot) These storys have no payoff, neither does the Bacco story or the Odo story. Or any story. It was an info dump. No wonder it's at 2.6/5 on amazon.

 

[Sci]

Given how review threads usually go in here, the general tone and comments in this thread are a pretty good indication that it was not as well received as some of the previous books.

Don't mistake a few people talking more than others for a general consensus.

The fact remains that 2/3rds of the people here who rated it gave it a positive rating.

By that metric, every TrekLit novel is the epitome of literary art.

Please don't put words in my mouth, as I claimed no such thing. The only "standard" I cited was the fact that a 2/3rds majority of reviewers here gave it a positive rating; this is an indisputable fact.

EDITED TO ADD:

Further, bear in mind that I cited this fact simply to point out to JD that he may well enjoy Revelation and Dust once he reads it, in spite of others' disenjoyment. I was not citing this to make any larger argument about literary quality.

 

[JeBuS]

Don't mistake a few people talking more than others for a general consensus.

The fact remains that 2/3rds of the people here who rated it gave it a positive rating.

By that metric, every TrekLit novel is the epitome of literary art.

Please don't put words in my mouth, as I claimed no such thing. The only "standard" I cited was the fact that a 2/3rds majority of reviewers here gave it a positive rating; this is an indisputable fact.

I don't think I did. I simply pointed out that saying 2/3rds of the reviewers here is quite a meaningless statistic. The audience here is biased. I think we all realize that.

 

[Sci]

By that metric, every TrekLit novel is the epitome of literary art.

Please don't put words in my mouth, as I claimed no such thing. The only "standard" I cited was the fact that a 2/3rds majority of reviewers here gave it a positive rating; this is an indisputable fact.

I don't think I did. I simply pointed out that saying 2/3rds of the reviewers here is quite a meaningless statistic. The audience here is biased. I think we all realize that.

Sure -- we're a self-selecting group that's already prone towards enjoying Star Trek novels. Which means that JD may well enjoy the book anyway, irrelevant of others' disenjoyment.

Besides, novels are not enjoyed objectively. Enjoyment is an inherently subjective experience; it's not like we're measuring barometric pressure.

 

[Captain Clark Terrell]

Besides, novels are not enjoyed objectively. Enjoyment is an inherently subjective experience; it's not like we're measuring barometric pressure.

Nor are we measuring genital size. But that hasn't stopped certain posters from insisting that theirs is bigger simply because they say so.

--Sran

 

[JeBuS]

Nor are we measuring genital size. But that hasn't stopped certain posters from insisting that theirs is bigger simply because they say so.

--Sran

Consider me suitably chastised if that's the way I came off. I was just trying to have an interesting literary discussion.

 

[Captain Clark Terrell]

Consider me suitably chastised if that's the way I came off. I was just trying to have an interesting literary discussion.

Not to worry. I wasn't talking about you.

--Sran

 

[Scout101]

Given how review threads usually go in here, the general tone and comments in this thread are a pretty good indication that it was not as well received as some of the previous books.

Don't mistake a few people talking more than others for a general consensus.

The fact remains that 2/3rds of the people here who rated it gave it a positive rating.

Are you intentionally misunderstanding? I simply used the same metric you're using. I'm not really referencing the thread itself, just comparing the numbers you used to the ones other books here have gotten.

You hold up 2/3rds positive as proof of good quality (or opinions, I suppose), I'm pointing out that the Trek books here usually seem to do in the 85-90% positive, so when those same people are 'only' rating this one 66% positive, it's STILL saying something. It just looks weird because we're all Trek fans and forgive a certain amount, so the floor for voting is usually a lot higher. Anything that doesn't intentionally suck will get at LEAST 50% thumbs up here

Last two threads I could find were for an ENT book and a TOS book. They got 87% and 73% as above average or higher, by comparison. The TOS book also had 20% that went average, so not much left for the below average or poor options. Same voters, for the most part. If this one's doing worse, doesn't that say something?

 

[Elias Vaughn]

Besides, novels are not enjoyed objectively. Enjoyment is an inherently subjective experience; it's not like we're measuring barometric pressure.

Nor are we measuring genital size. But that hasn't stopped certain posters from insisting that theirs is bigger simply because they say so.

--Sran

Can I get in on that? Because My junk is amazing.