Spoilers TF: Revelation and Dust by DRGIII Review Thread

[Paris]

I'd stayed away from this thread until I was done with the book, common sense and all, and i just finished it last night. I voted above average, but would have voted for something higher if there was a level between Above Average and Outstanding. I'm a big DRG3 fan, but this wasn't my favorite of his works (Serpents Among the Ruins still holds the title ).

I thought it was a great character piece. At first I didn't really dig the Keev parts, but they really grew on me. I could piture the surroundings and the people and the small pay-off at the end was cool. I can't wait for the next four books in this run, and i'm curious how they'll all tie together.

I remember when i was reading a description of the whole event. It said the all five books take place over a 60 day span. This book was only a week and a bit, so we have plenty more to read about.

I'll miss Nan . She was one of my favorite ongoing lit-only characters, and her absence will be felt deeply. I felt especially bad for Leonard Akaar, especially after reading about how he truly felt about their friendship.

I think DRG3 did a superb job and can't wait to see where the narrative goes next, even if he's not the one to write it. DS9 FOREVER!

 

[Hartzilla2007]

Rather, when Star Trek Online was created in 2009-10, its creators deliberately chose to contradict the direction the novels had already been going in for years. It borrowed some ideas and characters from the novels, like Titan and President Bacco, but it disregarded most of the DS9 post-finale series, the events of Destiny and the surrounding books, the novels' prior portrayals of races like Species 8472, and so on. STO chose to be a separate continuity from the start, and it and the novels have both been charting their own independent courses.

Fair enough. I wasn't entirely sure where the difference in courses had started. Do kinda note that they do seem to take an inordinate delight in doing everything in the reverse of how you seem to flesh out a lot of "seldom seen" species, ranging from 8472 in Places of Exile, to the difference between the "Elachi" and your portrayal of the aliens in A Choice of Futures. (Plus the crystalline entity and some other things I'm sure I'm forgetting)

While I can see some of it being necessary from the standpoint of making a video game (and I enjoyed it for a long while) it's disappointing because a lot of the Star Trekiness is sacrificed on the altar of combat mechanics. I get the sense they'll be doing something similar with the Voth soon.

^Yeah, STO has its own rather narrow set of priorities shaping how it develops its ideas. The books are able to be broader and more flexible, and don't have to interpret every race in terms of combat potential or whatever.

Actually I get the feeling Cryptic is going for a more TOS feel in Star Trek Online.

I mean the Federation and the Klingon Empire are back to mortal enemy status, the Romulans are back to being a minor power that can still screw up the Federation's day, the Terran Empire is back, one of the better cruisers in the game is the Soverign which at times came off as a Constitution-class update, one of their in planning STF's is supposed to be against a Khan expy (if it hasn't been scraped), heck originally in the tutorial one of the choices for your first bridge officer was a Vulcan science officer.

 

[Christopher]

^Sure, but they've also included Species 8472 as a major player, introduced the aliens from ENT: "Silent Enemy" (and given them a name and language, which makes no sense for a species defined by their absolute silence), etc. They're drawing on elements from every part of the franchise, because they have a large, immersive universe to build and they need material. And naturally they draw heavily on TOS because it and TNG are the most enduringly popular parts of the franchise.

But their priority from a story standpoint is to foment conflict and war, because they've chosen to make this a fighting game. So the way they use the species and governments they introduce is about generating combat scenarios. Whereas when the novels use those same species or governments, we have the option to develop them in other ways.

 

[trash80]

Just finished, very good book. I enjoyed the Keev parts after a slow start (mostly because at first it just seemed to get in the way of the DS9 parts) but i'm not certain yet if Keev and the other Bajora really existed or not...

As for the President, well shes the lit character i like least so i won't miss her (to paraphrase Weyoun)

I do miss the old DS9 though, it was different... alien... dangerous. The new DS9 just sounds like a gaudy Dubai megahotel.

 

[Sci]

Just finished, very good book. I enjoyed the Keev parts after a slow start (mostly because at first it just seemed to get in the way of the DS9 parts) but i'm not certain yet if Keev and the other Bajora really existed or not...

I think of Keev as being to Kira as Benny Russell is to Sisko.

 

[trash80]

Thats what i was thinking but then the arrival of one of the characters on DS9 threw me a bit.

 

[Mage]

Thats what i was thinking but then the arrival of one of the characters on DS9 threw me a bit.

Same here. I was fully expecting

Spoiler: SPOILER!!!

Kira to appear on DS9, so when she didn't and instead on of the people in her vision appeared the entire Kira-part got a new meaning to me. I'm extremely curious as to what is going on.

Also...

Spoiler: more SPOILERS!!!

Taran'atar. Appereantly, he died. And now he's back. To explain all that, they HAVE to do a backstory about the lost 4 years now, right?

 

[trash80]

I didn't know he had died to be honest i thought he had just returned to the GQ, which book is that in?

 

[Mimi]

I'm really hoping we might finally find out what happened to Even Odds. They were minor characters, but I really liked those guys.

 

[Shane Houston]

In DTI: Watching The Clock, Commander Juel Duncan traveled back to December 2381, to stop the assassination of Nan Bacco. He even doubled back on her timeline to have the double Bacco help him stop it. What was such a big deal in the following couple of years that Duncan had to come back and fix it if she was meant to die so soon afterward?

 

[Mage]

I didn't know he had died to be honest i thought he had just returned to the GQ, which book is that in?

No book as of yet, that's the problem. It's been hinted in the last few novels by DRGIII that something happened in the 4 years between The Soul Key and RBoE that involved the Even Odds and this character we speak off. Appereantly, this character died then. We don't know any of the specifics, only that it happened.

 

[Christopher]

Reports of his death were greatly exaggerated? It's been known to happen.

 

[Masiral]

In DTI: Watching The Clock, Commander Juel Duncan traveled back to December 2381, to stop the assassination of Nan Bacco. He even doubled back on her timeline to have the double Bacco help him stop it. What was such a big deal in the following couple of years that Duncan had to come back and fix it if she was meant to die so soon afterward?

My guess would be the formation of the Typhon Pact and ensuring that there would be more of a cold war between the Khitomer Accords powers and the Typhon Pact powers.

 

[Edit_XYZ]

In DTI: Watching The Clock, Commander Juel Duncan traveled back to December 2381, to stop the assassination of Nan Bacco. He even doubled back on her timeline to have the double Bacco help him stop it. What was such a big deal in the following couple of years that Duncan had to come back and fix it if she was meant to die so soon afterward?

My guess would be the formation of the Typhon Pact and ensuring that there would be more of a cold war between the Khitomer Accords powers and the Typhon Pact powers.

More likely the fact that CLB did not know Bacco will be snuffed out soon afterwards when DTI was written.
Which is why cmdr. J Duncan even expressed admiration for Bacco's achievements - none of which, as it turned out, are significant enough to be remembered as exceptional after 600 years.

 

[Christopher]

In DTI: Watching The Clock, Commander Juel Duncan traveled back to December 2381, to stop the assassination of Nan Bacco. He even doubled back on her timeline to have the double Bacco help him stop it. What was such a big deal in the following couple of years that Duncan had to come back and fix it if she was meant to die so soon afterward?

That's not how it works. If history records things happening a certain way, then that's the way they're supposed to happen, as far as the Temporal Integrity Commission is concerned.

Besides, nobody exists in isolation. We interact with other people every day, and our presence affects their actions, which in turn affect the actions of others, etc. It's the domino effect. And someone with the power of the Federation President is going to make decisions that set a lot of dominoes in motion. Changing the length of that president's term in office, even by a couple of years, could change a great deal of the ensuing history, even if the key changes are quite a few dominoes down the line.

Bacco has made some important decisions in the interim, though. For instance, I doubt relations with the Romulans would be as good now if she and Praetor Kamemor hadn't pursued their talks. Who knows whether a different president would've been willing to extend that trust? Alternatively, a different president might've responded differently to the Breen's slipstream espionage attempt, and by now either the Breen would have slipstream or the Federation and the Pact would be at war.

 

[langdonboom]

readers have yet to witness all the steps she’s taken, since a period of time—roughly 2377 through 2380—has thus far gone undocumented in the DS9 novels. If the books continue to sell well, though, there is every chance that at least some of those developments will be explored in more detail somewhere down the road.

At the risk of beating a dead horse, I really cannot wait to read about this gap - though I have really enjoyed this most recent run of DS9 related books, I cannot help but be utterly jarred and frustrated every time some reference to this missing gap is invoked - and there are plenty of them! From Raiq in the monastery, to Odo and the missing Founders, to Rebecca's kidnapping fallout, etc to the 'death' of Taran'atar and why he attacked Ro, never mind what happened to Jake - all the emotional heft that these events that were set-up to be world-shaking has seemingly been drained out of them for me, and so have their ramifications since it just feels like a traumatic gap in my memory to come across their effects in the current context.

Its not that I don't like where the stories have taken everybody - I love that Kira's a vedek, I love that Odo is back in the Alpha Quadrant, I love that Sisko has found a new path post-Emissary, but I just feel that all of these developments are tainted because when I read about how they happened, I'm just reminded that I wasn't there to see it.

I almost wish there weren't so many references to these story ramifications, because its very clear that the author knows how important these plot events were in his descriptions of them in the most recent book or two, but it just jolts me out of the flow of this current story to be asked to absorb the importance of things like the Acendants, or the trip by Ghemor's double in to the wormhole, when I've been narrative jerked around as it were (as opposed to deftly disoriented in some sort of french-novel way, which a more deliberate time-jump might have allowed for).

Does anybody have any idea how well these DS9 books are selling? The sooner these storylines are told, the better for this reader. The notion that 'anything can happen' is gone out of them now, of course, but even still, I was so completely fascinated by the idea of another race who worshiped the prophets somehow on the other side of the worm hole, and by the idea of a planet-sized changeling (and I'm sure I've forgetting a few other things left dangling...), etc.

 

[Elias Vaughn]

to the 'death' of Taran'atar and why he attacked Ro, never mind what happened to Jake

We know both of these.

Spoiler: Taran'atar and Jake

Taran'atar was under the control of Intendant Kira when he attacked Ro, and Jake met and married Karena on Bajor in, I believe, one of the Worlds of DS9 books.

I'm assuming that's the Jake thing you're referring to, anyway.

 

[langdonboom]

to the 'death' of Taran'atar and why he attacked Ro, never mind what happened to Jake

We know both of these.

Spoiler: Taran'atar and Jake

Taran'atar was under the control of Intendant Kira when he attacked Ro, and Jake met and married Karena on Bajor in, I believe, one of the Worlds of DS9 books.

I'm assuming that's the Jake thing you're referring to, anyway.

Yes, that's right, thank you. I forgot about just how and why Taran'atar was being affected - was that in Warpath? And I forgot exactly where Jake was at the end of Warpath/Soul Key - wasn't he on the Even Odds?? Its definitely been a while, but the thing I definitely recall s being excited about where it was all going! Still dealing with a serious case of plotus interruptus.

 

[Mimi]

It definitely is frustrating not to know what happened. I do applaud them for shaking things up a bit- most people would simply write [four?] years in the future as though nothing had changed. They clearly have some idea about what went on in those missing years, as there's references to it all the time.

It seems that in the recent interviews they've teased the idea of revisiting that time period. I'm not sure if this has any bearings as I'm relatively 'new' to the fandom, but DS9 seems to have grown in popularity thanks to streaming sites like netflix.

This book was listed as one of the top selling trek books on amazon for a little bit, although I'm not sure if that's simply a weekly list or an all time list. Hopefully that indicates its done well.

 

[Christopher]

^Amazon's top-seller lists are updated hourly. It's sort of a mix between up-to-the-moment and cumulative data.