The Buried Age: My thoughts

[JD]

I just finishe The Buried Age on Thursday, and all I can say is wow. IMO this is deffinitely THE Picard book, it just does so much great stuff with the character. I know some people were complaining about all the cameo appearances, but that was one of my favorite parts of the book. I thought it was cool getting to see how he met some of these people, and also to see some of the people who he talked about that we never met. But, it also had some great original characters, especially the Manraloth. I deffinitely found it intersting to get to see things from their perspective, and understand why they did what they did.
So I think overall I would give it a 9/10. Great Work, Chris!

 

[Christopher]

^^Thank you!

 

[wizkid]

I just picked it up at BAM today after reading your review in the store on my iPhone. Has the amount of TNG books dwindled to nothing compared to 5 years ago or what?

I will get back with you, hopefully, I can finish this in a week.

 

[JD]

Well, we actually have three new TNG books (Resistance, Q&A and Before Dishonor) and TNG paperbakc reprint of a Harcover (Death in Winter), a TNG anniversary anthology (The Sky's The Limit) , a TNG six-part ebook miniseries (Slings and Arrows) and a 2 part TNG/ Corps of Engineers crossover (Rememberance of Things Past) coming out this year. So actually, I think this year we will be making up for the lack of TNG the past couple years. Part of the reason we haven't gotten as many TNG books lately is because of all the anniversaries, 2003 was DS9's 10th, 2005 was VOY's 10th, and last year was TOS's 40th.

 

[Christopher]

And this, of course, is TNG's 20th anniversary year. Hence the abundance of TNG-related material this year.

 

[JD]

Mine too, LOL. I was born exactly two weeks before TNG premiered. So I have litterally been watching Star Trek my entire life, because my parents were already into Trek when TNG started.

 

[AN_D_K]

Just read this book this weekend. Excellent again, Christopher!

He just has a knack of making aliens truly alien rather than Star Trek's generic 'knob-heads' (just like us, but with a trait brought to the fore ...yawn). There always seems to be a nice bit of research too into science, literature, etc. It all makes the whole thing a lot more fascinating adding the extra depth needed to give the book an extra few points in my opinion.

I thought the 'cameos' were very well done and the characters always added to the story rather than felt tacked on.

My only complaint is that the story took place over too long a course of time not allowing many other characters other than Picard to develop ...but there was no getting around this really.

 

[Christopher]

Thanks for the comments!

 

[JD]

I do have one quick question, was the stuff at the end with the black hole and the system it was in a set up for something? I don't know why but for some reason that was the impression I got. I'm not trying to say that was bad thing or anything, it just seemed that way to me.

 

[Christopher]

I'm not sure what could've given you the impression that it was a setup for something. It wasn't a setup; it was the payoff of the plot that had been set up earlier in the book. The black hole archive was the McGuffin, the object whose pursuit drove the story. The only reason it was near a star at all was because I needed to delay the Manraloth from reaching it, so it had to be surrounded by an obstacle such as an ion storm. The best scientific interpretation of "ion storms" is that they're coronal mass ejections from stars. I chose a blue star both because they're particularly hot and energetic (making a more potent storm) and because they're abundant in that region of space. And I just happened to stumble across that binary pair of blue stars while looking around the area in the Celestia space simulator (a 3D map of the known stars of the galaxy), and realized that two stars (and the interaction of their magnetic fields with the black hole) would give me an even more potent storm. There was no other intention for any of it except to serve the needs of this novel's plot. And to be cool, hopefully.

 

[TJ Sinclair]

I hate to be a dissenting voice among all those who love The Buried Age, and please don't take this personally, Christopher, but the book left me cold, on many levels. I'm sorry.

 

[JD]

Ok, guess I just got the wrong impression then for some reason. Like I said, I don't why I felt that way but for some reason I did. Oh and it was cool.

 

[Christopher]

TJ Sinclair said:
I hate to be a dissenting voice among all those who love The Buried Age, and please don't take this personally, Christopher, but the book left me cold, on many levels. I'm sorry.

That's okay -- no book works for everyone. And judging from the reviews on Amazon.com, this one's a bit more of an acquired taste than my previous ones.

 

[Ryan Thomas Riddle]

Christopher said:

TJ Sinclair said:
I hate to be a dissenting voice among all those who love The Buried Age, and please don't take this personally, Christopher, but the book left me cold, on many levels. I'm sorry.

That's okay -- no book works for everyone. And judging from the reviews on Amazon.com, this one's a bit more of an acquired taste than my previous ones.

I haven't read all the reviews but there was one that I thought was off-base since the reader missed the arc of Picard in the book. The reviewer had stated that this wasn't the Picard of the series, but he/she didn't pick up on the intention of the book to showcase how Picard became the man we knew in TNG.

Then again, when it comes to Treklit, I am a big supporter of Christopher's work even if I disagree with him occasionally here on this board.

 

[Christopher]

middyseafort said:
I haven't read all the reviews but there was one that I thought was off-base since the reader missed the arc of Picard in the book. The reviewer had stated that this wasn't the Picard of the series, but he/she didn't pick up on the intention of the book to showcase how Picard became the man we knew in TNG.

Yeah, that one struck me too. Of course it wasn't the Picard of the series -- that was the point.

 

[KRAD]

I haven't read all the reviews but there was one that I thought was off-base since the reader missed the arc of Picard in the book. The reviewer had stated that this wasn't the Picard of the series, but he/she didn't pick up on the intention of the book to showcase how Picard became the man we knew in TNG.

That's right up there with the review of my Serenity novelization that complained that it was "just a novelization of the movie." DUH!!!!

 

[Ryan Thomas Riddle]

Christopher said:

middyseafort said:
I haven't read all the reviews but there was one that I thought was off-base since the reader missed the arc of Picard in the book. The reviewer had stated that this wasn't the Picard of the series, but he/she didn't pick up on the intention of the book to showcase how Picard became the man we knew in TNG.

Yeah, that one struck me too. Of course it wasn't the Picard of the series -- that was the point.

It's stuff like that that has my scratch my head and say, "Did ya read the book?"

 

[JD]

I really think that some people must just see a book and start reading it without even knowing what they're getting into. Because I'm sorry, but that is about the only logical explanation I can come up with for those situations. I could never do that myself, I have to know what I'm getting myself into before I start, same thing with movies, TV shows, and video games.

 

[Who_Trek]

I read the "Buried Age" When I was home in America for a couple weeks, and thought it was fantastic (t was the first ST book I bought). I kinda wish that they had made it a Lost Era type spine, though, so it would fit in with the other books lookwise. And also, the cover looked almost exactly like "The Good That Men Do".

I also thought the word "smirk" was overused, but that's probably just me (for some reason, the word is like nails down a chalkboard to me). Otherwise, I thought it was a fantastic read, and look forward to the next book by Mr. Bennett.

 

[Defcon]

I have to say TBA is Christopher's weakest work so far in my opinion. It's still a good read, but nowhere near his usual quality.

One problem I had was that I had problems to picture the Picard in the book as the Picard between Stargazer (as seen in MJF's series) and the pilot of TNG. I can't really pinpoint why, it just didn't feel totally right.

Two questions :
When Picard abandoned the ship he still had contact to the computer, so why he didn't even tried to give the computer the order to purge the computer databanks? He couldn't be 100% sure that the ship would be destroyed before someone finds it, so at least he could have tried to protect the data from potentially dangerous enemies.

And related to the first question : Why wasn't that brought up in the trial? I would think the Federation/Starfleet wouldn't want an agressive alien race, as the Ferengi here at least seem to be, having the data with all coordinates of federation worlds and colonies, data about their technology, etc.