The Buried Age: My thoughts

[Christopher]

Trent Roman said:
While we're on the topic... Christopher, I really enjoyed The Buried Age overall, but I have to say, I've read biology textbooks more alluring than than the bed scenes.

Hm. Well, there's no accounting for tastes, but I find that a bit surprising, because writing that first scene with Picard and Ariel was a very visceral experience for me. I got caught up in the emotion of it and let the words write themselves, and barely touched it thereafter. It was as close as I've come to writing poetry. Well, there have been times I've actually written poetry of sorts (such as Spring Rain's dialogue in Ex Machina), but this felt more like writing poetry.

And did I have more bed scenes, plural, than that? I had a few "before" and "after" scenes here and there, some brief mentions of encounters that had taken place, but I don't recall actually depicting the event in progress anywhere else.

 

[JWolf]

Why is it we see Captains, Commodores, and Admirals and no ranks in between? And Why is it that we have Captains jumping up from Captain to Admiral with usually no stop in between? It doesn't make a lot of sense.

 

[TJ Sinclair]

^Only if you're not familiar with real Naval ranks. There are no ranks in between Captain and Admiral (or more specifically, the lowest level of the Admiralty).

 

[wizkid]

Trent Roman said:

wizkid said:
What the heck is it with sex scenes these days in Trek literature. Sure, it happens in life, a lot even. To me, insinuating the act happened or will happen is fine, much like Riker, and Yar/Data in the shows. Going into more detail than that is not productive to the stories in my opinion.

Insinuation is still par for the course. Even the so-called sex scenes are either just before or just after the act; it's not as if we have blow-by-blow descriptions or erotica here. As for why, a better question is: why not? Trek fiction has been granted the flexibility to do a lot of what the televised series could not or would not. Serialized adventures, character arcs, grand vistas, universe-altering events, all of which have, by and large, improved the book line and enriched the universe. So why not take the opportunity and go beyond what the neo-Puritanism of network TV allows in terms of sexuality? I'm all for it.

While we're on the topic... Christopher, I really enjoyed The Buried Age overall, but I have to say, I've read biology textbooks more alluring than than the bed scenes. On the other hand, I conceed that those kinds of scenes are hard to do, even when not stepping around censors... Too graphic, and it might come across as vulgar, or present merely to titilate the fanboys; too clinical, and none of the passion comes across (which was the case here); too metaphorical, and one risks straying into axphysxiating purple prose of the Anne Rice variety. It's a challenge, to be sure; all the more so for the infrequency with which genre writers pick up the gauntlet.

Fictitiously yours, Trent Roman

[/QUOTE]

Why not is not a better question but a question equal to why. ;-) I do agree with your take on how it is hard to a passionate scene and please everyone.

Christopher said:

Thanks. I tried to be thorough in my research, since I'm no fan of the shaky courtroom procedure in most works of fiction I see.

The Guinan story was great and I was hoping to find out if there were any books out that dealt with Picard and her past besides this one.

The only other one I can think of is Stargazer: Oblivion, which depicts their first meeting.

Thanks! I will check that out.

Christopher said:
TNG established that Picard hand-picked Riker, Tasha, and Geordi. So it seemed to me that it stood to reason that he was able to hand-pick other members of his command crew as well. I wanted this to be a book that was partly about how the TNG command crew came together, sort of an origin story.

Besides, it makes sense that he would've known Deanna previously, since he's a very private man and wouldn't be comfortable opening up to just anyone. And it just seemed to me that he and Data must've had a prior relationship, given their closeness.

As for Q's appearance, I included that to address the question: why, out of all the places and times in history, did Q choose the Enterprise-D's maiden voyage to Farpoint Station as the moment when he'd challenge humanity's right to travel the stars? I mean, they'd already been out there for 300 years at that point, and had colonized hundreds of worlds. What, it took an omniscient race that long to notice humanity's existence? And we learned later that some Q, such as "Quinn" and Amanda Rogers's parents, have encountered humanity before, making that even less comprehensible.

At the time "Farpoint" was written, apparently the idea was that the Q lived in that region of space and the E-D was intruding on it. But later episodes elaborated upon them as these near-godlike beings living in a separate plane of reality, so in retrospect the premise of "Farpoint" doesn't make a lot of sense.

So I figured there had to be a reason why Q would've chosen that particular moment to test humanity, and why he fixated on Jean-Luc Picard in particular. And wouldn't you know it, I had a story in which Jean-Luc Picard became involved in matters that affected one of the higher races of the cosmos, the sort of thing that would attract the Qs' attention to a hitherto insignificant species. It seemed a perfect fit. (Plus it gave me a chance to do my bit about why they call themselves the Q, which I’d been dying to use for years.)

After sleeping on this the appearances and reason why Q chose Picard have grown on me. So, point taken.

Christopher said:
As for Janeway, all I can say is, I like her. Not so much the later Janeway of the Braga years, but the more nuanced, thoughtful, consistently written Janeway of the Piller/Taylor years. Plus, I like science officers, so I wanted to see Janeway as a science officer. This book was in the right time frame for that, so voila.

I guess we will differ here. I can take her in small doses but I can’t see her or don’t like to see her as hot stuff. Obviously, the TV series gave me that opinion since I don’t read Voyager.

Conclusion
This book gets a 3 out of 5 because it was not such as easy read in the middle third. I also thought that the time period covered was too long for the book, but like you stated above, I would probably be saying the opposite if it were shorter. I am just surprised PocketBooks let you go that long on a time period. Seems almost like they are shortening their time frame they can write in but that is a different subject.

Christopher said:
I'm not sure what you mean here. As for the time period covered in a single book, remember that this was conceived as a Lost Era project (though it ended up being presented more as a TNG book), and one of the books in that series covered 18 years. Plus we've had books like A Stitch in Time, Mosaic and Pathways that covered decades.

I just meant I have not read a TNG book that covered so many years. It was an observation put under the conclusion and not meant to be a complaint. I apologize if taken as such. It would have made more sense to me as a Lost Era book now that you mention it. However, if it had TNG plastered on it I would go for it because the fiction has become some small for TNG I will read anything I can get my hands on.

Christopher said:
And Pocket didn't "let" me cover that whole period, they asked me to. My assignment was to do a book filling in the gap between the Stargazer and the Enterprise. Now, if I'd chosen to focus on just one part of that 9-year gap, I'm sure that would've been okay too if the story had been right, but there was certainly no resistance to the idea of covering the entire interval. (I only regret I couldn't bring it right up to the opening scenes of "Encounter at Farpoint," but that would've made a very feeble ending to the book.)

Thanks for the insight. Again, I was more interested in making an observation to the inner workings of Pocket Books and no .

General Trek rant to Pocket Books
What the heck is it with sex scenes these days in Trek literature. Sure, it happens in life, a lot even. To me, insinuating the act happened or will happen is fine, much like Riker, and Yar/Data in the shows. Going into more detail than that is not productive to the stories in my opinion.

Christopher said:
Well, that's a matter of taste, and you can't please everyone. Personally, I'd like to see less violence in my fiction, and would be content to see it implied. I find it odd that so many people in our culture find violence more acceptable than the depiction of two people expressing affection and sharing pleasure. But that's just me.

I agree, I am not a big fan of the violence either. Both sex and violence have their place in Trek, but to me, it should be minimized. I missed the Vanguard posts and I think I will keep it that way for now because it seems people are pretty pissed on both sides.

The Inner Light and the best shows ever made had no sex involved (in my opinion).

Christopher said:They also had no singing and dancing, but that doesn't mean that singing and dancing make for a bad story. I find this statement a complete non sequitur. The quality of a story is not determined by the inclusion or exclusion of a single factor.

Correct, the quality of a story is dependent on many things. But, the quality can be diminished by a single factor. I am not saying your inclusion of one minor passion scene was bad, I guess I should have filed that general rant under another post.

That doesn’t mean we can’t have it, it just means, I am accustomed to the books being more true to the TV series and less on the dramatics in the books when it comes to this subject.

Christopher said:True to which TV series? TOS was a very sexy and risque series for its day, constantly pushing the envelope on skin and sexual content, sneaking everything they could past the censors. If TNG had continued in the same vein, it would've been as adult and pseudo-explicit as NYPD Blue was. Indeed, in the first season there's a lot of sexy stuff -- flirtation between Picard and Beverly, Tasha sleeping with "fully functional" Data in the second episode, Ferengi innuendo about female nudity in "The Last Outpost," naked Betazoid weddings and Lwaxana teasing Picard about his erotic fantasies in "Haven," the hedonistic and sexually uninhibited Edo of "Justice," etc. The show did become rather more sedate about such things later on, but that was more due to its becoming a successful, "establishment" show and thus pressured to be less daring, rather than being an intrinsic quality of the show. If TNG had continued in the vein of the early first season, it would've been a much sexier show.

And of course DS9 was a much sexier show. And ENT tried to be as well, though it did so in a more juvenile, prurient, and awkward way. Overall, though, there's no reason why Star Trek and sexiness can't go together.

If it is not obvious, I was talking about being true to TNG. I feel I hit a nerve here on this subject and that was not my intention.

Some of these books today are over the top for kids to be reading. Just my opinion here and I don’t expect a fight to break out over this.

Christopher said:
Well, they aren't exactly written at a grade-school reading level to begin with. Nobody ever said Star Trek was a kids' series -- at least, nobody involved with making it. Roddenberry created it to be an adult SF drama, an alternative to the juvenile sci-fi shows that dominated the airwaves at the time. TOS might look tame to us today, but I'm sure plenty of '60s parents sent their kids to bed to keep them from seeing scantily clad green animal women and stories about Vulcan mating rituals.

By the same token, Trek novels are written with adult readers in mind, and ideally it's up to parents to gauge their appropriateness for their kids (or for themselves). Trek novels as a whole are a lot less adult than a lot of original SF, with less explicit language and sex and generally less graphic violence, but they aren't G-rated, and some of us do choose to go in a more adult direction within those parameters. As for myself, the sexual content in my Trek fiction is relatively sedate compared to what you'd get in my original fiction.

The books may have a mature audience in mind so they should be in the mature section if that be the case. But as it stands, any 8 - 13 year old kid could walk in and buy any book in the sci-fi section and walk out with it. Whether they read the book or understand what is being said is another post to itself, it is still an option for them. I am not saying G-rate the books either. I will drop this one here as I feel we are taking away from your book we are discussing at this point.

I do look forward to your future TNG books, if any are coming up. I will be checking out any past TNG books you have written as well since I have taken a few years off. I left the original board with Diplomatic Immunity came out by Keith. So I have had a big break but am now back in the game.

 

[FatherRob]

TJ Sinclair said:
^Only if you're not familiar with real Naval ranks. There are no ranks in between Captain and Admiral (or more specifically, the lowest level of the Admiralty).

Well, there is the oft-forgotten (and perhaps suppressed) rank of Fleet Captain, established in TOS. Of course, Commodore and Rear Admiral (Lower Half) are equivalent ranks... so the only real Trek rank that would stand between Captain and either Commodore or Rear Admiral (LH) would be Fleet Captain.

We know Pike was a Fleet Captain... as was Garth of Izar. Beyond them, I can't think of anyone else who has borne the rank in televised Trek.

Rob+

 

[Christopher]

JWolf said:
Why is it we see Captains, Commodores, and Admirals and no ranks in between? And Why is it that we have Captains jumping up from Captain to Admiral with usually no stop in between? It doesn't make a lot of sense.

It's often assumed in fandom that the 23rd-century commodore rank was replaced between TOS & TMP with the rank of rear admiral (since we never heard of any commodores after TOS). Rear admiral is sort of a "one-star" rank, followed by vice admiral and then full admiral.

As for Father Rob's mention of "fleet captain," we don't know if that's an actual standardized rank, rather than a special title given in certain circumstances. Actually, in its original usage, "commodore" was not a formal rank either, but a title or honorary rank given to captains in certain contexts.

wizkid said:

Christopher said:True to which TV series? TOS was a very sexy and risque series for its day, constantly pushing the envelope on skin and sexual content, sneaking everything they could past the censors. If TNG had continued in the same vein, it would've been as adult and pseudo-explicit as NYPD Blue was. Indeed, in the first season there's a lot of sexy stuff -- flirtation between Picard and Beverly, Tasha sleeping with "fully functional" Data in the second episode, Ferengi innuendo about female nudity in "The Last Outpost," naked Betazoid weddings and Lwaxana teasing Picard about his erotic fantasies in "Haven," the hedonistic and sexually uninhibited Edo of "Justice," etc. The show did become rather more sedate about such things later on, but that was more due to its becoming a successful, "establishment" show and thus pressured to be less daring, rather than being an intrinsic quality of the show. If TNG had continued in the vein of the early first season, it would've been a much sexier show.

And of course DS9 was a much sexier show. And ENT tried to be as well, though it did so in a more juvenile, prurient, and awkward way. Overall, though, there's no reason why Star Trek and sexiness can't go together.

If it is not obvious, I was talking about being true to TNG. I feel I hit a nerve here on this subject and that was not my intention.

No, no hit nerves, just an in-depth discussion. And as I said, TNG itself started out being a pretty sexy show, so "true to TNG" isn't necessarily a monovalued concept. (I was leading in to the early days of TNG, after all.)

The books may have a mature audience in mind so they should be in the mature section if that be the case.

They are. They're shelved with normal fiction rather than in the "young adult" section. And if you compare Trek novels to a lot of the other books in the mainstream SF/fantasy shelves, let alone the mainstream fiction shelves in general, you'll find that the "adult content" in Trek books is generally pretty tame in comparison to a lot of the other stuff there.

But as it stands, any 8 - 13 year old kid could walk in and buy any book in the sci-fi section and walk out with it.

Which is why we tend to keep it relatively subdued. Really, the "sex scenes" in The Buried Age or Reap the Whirlwind or whatever are PG-13 level at most -- sure, there's nudity, but it can't be seen, and you won't find explicit descriptions of sexual anatomy or specific sexual acts. It's really little more overt than what you can find on prime-time network TV these days, and there's nothing to keep kids from watching that either -- except for attentive parents who communicate with their kids and stay involved with their lives and choices, or better yet, give them the knowledge and values they need to make good choices for themselves. As for myself, I also prefer to keep the profanity in my Trek fiction at a PG-13 level or lower.

I do look forward to your future TNG books, if any are coming up. I will be checking out any past TNG books you have written as well since I have taken a few years off.

This is my first work of TNG fiction, unless you count Titan: Orion's Hounds, which is sort of a TNG offshoot (since Riker and Deanna are in it). I do have a story in the TNG The Sky's the Limit anthology coming out pretty soon, and next year there's Greater Than the Sum, the fourth post-NEM TNG novel.

 

[TJ Sinclair]

FatherRob said:
We know Pike was a Fleet Captain... as was Garth of Izar. Beyond them, I can't think of anyone else who has borne the rank in televised Trek.
Rob+

There hasn't been. And I left out Fleet Captain because it's really not applicable in a TNG timeframe (unless an author really wants to be esoteric), and I didn't want to confuse the issue.

 

[RookieBatman]

Christopher said:
As for Janeway, all I can say is, I like her. Not so much the later Janeway of the Braga years, but the more nuanced, thoughtful, consistently written Janeway of the Piller/Taylor years. Plus, I like science officers, so I wanted to see Janeway as a science officer. This book was in the right time frame for that, so voila.

Janeway was the science officer and the first officer (mentioned upthread)? I have to say, this is one of the things I disliked about ENT, the insinuation (maybe not even intentionally) that the science officer is automatically the 1st officer. It probably wasn't even your intention to make comparisons to Spock in TOS, but I guess this is just a sensitive point for me. The ratio of instances where the First Officer is also the science officer to total instances where the First Officer isn't only the First Officer, is too high for my taste. I think the vastly greater percentage of First Officers (who didn't have that as a dedicated position) would most likely be Helmsmen, like in The Cage.
Sorry, nothing personal, just one of those things that gets me.

Christopher said:
Well, that's a matter of taste, and you can't please everyone. Personally, I'd like to see less violence in my fiction, and would be content to see it implied. I find it odd that so many people in our culture find violence more acceptable than the depiction of two people expressing affection and sharing pleasure. But that's just me.

On that, we have full agreement. I've known a number of very moral people, some of them pastors, even, who on the subject of uber-violent movies, have an attitude something like, "Yeah! Blood and guts and gore! YEAH! WOOHOO!" I really, really, don't understand that. I haven't done enough research into the psychological effects that intaking large amounts of violence in media has on people, so I couldn't confidently say that it's "evil" or not, but I certainly know that I find it quite distasteful, and highly unnecessary in most circumstances. And note that I'm not talking about a little light sprinkling of blood here and there; "16 Blocks" being a recent example that springs to mind; I can live with that. But other movies really just take it too far.
But since we're talking about books, I should point out that "too much violence" in books is quite a different thing. In that case, it's more about how much description is giving to the violent act or the suffering the person is undergoing. In Diane Carey's "The Great Starship Race," there's a scene where Romulans board a trading ship to capture some alien (I guess this will be minor SPOILERS, but it's nothing too integral to the plot), and someone sees them do it, so they decide to kill her so she can't tell. So they take her and instead of just shooting her and then hiding her in a closet, where she won't be found for days, they take her and lean her backwards over the oven and then unhook the microwave (or whatever's mounted over the oven), so that it'll fall and crush her skull. Now, first of all, the scene didn't make any sense. Like I said, if they had just shot her and stuffed her away, people would've known she was missing, but wouldn't have had reason to suspect her death. But instead, they clumsily fake her death by putting her in an unnatural position she wouldn't ever ordinarily be in, and then unfasten something so that it falls on her. This was immediately investigated and discovered to be non-accidental. So it was a weak plot point, IMHO, so that probably already rankled me about it, but the thing that really bothered me was that the author spent two or three whole pages describing what was running through this character's mind as the Romulans captured her, then held her over the stove, then the last moments before her skull is crushed in. It's not like this was a regular character, we only saw her once before. Why did there have to be so much time spent deeply describing her frustration, pain and eventual agony as she was being killed? If it had been a regular character (even just "regular" in that book), it would make more sense, since that's someone who we've come to know, and we'd probably want to read their last thoughts before their demise. But the last thoughts of a total stranger? Too much like a snuff film for me. That's really just not something I want to experience, especially when it's a weak plot point.
Sorry, I guess I had a lot of pent-up frustration. Christopher, is that the kind of violence in books that you think can sometimes be too excessive, or am I totally off the mark?

 

[Christopher]

RookieBatman said:
Janeway was the science officer and the first officer (mentioned upthread)? I have to say, this is one of the things I disliked about ENT, the insinuation (maybe not even intentionally) that the science officer is automatically the 1st officer. It probably wasn't even your intention to make comparisons to Spock in TOS, but I guess this is just a sensitive point for me.

Actually Janeway was second officer of the Mary Kingsley, a post she gained after rising through the ranks as a science officer. I needed her to be functioning as a science officer, but I had to reconcile this with Mosaic, which stated in Chapter 20 that Janeway was assigned a "command post" on a ship undertaking a 2-year survey of the Beta Quadrant. So I went with second officer instead and assumed that she still did a lot of oversight of the science work, kind of the same way Data did as second officer on the E-D even though he was never formally the science officer. I.e. it's not that science officer was necessarily her official post, but she more or less acted in that capacity due to her expertise in the field.

Christopher said:
On that, we have full agreement. I've known a number of very moral people, some of them pastors, even, who on the subject of uber-violent movies, have an attitude something like, "Yeah! Blood and guts and gore! YEAH! WOOHOO!" I really, really, don't understand that. I haven't done enough research into the psychological effects that intaking large amounts of violence in media has on people, so I couldn't confidently say that it's "evil" or not, but I certainly know that I find it quite distasteful, and highly unnecessary in most circumstances.

I don't think exposure to violent imagery makes people more prone or insensitive to violence, so long as they're reasonably well-adjusted and raised with constructive values. I mean, the excess of media violence has made me more sensitive to it over the years, not less. So it's got nothing to do with that, just with the odd double standard that somehow violent imagery is considered so much more wholesome and unthreatening than images of love and affection.

 

[RookieBatman]

Christopher said:

RookieBatman said:
Janeway was the science officer and the first officer (mentioned upthread)? I have to say, this is one of the things I disliked about ENT, the insinuation (maybe not even intentionally) that the science officer is automatically the 1st officer. It probably wasn't even your intention to make comparisons to Spock in TOS, but I guess this is just a sensitive point for me.

Actually Janeway was second officer of the Mary Kingsley, a post she gained after rising through the ranks as a science officer. I needed her to be functioning as a science officer, but I had to reconcile this with Mosaic, which stated in Chapter 20 that Janeway was assigned a "command post" on a ship undertaking a 2-year survey of the Beta Quadrant. So I went with second officer instead and assumed that she still did a lot of oversight of the science work, kind of the same way Data did as second officer on the E-D even though he was never formally the science officer. I.e. it's not that science officer was necessarily her official post, but she more or less acted in that capacity due to her expertise in the field.

Well, see, that's quite different. I don't have a problem with that at all.

 

[Baerbel Haddrell]

Christopher said:

I don't think exposure to violent imagery makes people more prone or insensitive to violence, so long as they're reasonably well-adjusted and raised with constructive values. I mean, the excess of media violence has made me more sensitive to it over the years, not less. So it's got nothing to do with that, just with the odd double standard that somehow violent imagery is considered so much more wholesome and unthreatening than images of love and affection.

I think what is most dangerous is parking children in front of the TV on their own and leave them alone with what they watch. Sometimes my daughter surprised us: When she was three she was terrified of the Lion King, so badly that we had to stop the DVD. But she had no problems whatsoever with the Hulk.

When you show a child violence it is important to keep in mind the context in which it is shown and to talk with him or her about it. I wouldn`t show a young child a more violent movie in which violence is shown for violence`s sake and most definitely not one in which violence is glorified. I would wait with such movies until the child is at least a young teenager. Jennifer watches pretty much what we do but there are still limits. For example, she can watch Doctor Who with us (not alone) but not Torchwood.

My opinion is that it is more damaging to show violence in an unrealistic, “clean” manner that looks sanitized and artificial. When I showed my daughter TOS for the first time I explained to her that these people (the “redshirts”) who just fell over are indeed dead in spite there are no marks on the uniform. I prefer the more realistic presentation of violence in later TNG and DS9. I think she is also understanding by now that dead means the person is not coming back which is of course the main difference in a video game.

Yes, I agree: I think with the right guidance media violence makes a person more sensitive to violence, not less. Jennifer is certainly developing the basics of understanding what is right and wrong. *touch wood* So far, so good.

 

[Christopher]

TrekMovie.com has posted a review of The Buried Age:

http://trekmovie.com/2007/09/02/book-review-the-buried-age/

 

[JD]

wizkid said:


The books may have a mature audience in mind so they should be in the mature section if that be the case. But as it stands, any 8 - 13 year old kid could walk in and buy any book in the sci-fi section and walk out with it. Whether they read the book or understand what is being said is another post to itself, it is still an option for them. I am not saying G-rate the books either. I will drop this one here as I feel we are taking away from your book we are discussing at this point.

Nothing personal wizkid, but this absolutely drives me nuts. I really don't understand why everyone always assumes that Trek has to be kid friendly, because IMO Trek has never really been a kid show. Sure it usuall stayed pretty PG but they still got into some fairly adult and complicated issues that kids really wouldn't get, enough so that it was obviously geared more twoards adults. So IMO it makes sense for the books to be the same. Plus I don't see where "8-13 year olds" being able to get ahold of Trek books, is any different from them being able to get ahold of anyother adult book. Unless they are in the YA section of you're bookstore, in which case you should probably talk to the stores managment about moving them.

 

[Christopher]

^^I think we might be running across a bit of a usage problem -- the way our society uses "adult" or "mature" both for generally anything that isn't aimed specifically at kids and as a euphemism for erotic or otherwise adult-only material. We should make it clear that when we say ST is adult fiction, we're speaking in the former sense. And really, as I said, even the ST books with the most sexual content are no more "adult" than prime-time TV or a PG-13 movie.

 

[Ronald Held]

A little too late to be incorporated into the novel:
ArXiv:0709.0676v1{astro-ph].

 

[Christopher]

Ronald Held said:
A little too late to be incorporated into the novel:
ArXiv:0709.0676v1{astro-ph].

Thanks. That meshes pretty well with my conjectures in TBA, since I did portray the debris disk around Adonis as being fairly dense, dense enough to have a well-defined ring system following planet formation.

 

[Ronald Held]

it did work out. I must admit that this book was hard to read in spots, because I would have to stop and think about whether the technical aspects were correct for this Universe, or the Trek one.

 

[Christopher]

Ronald Held said:
it did work out. I must admit that this book was hard to read in spots, because I would have to stop and think about whether the technical aspects were correct for this Universe, or the Trek one.

They were as close to being correct for both at once as I could make them.

 

[Smiley]

One of the things that impresses me about Christopher's novels is how much thought and care go into them. This book is obviously not written just for the paycheck. I love reading the annotations. I get a lot of the inside jokes and Trekkie references, but there are still some that go over my head, and it's fun to learn about the science, Shakespeare, and other background material.

I had just watched "The Wounded" before starting the last sections of TBA, so I really appreciated the dialogue about hating certain people becoming habitual and comfortable "like old leather."

There was so much done right, and a lot of it was touched on in this and other threads already. Picard's nine-year journey is a marvelous epic. Standout sequences are the court-martial, the university lecture, the interlude, and the epilogue.

TBA loses points with me for two things. First, Ariel's betrayal is fairly predictable (even without the giant clue in the back cover copy). The other is that the science and astronomy are relatively complex, and they sometimes just slow the story down rather than evoke awe and wonder. Personally, Orion's Hounds has a better balance of science and other elements.

TBA is one of the best Trek novels I've read all year; right now, only The Sorrows of Empire has bettered it. Of Christopher's Trek novels, I rank it second after Orion's Hounds, but they both get the same score.

9 out of 10

 

[Christopher]

^^Thanks for the comments!