The Children of Kings

[ronny]

Meh.

I hate it when Trek books go through all the rigamarole of establishing a long-dead aspect of the history of some culture, only to totally destroy it and have it not matter at all in the end. ("Oh shit all the priceless historical artifacts got blown out the hull breach! Guess we won't be learning anything from that!") This book at least leaves part of the ending (the serum/Orion leadership) ambiguous, but unless this chick shows up leading the Orions again in Vanguard or something, it pretty much has to be a non-starter.

Plus, for being a novel set in such a big gap in Trek history, it did basically dick-all to give us any new information about either galactic affairs or particular characterizations. Spock's tendency towards run-on sentences was a joke more than a character trait and kind of dumb, and no one else exhibited any real characteristics of any kind. Even Boyce was sort of McCoy-lite. The Lost Era novels gave an incredible sense of the many decades of history through which they ran; this told me nothing at all.

All in all, the alternate universe aspects of it weren't interesting enough to be worthwhile, it also didn't tell us anything new about the prime universe, and the story was a giant dead end with some false ambiguity added on. I'm not the biggest fan of standalones in general, but even still I think this was a pretty bad one.

Inception, Unspoken Truth, and this have been a pretty uninspiring run of TOS novels. I am not very impressed.

Pretty much sums up my thoughts. Just didn't get into it much.

And the last line is sadly true. So far this year hasn't turned out that great for me for ST books.

 

[TenLubak]

The cover art showed Pike and Spock as were seen in (different era) TOS tho the uniforms didnt match the books timeline (as far as i know), the line about one the redshirted crewmen made wonder where is this taking place? It wasnt until the book was almost over that I stumbled upon the note that this takes place in the other universe, or could have....then i was really confused.
The relationship between Pike and Number One is very different than the one in Vulcans Glory.
This book is in its own little world which is fine, if I would have known about it going into the story it would have been nice. Because its just confusing without knowing that.
I liked it but didn't love it. One day I will re-read it, but now moving on to Star Trek : Voyager Unworthy. A historians note in the beginning would have helped.

 

[JD]

Why do you think a historian's note was necessary for Unworthy? I thought it was made pretty clear from both the back cover, and the book itself that it took place after Full Circle and Destiny.

 

[mbruno]

Why do you think a historian's note was necessary for Unworthy? I thought it was made pretty clear from both the back cover, and the book itself that it took place after Full Circle and Destiny.

He meant a historian's note for Children of Kings, not Unworthy.

 

[JD]

Are you sure? He did say it at the end after he mentions Unworthy.

 

[Thrawn]

His whole post was complaining about the lack of clarity of the era in which Children Of Kings took place. He was definitely talking about a historian's note for that book.

 

[JD]

Oh, my bad.

 

[ClayinCA]

I think there should have been an historian's note for TenLubak's post.

 

[TenLubak]

His whole post was complaining about the lack of clarity of the era in which Children Of Kings took place. He was definitely talking about a historian's note for that book.

Yea that whats what I was getting at...just alot of little things were off to me "redshirts" the realtionship between him and No 1. Pretty sure this has all been covered. I just have no idea where this book is supposed to take place. I guess its just its own little Sternaverse.
I historains note in the beginning of CoK would have helped me have a set visualization all the way thru instead of it changing midway thru the muliplte times, or have a couple head scratching moments. As it contradicts Vulcans Glory and TOS, and the Trek o9 film. Thats all i meant.
ITs a neat little adventure tho

 

[Sxottlan]

I'm not finished yet, but I'm really enjoying this book so far.

 

[Ronald Held]

Still at it. It seems a little tedious.

 

[C.E. Evans]

I just couldn't finish it. I tried several times, but each time I lost interest and wanted to read something else...it actually drove me back to re-read Vulcan's Glory instead. Go fig.