On a slightly related note, in the most recent Shatnerverse novel Kodos was said to not have actually been the governor, but had instead overthrown the actual governor of the colony.
The Diane Carey novels
- Thread starter Joel_Kirk
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On a slightly related note, in the most recent Shatnerverse novel Kodos was said to not have actually been the governor, but had instead overthrown the actual governor of the colony.
Another criticism I have of Carey's work, albeit minor, is how quickly Piper rose through the ranks -- commissioned as a full lieutenant right out of Starfleet Academy, rather than an ensign, then quickly rising to lieutenant commander by the end of her first appearance. That just didn't work for me. I mean, was Kirk even commissioned as a full lieutenant when he graduated from the Academy? I don't think so. -- RR
I started reading that and couldn't help but wonder whether Carey had actually watched Cause and Effect. The whole battle with the Klingons, the Bozeman all shot up and her bridge ruined (IIRC there was even a support strut that landed on the captain's chair)...
Granted, we only had a few seconds view of the Bozeman's bridge in the episode but it sure wasn't smashed and Kelsey Grammer wasn't sharing his chair with a dislodged girder...
I can't recall ever finishing the book. I do recall that I didn't like the characterizations of the Bozeman's crew though. Again, did she see the episode?
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Actually references in TOS do suggest that Kirk was an ensign while still in the Academy ("Court-martial") and a lieutenant on his first post-Academy posting ("Obsession"). And The Wrath of Khan establishes Saavik as a lieutenant before her graduation from the Academy. Since Dreadnought! came out less than four years after TWOK, it was surely following that precedent.
And Piper's rapid promotion, like Kirk's in the Abrams movie, is following the precedent of the Horatio Hornblower novels, I believe.
Also, in the episode there were two women on the Bozeman bridge but in the book the bridge crew was all-male. And in the episode, the Typhon Expanse was a remote, mostly uncharted sector in the 24th century, while in the novel it was a well-patrolled portion of the UFP-Klingon border in the 23rd.
Really? When people had mentioned that in the past, I had assumed it was only for like a chapter.
It's a couple scenes, where Picard interacts with Holo-Kirk during a program depicting the events of "Ballance of Terror".
It's realistic, their interaction, and pretty believable--but I do have a bit of an issue with Picard suddenly, after finishing the program, suddenly going all aggressive with Macet, throwing diplomacy out the window, etc.
I LOVE his payback moment ("Oh, BTW...how many lights are up there?"), but, as a whole, this kind of "confrontation" isn't Picard.
However, that's my only real problem with the book. And...it does provide a bit of an explanation for his "action-man" status in First Contact, etc.
I had no beef with the nautical stuff--and authors have "bended" canon before....
Not that they should. I'm just saying, it's not unheard of. After all, Diane Duane's Romulan Way has the Romulan War going of for 75 years, or something....
It's realistic, their interaction, and pretty believable--but I do have a bit of an issue with Picard suddenly, after finishing the program, suddenly going all aggressive with Macet, throwing diplomacy out the window, etc.
I LOVE his payback moment ("Oh, BTW...how many lights are up there?"), but, as a whole, this kind of "confrontation" isn't Picard.
However, that's my only real problem with the book. And...it does provide a bit of an explanation for his "action-man" status in First Contact, etc.
I had no beef with the nautical stuff--and authors have "bended" canon before....
Not that they should. I'm just saying, it's not unheard of. After all, Diane Duane's Romulan Way has the Romulan War going of for 75 years, or something....
Un-freaking believable that someone can read her books and make that statement. Her politics come out in most of her books. Trying to defend her books by saying she doesn't put politics in them just makes you're arguments appear, uhh, uninformed.
I'm with Thrawn, some of her stuff I like and some I don't like. It just happens that some of the stuff I don't like I consider some of the bottom of the barrel as far as Star Trek fiction goes.
Dreadnaught! has a bit of a Mary Sue and she shoe horns politics into a couple of pages but it's still a fun read. I thought it was a very fun read as a matter of fact.
Final Frontier is good. Seems like the Enterprise was the first of it's kind in a few too many areas, warp drive, phasers, communications, etc, but what ever, a product of it's time. Good story. Best Destiny, the follow up, was starting to get a bit think on the Kirk worship.
Wagon Train to the Stars, yeah the libertarianism gets a bit thick here but at least the Enterprise is doing something different. Series got weaker as it went along. And as for Chainmail, I don't get the "pushing the limits of Star Trek like DS9" argument at all. If you changed half a dozen lines in that book you get a totally non-Star Trek book. They are not on a federation ship, they don't have star fleet uniforms, there are no familiar characters, no familiar races, everyone acts like the Federation just gets in everyones way, etc. There's like one mention of Kirk, one mention of Vulcans, etc. Remove those mentions, which have nothing to do with the plot, and you've got a stand alone science fiction novel.
First Strike - Second only to the DS9 book in the Invasion series. Thought it was a respectable plot and the characters acted like I expected them to.
And it starts to go down hill.
Ship of the Line - The absolute worst of the worst. I just don't know how you can base a book on a couple minutes of screen time and get every detail of those 2 minutes so wrong. Don't need to repeat what's been said in this thread. And the idea that Kirk is such a god like figure that the presence of a hologram is all it takes for Picard to think "Hey, maybe I could be a good captain after all". I don't like to give motives to authors but I just can't help but think that Carey had a story she wanted to tell and just willfully ignored what was on screen. And I didn't believe for one second the Picard in the book is the Picard we've seen on screen.
Ghost Ship - Giving her a 100% pass on this one considering she couldn't have seen an episode and only had the bible to go by.
Red Sector - Right down there with Ship of the Line. A marty sue that talks like any crew member in SotL and who worships Spock but we never figure out why because if I remember correctly Spock acts pretty stupidly in this book.
Ancient Blood - Main plot is OK at but the sub plot of having Alexander learning about honor from a Naval battle hologram, oh, and he's named after some relative who fought in the Revolution. How did that happen? I thought K'Ehleyr named him. What did she do, go through Worf's adoptive parents family tree to find a hero to name their son? That just doesn't seem plausible to me.
Fire Ship - Janeway spends all her time talking about how she's some sort of "master engineer" or some such. I thought she was a science officer before. Just didn't think much of the story either. Again, main character, only this time it was Janeway, seemed to talk more like how she pictured Bateson than Janeway. Just never felt like it was Janeway talking.
Also giving her a pass on the novelizations. Big time crunch on those and she needs to expand a script into a novel. If she needs to throw in sailing or what ever to expand the book, fine. What else is she going to fill a book with.
I haven't read Battlestations!, The Great Starship Race or First Frontier so I can't judge them.
The bottom line for me:
Although I've hated a couple book and thought a couple were pretty good, not great, good, for the most part my feelings on Carey is she has no problem ignoring on screen canon if it interferes with the story she wants to tell and the stories she likes to tell are about sailing and libertarianism. And the farther she gets from TOS, the worse she is as far as having her characters act like they normally do.
As far as Battlestations!, The Great Starship Race or First Frontier go, I'm going not expecting them to be terrible because they are TOS after all. I'll give you an you an update on what I think in a couple of months...
^I'm saying if there were, I didn't really notice.
Maybe it was because I agreed with it, so it flowed better for me....
BTW, Great Starship Race is pretty awesome! I recommend it.
Maybe it was because I agreed with it, so it flowed better for me....
BTW, Great Starship Race is pretty awesome! I recommend it.
RobertScorpio
Pariah
Agreed.. I LIKED Ship of the Line, and I like that fact that Kirk was given that much respect...
And so what if her views are 'libertarian' or 'conservative'? The books were good. I think some people in this thread are letting their 'left wing' views sway their opinion of these books.
If her books WERE this right-wing-tilted, then why keep reading them? Why beat your head a against the wall?? I don't understand it. I have read MANY Trek books that could have been written by Michael Moore, but I don't complain; I just enjoy the story for what it is...
Rob
My thoughts, exaxtly, Rob.
DANG right.
Look at me. I have a copy of Last Full Measure, in which Mike Martin dedicates the bloody thing to Cindy Sheehan. And then he goes on an anti-Iraq-War rant.
What do I do? I roll my eyes, shake my head...and keep on reading, accepting the book for what it is--a darn good read!
And no, I didn't rip that page out o' the book.
I'd be interested in knowing which Trek novels read like something from Michael Moore. I guess I missed those Trek books, because I can't for the life of me think of ANYTHING I've read that even remotely resembles something Moore might have written.
Then you might like Ship of the Line. Carey makes her opinion of Kirk vs. Picard very clear as......Picard spends a good deal of the novel in the holo-deck learning how to be a "real captain" from a holographic Kirk.
Tks, Allyn....
According to one of the other posts, the crew is depicted as being all male, and even I recall a female crewperson standing next to Bateson in the episode he was introduced....
Hmmm...
^Maybe she was just on the bridge for a moment--like a yeoman or something. Just not a bridge officer.
DANG right.
Look at me. I have a copy of Last Full Measure, in which Mike Martin dedicates the bloody thing to Cindy Sheehan. And then he goes on an anti-Iraq-War rant.
What do I do? I roll my eyes, shake my head...and keep on reading, accepting the book for what it is--a darn good read!
And no, I didn't rip that page out o' the book.
Though aggravating politics, for me, are a good reason to buy books at a used book store instead of straight off the shelf. Means a longer wait time, of course, but then I don't have to buy knowing that I'm rewarding a cause I don't support.
She may have changed her mind after a couple of seasons, but in the early days of TNG, Diane Carey was very vocal about how much she disliked that show. It's not surprising her characterizations in books like Ship of the Line are off.
If she didn't like TNG, why did she write in that universe? Was somebody holding a phaser to her head?
^My guess is, the editors did it to her as a "request".
Happened with Peter David:
They wanted him to write a Borg novel, and he wasn't sold on it.
He wanted to write a Q-and-Lwaxana novel, and they weren't sold on it.
Finally, they came to a deal, and he wrote both.
As I recall, the editors wanted Diane to write the first TNG novel, because she was "The Big One" in TrekLit, as Peter David later became, and remained for the longest time. They wanted her to kick off the franchise.
And then they got all ticked off because TPTB wanted her to "tone things down a bit" with the military aspect of Starfleet.
That was in the Richard Arnold era. Go figure.
Happened with Peter David:
They wanted him to write a Borg novel, and he wasn't sold on it.
He wanted to write a Q-and-Lwaxana novel, and they weren't sold on it.
Finally, they came to a deal, and he wrote both.
As I recall, the editors wanted Diane to write the first TNG novel, because she was "The Big One" in TrekLit, as Peter David later became, and remained for the longest time. They wanted her to kick off the franchise.
And then they got all ticked off because TPTB wanted her to "tone things down a bit" with the military aspect of Starfleet.
That was in the Richard Arnold era. Go figure.
If she didn't like TNG, why did she write in that universe? Was somebody holding a phaser to her head?
She was, at one point, one of Pocket's bestselling Trek novelists, so from Pocket's perspective it made sense to ask her to do it. As for why she'd agree to do it, they were high profile books (the first original TNG novel, a TNG hardcover, entries in a couple of the big annual crossovers), and for all I know maybe she eventually became a fan. I think Ship of the Line suggests otherwise, though.