The Final Reflection- best Trek book ever

[Captain_Koloth]

I've been rereading this again, and it's just awesome. So many subtle, beautifully written conversations between Krenn and Tagore. So much incredible political play. Amazing scenes with the II master Meth. Touching portrayal of a lot of the characters, from Tagore to Zharn. Amazing climax that just comes together in so very many ways. Doesn't hit you over the head with a single idea, and yet leaves you with more ideas than most any other Trek book. Really makes you feel sympathy for this truly different culture.

If you have the patience to get through the first 20 pages or so, which are admittedly a bit confusing at first, the rest of it is just amazingly rewarding on every page.

 

[Mistral]

Um, I have read it. 3 or 4 times. Did you want some kind of reaction?

 

[EmperorKalan]

So much incredible political play. Amazing scenes with the II master Meth.

This is yet another thing I have to thank KRAD for reviving and adapting to the Klingons as they were developed in TNG and DS9, in The Art of the Impossible and the various Gorkon books: The tension, fear, loathing, and (in rare places) respect between the mainline military and Imperial Intelligence.

 

[KRAD]

^ Why thankee.

Mike Ford is the one who set the bar. The rest of us just jump up and try to touch it every once in a while....

 

[flandry84]

The klingon rank of thought admiral is one I would have liked to have seen continued.Sometimes the klingon defence force seems more like a horde of vikings than a structured organisation.The "dumbing down" (horrible cliche btw) of the klingons is a well worn path(God,another cliche),that diminished that races' effectiveness.
Imagine TNG & DS9 complete with klingons the calibre of those in TFR.

 

[Biggshow]

The klingon rank of thought admiral is one I would have liked to have seen continued.Sometimes the klingon defence force seems more like a horde of vikings than a structured organisation.The "dumbing down" (horrible cliche btw) of the klingons is a well worn path(God,another cliche),that diminished that races' effectiveness.
Imagine TNG & DS9 complete with klingons the calibre of those in TFR.

I think this perception of the Klingons as dumbed down in TNG and DS9 is also a bit of a cliche. There is a great deal of political intrigue in the whole Duras storyline. That it is a culture that doesn't seem to have a lot of culture is ethnocentric (speciocentric?). "Seem" being the operative word.

I would actually put Andrew Robinson's "A Stitch in Time" at the top of my list and I'm not even that big a Garak fan. "The Final Reflection" is up there, though.

 

[KRAD]

The "dumbing down" (horrible cliche btw) of the klingons is a well worn path(God,another cliche),that diminished that races' effectiveness.

I reject the premise, and have spent over half a dozen novels rejecting it.

Imagine TNG & DS9 complete with klingons the calibre of those in TFR.

We have. Read TFR again, then look at how the Cardassians developed on DS9. It's pretty much the same thing -- resource-poor culture that branched out out of necessity, a culture where being a soldier is of the greatest import, where service to the state is mandatory, and in which there's tension between the military and intelligence branches of the government.

 

[Captain_Koloth]

Perhaps true, though I feel like the detail and subtlety which drives the Cardassian culture doesn't reach the fascinating level of the idea that Klingon structure was so heavily based on games and philosopohical concepts. Klin zha, the perpetual game, that sort of thing. Also the idea of having seemingly every Klingon and Romulan as part of some "House" isn't as interesting as the social structure portrayed in TFR - we saw that it was possible at least in some circumstances to start your own line.

Plus the political power plays were just at a level beyond anything we saw in the episodes, though perhaps that's due to the nature of the medium.

 

[Christopher]

Also the idea of having seemingly every Klingon and Romulan as part of some "House" isn't as interesting as the social structure portrayed in TFR - we saw that it was possible at least in some circumstances to start your own line.

What? TFR itself introduced the idea of Klingons having noble Houses. The shows presumably borrowed the idea from it.

 

[Captain_Koloth]

Also the idea of having seemingly every Klingon and Romulan as part of some "House" isn't as interesting as the social structure portrayed in TFR - we saw that it was possible at least in some circumstances to start your own line.

What? TFR itself introduced the idea of Klingons having noble Houses. The shows presumably borrowed the idea from it.

The lines in TFR were much less rigid than the House structure we see later; it feels to me like the Houses in the TV series are there simply to make it different from human culture, whereas the lines of TFR were a single part of a much grander scheme including their concepts of komerex zha and klin zha and the Black Fleet.

Make no mistake; I love the Klingon episodes of the TV shows; I just like TFR's characterization more.

 

[darkwing_duck1]

TFR is certainly the best Klingon-focused book, but I think the Bloodwing Chronicles (esp the first two, written before the Dark Age of Richard) are just a little bit better, as is "Spock's World".

 

[Timo]

Personally, I feel the harsh economy of words in TFR brings it on par with the entirety of the verbose Chronicles...

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Cicero]

Perhaps because I only first came across it in omnibus a few years ago (and wasn't old enough to read a novel in the pre-Arnold days), I really didn't care for it. The novel lacked grace, interesting characters, quality prose, directness, and (for lack of a better term) Trek sense. It was boring and weird, like the unfortunate majority of pre-Arnold novels.

 

[Steve Roby]

The novel lacked grace, interesting characters, quality prose, directness, and (for lack of a better term) Trek sense. It was boring and weird, like the unfortunate majority of pre-Arnold novels.

A bold young iconoclast shows us the shocking truth! Still, I wonder what it is that everyone who likes the book sees in it. Fans like it. Trek novelists like it. People who don't often read Star Trek but like John M. Ford's other books like it (he was very well respected in the lit SF community). People who wrote for Star Trek on TV like it. 24 years after it was published, people are still talking about it. Not bad for such an utterly worthless book.

 

[OmahaStar]

This reminds me of an incident a few nights ago at a book signing.

A woman approached the author and said (book title, the second book the author had written) was the best she'd ever done. The book signing was in honor of the author's thirtieth book published. I'm not sure the woman understood just how big an insult she hurled at the author, saying that none of the 28 books since then had been as good as the second book.

That very much reminds me of this. One of the very first Pocket books published is the "best Trek book ever" ... So none of the hundreds of books published since then even approach that old book. Kind of insulting, I think.

 

[Smiley]

I wouldn't call it insulting. If somebody peaks at a time other than the end of their career, that doesn't make everything that follows worthless. In subjective fields like writing, it's all opinion anyway, so that author should not feel bad. I would be flattered that somebody liked something I'd written enough to want to meet me.

I'm more in agreement with Cicero than Captain Koloth about The Final Reflection. I couldn't make it past the first of nine sections in the book when I tried to read it last year. I have liked Trek books with little or no presence from the regulars, but that is because the new characters made a strong first impression. The Klingons just came across as strange warriors with funky names. I didn't see much of a point to anything I read, so I dropped the book for something more to my taste.

 

[Warped9]

I've been rereading this again, and it's just awesome. So many subtle, beautifully written conversations between Krenn and Tagore. So much incredible political play. Amazing scenes with the II master Meth. Touching portrayal of a lot of the characters, from Tagore to Zharn. Amazing climax that just comes together in so very many ways. Doesn't hit you over the head with a single idea, and yet leaves you with more ideas than most any other Trek book. Really makes you feel sympathy for this truly different culture.

If you have the patience to get through the first 20 pages or so, which are admittedly a bit confusing at first, the rest of it is just amazingly rewarding on every page.

Although I quibble with its sense of continuity I do like this book very much. These Klingons are so much more interesting than what we got onscreen from the '80s onward.

I don't know if I'd say it's the best Trek book ever, but it's definitely in the top list.

 

[KRAD]

Uh, Mitch? Speaking as an author, I wouldn't find that insulting at all, if I were her. Put it this way, I think that the best novel I've written is The Art of the Impossible. I've published 16 novels (and four novelizations) since then. I don't think that's a knock on those 20 books....

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

I liked TFR (especially Krenn's line about the Starfleet transporter: "Of course. They'll want to know why it makes that horrible noise." )

I admit, though, that I still can't figure out what klin zha is supposed to be. I mean, I know it's a game of course, but I couldn't figure out what was going on (i.e. what the players were actually doing). Reading the game sequences in the book left me scratching my head.

Then again, my favorite TV shows are on Spike, so maybe I'm just not intellectually 'deep' enough for things like this.

 

[Christopher]

Uh, Mitch? Speaking as an author, I wouldn't find that insulting at all, if I were her. Put it this way, I think that the best novel I've written is The Art of the Impossible. I've published 16 novels (and four novelizations) since then. I don't think that's a knock on those 20 books....

Ditto. Personally, I suspect I'll never top Orion's Hounds.