The Furies (Star Trek: Invasion)

[Mike Doyle]

The Invasion series are the first Trek books I remember reading. As such they’ve stuck with me. I thought they were amazing at the time but I think I was about 12 so who knows how good I would think they are if I read them though.

I think I’m right in saying it was the first series with a story coming from each TV series at the time.

So two questions:

1. Does anyone else have any strong feelings either way if they were a good or bad series.

2. Are the furies ever mentioned again even in an offhand manner. Memory Beta says one mention in an SCE story.

 

[Allyn Gibson]

Two answers:

1. Invasion! is a mixed series in my mind. The first and third books are very good, the fourth is fine, and the second is okay. I like the idea of the Furies for the same reason I like the Silurians in Doctor Who -- I like that places (the galaxy, Earth) have a deep history that humanity doesn't know, and the "villains" aren't in the wrong because they're only trying to reclaim what was theirs.

2. I used them in the backstory to Ring Around the Sky. I needed a broken, irreparable space elevator. Who would build a space elevator and not know how to repair it? Well, no one. So, what if it were an artifact of a long gone civilization? Okay, then who would build it? I recall that Kirk and Spock assessed the Furies' ships and found them to be more hardened, with actual armor, than you'd find in near-Federation space, and It struck me that the Furies very well might as a piece of "brute force" engineering and that was their "style."

 

[Reanok]

I liked the Invasion series .They were good books. The ds9 book Times enemy novel was my favorite book in this miniseries. The story arc with Dr. Bashir and the Dax symbiote was really intriguing.They found a way to communicate and it ended up saving alot of people on the ds9 space station.

 

[F. King Daniel]

I know they were meant to be furies as in fury, but when I read it they were just furries to me.

 

[zarkon]

they were all pretty average to me.

only one a bit notable was the voyager one because neelix is pretty out of character. but it was released a year & a half after the series started, so I don't know how much of the series the author had a chance to watch, or if they just had the series bible.

to be fair I think neelix was pretty gung ho in caretaker, but I don't really remember the rest of S1 much, so maybe he was flanderised later and this is accurate lol

 

[historypeats]

Given how frequently S&S have discounted Double Helix - individual titles, omnibus edition, etc. - in the Kindle store, I'm surprised they haven't done the same for Invasion! I believe only First Strike has gone on sale; I picked up Time's Enemy at full price because it's cheaper than most Trek Kindle novels, and (as others have said) I felt it was the standout of the four. But I don't remember anything about The Final Fury other than its characterizations feeling "wrong."

 

[DGCatAniSiri]

I feel like Final Fury got more caught up in its mechanics of concluding the threat of the Furies over the more broad storyarc - Voyager visits the adoptive homeworld of the Furies, only to have the last appearance of individual Furies take place somewhere around the first quarter.

It also suffers from a general feeling I get from Daffyd ab Hugh’s Star Trek novels of not really having the character voices right, but I do offer some leeway in that it couldn’t have been written very far into Voyager actually airing, if it had even premiered.

I would say that Time’s Enemy is definitely the best of the miniseries. I’d have liked to see Soldiers of Fear go on longer, give things more time to simmer and focus more on, say, Troi handling the projected fear, both for herself and the crew, or Data, not having a fear response to trigger... It seems like the story could have gone on longer. Especially with the way that Redbay hits an obvious sacrificial checklist (maybe this wasn’t so obvious in 1996?), so it’s hard to really connect with him, especially given the suddenly large role of an original character.

Been longer since I read First Strike, so I can’t really speak to it at the moment.

 

[tomswift2002]

https://www.trekbbs.com/threads/voy-9-the-final-fury-by-dafydd-ab-hugh-review-thread.284915/

 

[publiusr]

I loved this series myself.

 

[Damian]

I believe this was the first crossover series I ever read (though, IIRC I think there were earlier crossovers that were released, I'm not positive though).

I really liked the original series book and the Voyager book in this series. I actually don't recall TNG or DS9 stories all that well. Though I don't recall disliking them. I usually remember bad books (here's looking at you Price of the Phoenix). I just don't remember those 2 all that well.

As for being referenced, I don't recall them being referenced in later stories at all. It's possible someone included a throwaway line somewhere, but nothing substantive. But then it's pretty rare for later novels to reference things from the 'numbered novel' era of Star Trek books (these were numbered novels in their respective series still, even though they were a crossover).

 

[Sisko_is_my_captain]

There were some weird, kind of cool ideas in the Voyager one. Like, Neelix kept a couple spare comm badges in his boot (because, duh, they're super useful and frequently stolen). Comm badges had enough computing power that you could tap them and get the onboard computer to do basic tasks (again, a logical, good idea). I seem to remember Janeway dramatically ordering, "Combat impulse," which really doesn't mean anything, but I kinda liked the sound of it. I don't remember much of the story. I recall enjoying all four books at the time.

 

[Stevil2001]

There were some weird, kind of cool ideas in the Voyager one. Like, Neelix kept a couple spare comm badges in his boot (because, duh, they're super useful and frequently stolen). Comm badges had enough computing power that you could tap them and get the onboard computer to do basic tasks (again, a logical, good idea). I seem to remember Janeway dramatically ordering, "Combat impulse," which really doesn't mean anything, but I kinda liked the sound of it. I don't remember much of the story. I recall enjoying all four books at the time.

My favorite part of that Neelix bit is how amazed he is that the Starfleet officers don't keep spare comm badges hidden on themselves because of how obvious an idea it is.

 

[David cgc]

I did wonder how big his shoes were that he could carry something like three commbadges, two cricket phasers, and a tricorder in them, or whatever it was.

 

[publiusr]

The meeting where they shot down Kim’s idea was interesting. The Doctor likened it to triage.

 

[DS9forever]

The authors of the TNG novel did a good job at making the Furies eery. I haven't felt genuine shivers while reading a book outside of a King novel. Kudos to them.

The DS9 novel is intelligently written, it ventures into what I think of as hard science fiction at times: ansible technology and the like.

 

[Krupp]

I loved the Invasion! series back in the day. I actually miss the novels set around the time of the TV shows, the way they had to return everything to as-is. TOS is where that's at nowadays, but it's nice to see for example a DS9 novel coming that's set in the time period.

Invasion, Captains Table, Dominion War were some vintage Trek.

 

[JD]

There's also a TV era TNG novel coming out in July called Shadows Have Offended.

 

[Reanok]

We're also getting a new Ds9 novel Revanant by Alex White a Jadzia Dax novel t hat takes place during the tv series. It comes out in December.