Nerys Ghemor, thank you for this marvellous review, and my apologies that it's taken a few days to get back to you.
I know exactly what it's like to have a very strongly imagined sense of a world and its people, and so I'm particularly grateful that you were willing to take my vision of things on its own terms for the purposes of reading TNES. (I'm not so generous: you should have seen how cross I was coming out of Peter Jackson's The Two Towers!) In fact, I've never read Les Miserables, so if I was channelling it, it was wholly unintentional. I did pick up a copy yesterday while I was in town, so thank you for pointing me in that direction.
I felt it was only fair to accept your vision...after all, I'm just the fanficcer, no matter HOW strong my vision is.
Very cool that I could give you a recommendation.
Mind you I've only seen the stage show and never read the book, so I'm not liable if the book sucks.
When it comes to my really long books, right now Dostoyevsky claims that place on my shelf. (Now I wonder...perhaps Bashir should've introduced Garak to human literature with
Crime and Punishment instead of Shakespeare? Something tells me it might've gone over a little better, if Garak could make himself deal with the religious aspect long enough...) But based on having seen
Les Mis, which had a definite impact on me, I definitely got that vibe.
Oh, and here's one more song from the play that came to mind very strongly as I read your book--called "Empty Chairs and Empty Tables." I think it really speaks to the themes you were going for with the Detapa Council "revolution"...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=32Zb6EZ8Z4s
I'm glad you liked the characterizations of Tekeny Ghemor and Tora Ziyal. They are both extremely appealing characters, particularly in the way that they don't sign up to the chauvinism that I imagine being so tragically prevalent in Cardassian society. (One of things I like best about "Second Skin" is that Ghemor continues to help Kira even when it becomes clear that there's no blood relation. And, IMHO, it's both to Ziyal's credit and her tragedy that she is able to love her father non-judgementally.)
I totally agree about "Second Skin"--that really shows you just how big Tekeny's heart is.
As for Ziyal's attitude towards her father, though...that's always a tough one to call. I mean, she's a very big-hearted character, but also very naive and idealistic, and I'm not always sure she's got a good balance. That said, though, I still liked the character in the end.
You have absolutely got my intention that is meant to be a reworking of the other Never-Ending Sacrifice (hmm, I appear to have fanficced a book that doesn't exist!): that this is meant to represent a breaking of that cycle of abuse. (As an aside, this was why I decided not to make Proka Migdal abusive, although I completely see how that characterization can work, and indeed I um-ed and ah-ed about it in the early stages of writing.) Thank you for this.
That's very cool to know that you did go back and forth on Proka--that makes me feel a little better about my own interpretation, which is that we never saw conclusive proof one way or the other, and I tend to fall on the other side of the debate, myself. I mean, to me, biting is a VERY extreme reaction at that age and one that suggested a very troubled youth--and I admit at first, when I read Rugal's memories of the incident, I found it a little hard to be convinced. But when you described the incident with Hulya, I found it easier to understand what you were thinking about Rugal.
I'm extremely pleased that you enjoyed the story so much, and most of all that it was able to stand alongside your own vision of Cardassia, and not violate it any way. A very happy early birthday to you!
Thanks.
And even if it HAD been in greater contradiction to the way I see things--the hard truth is that your version has official sanction and mine doesn't, no matter how attached I might be.
