Spoilers TNG: Armageddon's Arrow by Dayton Ward Review Thread

[Christopher]

Titan: Taking Wing's main body (Ch. 6 onward) begins about seven weeks after the beginning of NEM, spans about two weeks, and ends on "Elvis's Birthday," which would be January 8. That puts the bulk of NEM in about the first week of November 2379.

In fact, the authors were probably going by the Stardate Calculator applet, which puts Stardate 56844 on November 5, 2379.

 

[nx1701g]

is this an easily accessible novel for those of you who've read it? I've been working through the post-Nemesis stuff. I'm currently on Raise the Dawn. I ask, because this story sounds interesting from the blurb, i'd love to read it now. i was wondering if i could skip ahead? Or would it be better to work through Cold Equations, The Fall, and the other post-Fall books first?

Personally I would recommend reading through the others first.

 

[VDCNI]

Well I enjoyed it - nothing groundbreaking and once the twists were out of the way it was pretty obvious how it was going to all end but still a decent read.

Some nice character work - at last someone shows an interest in Chen after quite a while and good to see Konya get some page time, another interesting character who almost vanished post Destiny. We also got to see a different side to Worf & Elfiki in their mission, two characters who had barely interacted before now.

In fact after all the big events it was a treat to spend some time with the crew without the fate of the Federation being at stake - before now it's felt like we have a big 4 on the Enterprise and then the new kids, which I know is hard to avoid but when they've been dealing with such high stakes they've tended to be kept out of the loop quite often - they felt more like one crew this time round. The Picard/Šmrhová interaction was much appreciated for the same reason.

Nit picks - well as I said the ending wasn't particularly surprising. The discoveries by Taurik and Worf/Elfiki didn't really add a huge amount to this book - though perhaps something is coming down the line particularly with the former. Crusher could have been a bit more involved on the alien ship but then that would have given Chen less to do so fair enough and early on it looked like Harstad might have a bit more to do but that doesn't really happen - it would be nice to find out a bit more about her in future, she's pretty much been a blank slate up to now.

 

[Ronald Held]

Mine has appeared just getting started.

 

[BritishSeaPower]

Well, I'm officially caught up on the post-series TNG, DS9 and Titan novels, so Armageddon's Arrow will be my first "week of" novel since starting that endeavor 5 years ago this very month! (Though, technically, I still have two Voyager novels to go before being fully caught up there. But soon!)

Excited by the blurb, too.

 

[Deranged Nasat]

My copy literally just arrived, so I'll get to work on this tonight. Again, I have to say that the cover is one of the best we've had in a while. It's nice to see some effort put into it in terms of illustrating the contents of the book. I assume this is an accurate depiction of the future peacekeeping craft.

 

[Jim Gamma]

I have to say I honestly thought Mr. Ward was going to

Spoiler

blow up a planet and kill my favourite TNG-Lit character Chen off

, but then I remembered

Spoiler

he's not David Mack.

In all seriousness though this was an excellent novel. I do hope that the Taurik/DTI thing gets explained in future novels (Christopher, is Dayton setting something up here for you, by any chance?)

 

[Reanok]

I ordered this book and hope to get it in the nail soon.

 

[E-DUB]

Got mine a few days ago, about 2/3rd through. One non-spoilery question. Was the book Rene Picard was reading "Strangers from the Sky" by any chance? (It's already established as existing in the noveverse as a "Historical novel.)

 

[Idran]

That's the impression I got too; it seems to be the go-to human speculative fiction novel in the Trek universe.

Edit: Actually, would that be speculative fiction or alternate history fiction?

 

[RunawayStarShip]

So... did Taurik notice a certain nearby star having gone supernova in future Raqilan star charts? He certainly seemed sufficiently alarmed.

It appears that in the original timeline without the derelict Arrow, the Enterprise simply passes by without making contact after noting the intrasystem conflict. This explains Jodis' surprise at meeting the "outsiders" as well as noting that every child dreamed of such a meeting... even though he's from the future. Chen's constant questions about the future Federation's involvement seem to be a red herring (although it makes sense in-story since she doesn't witness Picard and Jodis' first meeting).

Of course, if that's what Taurik notices, it opens numerous cans of worms.

 

[Idran]

So... did Taurik notice a certain nearby star having gone supernova in future Raqilan star charts? He certainly seemed sufficiently alarmed.

It appears that in the original timeline without the derelict Arrow, the Enterprise simply passes by without making contact after noting the intrasystem conflict. This explains Jodis' surprise at meeting the "outsiders" as well as noting that every child dreamed of such a meeting... even though he's from the future. Chen's constant questions about the future Federation's involvement seem to be a red herring (although it makes sense in-story since she doesn't witness Picard and Jodis' first meeting).

Of course, if that's what Taurik notices, it opens numerous cans of worms.

Oh, I didn't even think of that, but that does make a ton of sense, yeah.

 

[zarkon]

ehhhh.

Was depressingly average for me. Nothing in it really ever got me going at any point - as the book itself notes, the planet killer has already been done twice in prose, and as such as soon as I heard the words "neutronium" and "antiprotons" I knew what was coming - if only because I was wondering why the trek crew weren't sufficiently impressed by the ship having those features, even given the timeskip, as they were attributes sufficent to take on the borg. Relationship stuff was pretty boring, and the aliens fairly uninteresting.

 

[Reanok]

I got a copy of the book today.

 

[Titus Andronicus]

I have to say I enjoyed the novel! I just wanted to lose myself in an adventure, and Armageddon's Arrow certainly did the trick.

 

[Cyfa]

I really liked this book - The interactions & relationships (Chen-Taurik, Chen-Konya, Worf-Elfiki, Geordi-Harstad); the exploration of what happens when a race/races discovers alien tech known to the Federation; the world-building; the non-evil alien leaders/representatives; and the mystery (please, please, please let there be a Taurik/DTI follow-up very soon!). The characterisation was all top notch - I especially loved the mature, restrained Worf. Oh, and the appearance of Siouxsie from the 2011 Ships of the Line calendar was a treat!

A couple of things prevented me from rating this outstanding - I found there was a little too much explanation of past events. Some of it was necessary, but I got the impression that the rest was tacked on (at an editors request, maybe?). The general resolution was predictable-and there's nothing wrong with that-but I think it could have been more interesting if certain people had survived because technology hadn't crapped out just like it always seems to in these circumstances.

Over all, I think this is a fantastic novel, and would be a great picking up point for anyone new to Trek Lit that doesn't want to (or hasn't the time to) wade through years worth of previous storylines/arcs (Destiny, Typhon Pact, The Fall etc). Bravo Dayton Ward!

 

[JD]

I think the over recapping has been a recurring complaint with Dayton Ward's books. That doesn't usually bother me, so I never really noticed if it, but it does seem be a pretty consistent issue people have mentioned when it comes to his stuff.

 

[Klaus]

I liked it a lot, and Chen is definitely my favorite Treklit character... I figured that the mission wasn't what it seemed early on, as Jodris wasn't fanatical enough for it to be plausible. I liked the character work, and a bit of a break from the big political arcs is a nice thing even though I like those too.

 

[Mage]

I think the over recapping has been a recurring complaint with Dayton Ward's books. That doesn't usually bother me, so I never really noticed if it, but it does seem be a pretty consistent issue people have mentioned when it comes to his stuff.

This is true. It has bothered me a little in the past, but it was never that bad untill Seekers 2, where it felt that every 30-40 pages we got a recap. That's a momentum killer if I ever saw one.

 

[Jedi Ben]

For having cost me between £4.50-5, I feel I got my money's worth. I did wonder if it was a good idea to pre-buy this after the woeful Peaceable Kingdoms, but this was a far better book.

I'd agree that the focus on a smaller but no less important crisis worked well, as did the ties to other stories. I'd too have to wonder if the Taurik plot will go anywhere too, I suspect it might.

What I liked most about the book was that it set up the two factions as one way, then as it went on that picture blurred greatly. The other aspect was the critical engagement in terms of what the plan was in the first place and how it made no sense whatsoever.