I agree with you largely though i thought overall it was Above Average. I enjoyed the different style a new author can bring to Trek Lit so i hope we have more stories from JJM.
Spoilers TNG: Takedown by John Jackson Miller Review Thread
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I agree with you largely though i thought overall it was Above Average. I enjoyed the different style a new author can bring to Trek Lit so i hope we have more stories from JJM.
Thankfully the "litverse" doesn't have to take The Needs of the Many into account. Talk about small universe syndrome.
Thankfully the "litverse" doesn't have to take The Needs of the Many into account. Talk about small universe syndrome.
I dunno, that'd only be small universe syndrome if Picard, Crusher, Riker, and Troi didn't know each other as well as they did. If it was Rene marrying, say, Janeway and Chakotay's kid, for example. The children of close friends marry one another all the time in real life; unrelated people that spend a lot of time with one another naturally tend to pick up an attraction to one another.
Just finished "Takedown". I really enjoyed it. The beginning and middle were the strongest. The suspense was well crafted and the action sequences were excellent. At first, I thought we were dealing with doppelgangers like in "Allegiance" but really like that it was the Cytherians from "Nth Degree". The reasons behind what Proctor did seemed a bit of a let down to be honest. I did love the parallel between how the Federation handled Riker and how the Romulans handled Bretorius. I felt pity for him. The guy just could not get a break. Even when aliens make him smarter and more confident, he still loses.
Overall, it was a really fun read that definitely kept my attention from start to finish. I give it a 8/10.
Overall, it was a really fun read that definitely kept my attention from start to finish. I give it a 8/10.
I just finished and I gave it an average vote.
I almost stopped on the first page when I read the author chose to give a description of Riker by looking at a mirror. That's a cringe worthy cliche amongst authors no?, you know one of those thing authors list as things to avoid when writing. I moved past that and then got to the part where they retell the entire story because it already happened. It's as if it's story structure is book ended by a present - past (the entirety of the book) - present again. It's just me but it irks me when I read stories of this type.
The overall writing is fine. The overall story felt neutral to me and kind of predictable (at least I saw what the reveal was before the big reveal). I was expecting something more in the end and it didn't deliver, very anticlimactic.
The one interesting aspect of the book was the character Simus. He sounded interesting to me. I wanted him to be some old section 31 agent, turns out he was just a doctor ...
I almost stopped on the first page when I read the author chose to give a description of Riker by looking at a mirror. That's a cringe worthy cliche amongst authors no?, you know one of those thing authors list as things to avoid when writing. I moved past that and then got to the part where they retell the entire story because it already happened. It's as if it's story structure is book ended by a present - past (the entirety of the book) - present again. It's just me but it irks me when I read stories of this type.
The overall writing is fine. The overall story felt neutral to me and kind of predictable (at least I saw what the reveal was before the big reveal). I was expecting something more in the end and it didn't deliver, very anticlimactic.
The one interesting aspect of the book was the character Simus. He sounded interesting to me. I wanted him to be some old section 31 agent, turns out he was just a doctor ...
I really liked this book. I didn't care much for Absent Enemies so wasn't expecting much but this blew past my expectations. I kind of made a mistake by reading the thank you page when I was about half way though where he thanks the author of The Nth Degree which gave a big plot point away but by then I was far enough along that it wasn't that much later that came to light anyway so not a big deal. Didn't affect my enjoyment by then anyway. I loved seeing all three crews. It was also one of those books that has the right amount of 'continuity porn'. The reveal of what the doctor was at the end was cool and how other Troi and Picard and been there before was cool. Lots of things to look about this book and I hope we see more by this author. I gave it 4 stars, it's a very high 4 stars.
I've been on another project and haven't had a chance to get in here, but I wanted to thank you all for the kind words. This book was a lot of fun to write.
I'll be posting some notes about this book on my site later in the year, but I have really appreciated the word being spread -- and also the spoiler alerts being used, since the book is basically a mystery. (The main adventure in the story is deliberately structured, in fact, like the episode it references, in terms of what we learn at what points in the book. If it in any way has the feel of an episode of the TV show, that's my goal.)
I also appreciate the glitch alerts; they've been noted and sent up the line. I'm informed that digital revisions will be pushed out at some point on those editions. In my umpteen years in publishing, I've rarely seen anything sent out without something amiss, no matter how many sets of eyes were involved -- and, always, there are either very mundane, very complicated, or very peculiar reasons for all of them. For me, the most bizarre head-desk was Wolf 359, which I certainly knew -- but I had just completed a revision of another novel in which we were changing the name of a compound to the mythical isotope "baradium-357," so it was on the brain. Occupational hazards!
There'll be a StarTrek.com interview posting next week, and I'll be on Literary Treks next week as well. I am also able to announce now that I'll be at Shore Leave later in the summer -- looking forward to seeing everyone!
I'll be posting some notes about this book on my site later in the year, but I have really appreciated the word being spread -- and also the spoiler alerts being used, since the book is basically a mystery. (The main adventure in the story is deliberately structured, in fact, like the episode it references, in terms of what we learn at what points in the book. If it in any way has the feel of an episode of the TV show, that's my goal.)
I also appreciate the glitch alerts; they've been noted and sent up the line. I'm informed that digital revisions will be pushed out at some point on those editions. In my umpteen years in publishing, I've rarely seen anything sent out without something amiss, no matter how many sets of eyes were involved -- and, always, there are either very mundane, very complicated, or very peculiar reasons for all of them. For me, the most bizarre head-desk was Wolf 359, which I certainly knew -- but I had just completed a revision of another novel in which we were changing the name of a compound to the mythical isotope "baradium-357," so it was on the brain. Occupational hazards!
There'll be a StarTrek.com interview posting next week, and I'll be on Literary Treks next week as well. I am also able to announce now that I'll be at Shore Leave later in the summer -- looking forward to seeing everyone!
Always great when authors post in reviews threads of their work.
Little mistakes can happen, and even editors and proofreaders can drop the ball sometimes. We're all human, even those making to big a deal of this.
I really enjoyed your work on this, and personally, I hope you get the change to do some more TrekLit for us soon.
I went with Above Average on this one. I quite enjoyed it, found the pacing brisk, and felt the way the story was framed kept the mysteries about exactly what was going on alive for most of the story. Perhaps the thing I most enjoyed was
Overall, a solid first full ST novel from Miller. I hope we'll get more from him soon.
the idea that being controlled by alien entities is a common enough experience in Starfleet that they have an entire facility devoted to helping people recuperate and process these events.
Overall, a solid first full ST novel from Miller. I hope we'll get more from him soon.
Absolutely loved this one. The tone was perfectly irreverent, and very reminiscent of the best of Peter David.
Here's my review!
Here's my review!
Really enjoyed this novel, JJ Miller makes a great addition to the lit verse and I'd be happy to see more Trek novels from him. After The Fall, I'm glad to get a novel that isn't very politically minded. As others had mentioned, this book could have been a serious brink of war novel but instead stayed light and was a pretty fun read. I'm with Picard now though, let's get to some exploring!
Just finished it. And it was fantastic. I get the feeling that this is designed to be a transition from the Fall, towards more exploration focused books. It started out reading like a Typhon Pact/Fall-type thriller and ended up with a more classic-TNG type resolution. I really appreciated the gradual change in tone as more was revealed. There were a few time where I felt like Picard used expressions that were out of character/too 21st century colloquial (which would have worked with Riker or Dax, but not Picard). All-in-all I think it's one of the strongest TNG novels I've read.
I agree, and between this and The Missing, which also felt very much like an episode of its series (for all that most of the characters were TNG in origin), it seems the books are trying to be true to what was promised at the end of The Fall.
I've been wondering. Does the main story of Takedown take place before or after the main story of The Light Fantastic?
According to the historian's notes on each story The Light Fantastic takes place in November 2385 and Takedown in late November 2385. As Geordi is featured in both stories they obviously can't take place at the same time. There's probably 1 to 2 weeks betwern them as there used to be with TNG episodes.
I think what is so wonderful about the story is it feels fresh, fun and just damned exciting. It's been a while since that happened. Don't get me wrong this is not me disparaging what's come before, I think it's just a fantastic way to start out the year of exploration and more light-hearted stories. It's excellent and I really hope JJ Miller gets to write more Trek books.
I'm currently reading the book and it is a lot better than "The Missing", and even casts "The Missing"'s status in the storyline into question, as with the massive communications issues across the quadrant it is surprising that there was no mention of the comm issues "The Missing". And considering how many ships were breaching the Federation's borders (and every other nation's borders), I'm surprised DS9 wasn't on high alert or lockdown.
Maybe they would have been if the second stage of the operation had gone according to plan, when Proctor's Proxies would have transferred their attention to a list of targets on the Alpha Quadrant side (near Cardassian, Ferengi and Tzenkethi space). The first stage, they were on the Beta side, near Klingon, Romulan, UFP and Kinshaya space. I suppose the action hadn't gotten anywhere near close enough to DS9 yet.
This was my take as well. Takedown reminds me very much of 24 where things happened really quickly for the most part.
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