Spoilers TNG: The Stuff of Dreams by James Swallow Review Thread

[David cgc]

- There is a bit of dialog that reads "The threat of the Machine, the Borg invasion, and the rise of the Typhon Pact..." What is the Machine?

That's a reference to the last book of the Cold Equations trilogy, where there was a Machine that was eating stars (not a spoiler, it appears on, like, page 2).

 

[marlboro]

Ah, I see. I am way behind on TNG stuff and I'm reading things out of order. Thanks!

 

[JD]

Finally bought an Amazon Fire. This was my first purchase. Quite good. As others have said, this felt like an episode of the show, and that's a good thing. I have only read a handful of modern TNG books, and while I've enjoyed most of them, they seem to focus on political intrigue quite a bit. It's nice to read a standalone adventure. Plenty of room for both.

They do move away from the politics a bit more once you get past The Fall.

Ah, I see. I am way behind on TNG stuff and I'm reading things out of order. Thanks!

If you're going to be reading them anyway, I'd recommend trying to read them in order if possible. You don't have to, but you get a lot more out of them if you follow the order they came out.

 

[James Swallow]

Thanks for the comments!

Is Kolb a character that we have previously seen?

Kolb was an all-new character for this story. He's named after director Winrich Kolbe.

Where is Guinan these days?

If I recall correctly, she briefly reprises her role of bartender on the Enterprise-E, but she leaves a few years before this story takes place.

I had the same thoughts about the time travel aspects as bfollowell, but I quickly decided to leave those sorts of questions to the DTI guys.

I must have missed those comments back in 2013! There's nothing odd there, bfollowell has it right.
Unable to live with the loss of his family, Kolb from the "present" travels back to 2381 to die with them on Deneva during the Borg attack - but the 2381 version of him is still out there at that point in history and still suffers through the loss...ultimately leading to the events that take place in the novella and him traveling back to die in 2381. Events don't change.