Spoilers TOS: Shadows on the Sun by Michael Jan Friedman Review Thread

[thribs]

I really enjoyed this book. It gave us a good insight into McCoy’s character and it finally told us why his marriage broke up. I did think it was rather cliche but it worked well enough. The ending was rather sad. Talk about bad luck with McCoy saving that assassin. It’s lucky he didn’t save him for a third time since he would probably go on to kill his daughter or something.
The Ssani are a interesting race. The assassin sect did remind me of the Assassins Creed with them having white robes. No wrist blades though.
My one criticism is having it set after Undiscovered Country since it takes away from the impact from that story being their last big adventure together but it’s only a minor one.

I want to hear more about this Risa War. I wonder what happened.

 

[Leto_II]

My one criticism is having it set after Undiscovered Country since it takes away from the impact from that story being their last big adventure together but it’s only a minor one.

Really, though, this novel was simply one of several that already existed starting with early 1992's Best Destiny where Starfleet gave the Enterprise-A an official reprieve for the remainder of 2293 from decommissioning, and subsequent books went further with this, including Sarek (where the starship gets repaired at Vulcan following Khitomer) and Mind Meld (where it undertakes a mission involving Spock's nascent Reunification movement).

By the time Shadows came out, the Enterprise had already been pretty well-established as having been placed back in service before Star Trek: Generations finally rolled around and dictated an ending to those post-TUC stories.

 

[thribs]

Really? That’s interesting to know. I sometimes wondered what happened to the A. Why didn’t Scotty steal that ship in Crossover.

 

[Desert Kris]

The book Ashes of Eden suggests one possible answer for the Enterprise A, and I think I've seen at least one other book that referenced Ashes' idea for what happened next for that Enterprise.

 

[thribs]

That’s a ShatnerVerse book is it not? That’s a separate continuity.

 

[Leto_II]

The book Ashes of Eden suggests one possible answer for the Enterprise A, and I think I've seen at least one other book that referenced Ashes' idea for what happened next for that Enterprise.

That’s a ShatnerVerse book is it not? That’s a separate continuity.

James Swallow's Cast No Shadow does indeed explicitly Litverse-reference many of the events of The Ashes of Eden (the destruction of the Enterprise-A at Chal, Androvar Drake's attempted takeover, etc.), so the 23rd Century stuff in that book is still pretty compatible with the bulk of the 24th Century novelverse (whereas subsequent Shatnerverse stories like The Return, etc., are largely considered "optional").

Coincidentally, roughly around the same time Ashes came out, DC Comics published a TNG special ("Old Debts," in the 1995 Winter Special), taking place not long after the episode "Relics" (and immediately prior to DS9's "Blood Oath") where Scotty visits the decommissioned NCC-1701-A at a starbase using the shuttlecraft Picard gave him, which pretty much massively contradicts The Ashes of Eden, but it's still an interesting read to compare the two stories.

 

[Desert Kris]

That’s a ShatnerVerse book is it not? That’s a separate continuity.

Any single individual book can be it's own separate continuity. The next individual book can include or discard (cherry pick) whatever it likes from the earlier one. Characters and situations that make the jump from one book to the next does not mean that the entire contents of the earlier book is accepted in the new book.

As you say, Ashes is the first book of the Shatnerverse. What happens to the Enterprise in Ashes (or a version of what happens) is accepted or given a nod as an Easter Egg for readers who know the reference in Cast No Shadows. Doesn't mean Shadows "counts" the entirety of Ashes, or the rest of the Shatnerverse.

It's compartmentalized continuity. Or alternatively, a similar event happens in two or more universes.