Poll VOY #11: The Garden by Melissa Scott Review Thread

[tomswift2002]

Published: February 1997

Plot: What secrets lurk on a strange world?

Desperately in need of vital nutritional supplies, the crew of the USS Voyager must risk dealing with an enigmatic known as the Kirse, legendary for the bountiful crops of their world—and for their secretive ways. Despite Neelix's warnings, Captain Janeway leads an away team to the Kirse.
But when the hostile Andirrim attack the Kirse, Janeway finds herself caught in a deadly situation. Forced to fight alonside the Kirse, Janeway and her crew can only hope that their strange, new allies are not more dangerous than their common foe.

Review: I know that many are at home right now with the COVID-19 issue going on right now, so this might be the best time to review The Garden, considering that it is the infamous Star Trek book that features 9 Chapters, with in, some cases, around 40 pages per chapter! This was at the opposite end of the spectrum from the September 1995 DS9 book The Laertian Gamble by Robert Sheckley which featured 72 chapters and in some cases, Chapters that were half a page long with 1 paragraph.

According to Memory Beta, this was another book where the English cover was altered to present a closer version of a character, in this case, Janeway, after Bless The Beasts had to have Paris redrawn to more closely match Robert Duncan McNeil. Of course with this book, I think they should've redrawn the male guy on the cover as well, if that was suppose to be Paris, since that guy looks more like the original Paris from Bless the Beasts, and not McNeill's Paris.

Of course, I must say that the cover of this book is easily one of the best Trek book covers ever. Just the blue and white of the planet, contrasted with the black, red and skin tones of Janeway and the mysterious guy---whenever I think of the Trek books in general, this is probably the first cover to pop to mind. And I remember, even as a kid when I borrowed this from the library (which, surprisingly, was over March break 1997, so it would've been a "Just In" new book at the library, probably the first time that I had checked out a Star Trek book so close to its release date) the cover drew me to it. The Garden was probably the 2nd Voyager novel I read, and when I read it, I had only seen maybe 6 episodes from Voyager's 3rd season during the summer of 96, so I still didn't know the series as well as I knew The Next Generation.

And it's been 23 years since I last read The Garden, but I still remember the scene where Paris was in the Kirse craft and he had to sit on a chair that, as I recall, the Melissa Scott described as being more like a round cat scratcher, rather than a seat that we would think of, and the Kirse were bigger and taller than the Voyager crew in the book, so the chair didn't really fit Paris and he had a hard time reaching the controls.

 

[zarkon]

Wow, not many people have read this one then huh.
I really enjoyed it. Good aliens, good concept, better then 99% of actual VOY eps.

 

[tomswift2002]

I just got around to reading it, and I'm still in Chapter 1 (page 22 of 33) , and while it's interesting in terms of plot, with the crew trying to find out how everyone is vitamin deficient, I think an author could've easily inserted another chapter or two, since there seem to be natural act breaks in the chapter that would make the Chapter feel like Chapter 1 in any other Star Trek TV series-time book.

 

[tomswift2002]

So the book is proceeding more slowly then I remembered it. I’m upto page 80 and they only just beamed down to Kirse and are following the yellow brick road.

 

[tomswift2002]

So I’m upto page 100 (somewhere in the middle of Chapter 4) and Scott has done a lot of world building to the point that it reminded me of “Star Trek The Motion Picture” and those long periods of no talking just reaction shots to what’s on screen.

And it’s interesting that she used the “another human in the Delta Quadrant” storyline.

 

[tomswift2002]

I was just noticing that on the copyright page, the Paramount Pictures copyright says “Copyright 1996”, whereas the rear cover has a copyright of 1997 (the book was published in February 1997). I wonder if the book was originally scheduled for a 1996 release but needed to be pushed back (maybe for the cover art). Or it could be a type.


Also, Harry Kim gets a promotion to Lieutenant in “The Garden”. He’s been referred to as ‘Lieutenant Kim’ a few times!

 

[tomswift2002]

So on page 123 there an interesting spelling for “fairy”: it is faerie. Scott was describing the scene as being like a “faerie kingdom”, and I thought “faerie” might’ve been the British spelling.

 

[Christopher]

So on page 22 there an interesting spelling for “fairy”: it is faerie. Scott was describing the scene as being like a “faerie kingdom”, and I thought “faerie” might’ve been the British spelling.

It's the original French spelling, which endures as an archaic spelling in fiction and literature. It's generally used to refer to the realm of the fae/fairies as opposed to individual entities, or to invoke a sense of something powerful and mysterious and mythological rather than a cute Disneyfied sprite like Tinker Bell.

 

[JD]

They use it a lot in contemporary fantasy, I read a lot of those books, and I see that spelling more often than fairy.

 

[tomswift2002]

Now then this reminds me of that scene from “Yesterday’s Enterprise” where Picard crammed everyone into his tiny ready room for staff meetings. In “The Garden” all the staff meetings occur in Janeway’s ready room. The ready room also doesn’t quite sound like the one seen on TV, as in the book it features a wall screen that the Doctor appears on. And people are able to plug their tricorders and other stuff into access points. On TV the only access point and screen that I recall were Janeway’s computer and the screen above the replicator.

 

[tomswift2002]

So I finished “The Garden” about 2 days ago. I found that it really didn’t move all that fast. Most of the book was world-building with no real action until the end of the book.

It was an average book. 2.5/5.