VOY #9 The Final Fury by Dafydd ab Hugh Review Thread

[tomswift2002]

Published August 1996
also #4 in the INVASION! Mini-series

Plot: Due to the inertial dampeners being down for much needed maintenance, everyone on Voyager is suffering from the space-version of "seasickness, when they receive a distress call carrying a Federation signal. Upon locating the signal's origin, the crew discover that an Invasion of the Alpha Quadrant is being planned, and Voyager is the only ship that can stop it!

Review: it's been about 20 years since I've read this story (originally in the Omnibus edition which I got for Christmas 1998), and the one scene that's stuck with me all this time is the opening seasickness.

Even though I haven't read the other three books in this quadrology, it's hard to believe but this was the first series to feature entries from all the tv shows, and how it really launched the relaunch books of the 24th century and all their crossover stories, such as the recently released "Prey" trilogy having elements of TOS, TNG, DS9 & VOYAGER in it.

 

[20fridge]

I remember this being a good follow-up to The Soldiers of Fear and an excellent conclusion to the series. I thought it fleshed out the Furies better than the TNG or TOS installments and it used the Voyager characters well. I should probably reread it at some point.

 

[DS9forever]

Best of all four was the DS9 entry, Time's Enemy.

 

[tomswift2002]

One thing that I'm finding with "The Final Fury" is that some of the characters are a little off, with B'Elanna being the most off. B'Elanna seems to be more like a teenage girl in this book rather than an adult, in that at one of the staff meetings, once Janeway's finished talking about engineering, B'Elanna is like "Can I go now?" in a flippant, almost disrespectful manner.

But I also noticed that Chell shows up in this book, but he's referred to as "Cadet Chell", and is noted as being in one of Tuvok's Starfleet Academy courses. Maybe that was an early idea for Tuvok and Chell that we only saw in "The Learning Curve". Have a Starfleet Academy program developed so that anyone could be trained, since the ship, after all, was 70-75 years away from Starfleet and the Federation, so they would probably need someone to help train any kids on the ship.

Of course, with Fury being number 9, it's still within that 12 book order that was done prior to "Caretaker airing, so ab Hugh had a major job, writing for a series not yet on air, or just coming on air, and tying into a larger story arc.

 

[Markonian]

I liked that the officer from the TNG book reappeared, although the was half-dead by now.
The Furies made good enemies. I wish we had learned more about this multi-species (666 species!) civilisation.

Each book in the series was a joy.
Read them all in 1 go in 2013 or so.

 

[Relayer1]

I recall it being a pretty poor series, the DS9 one being best.

I've read others by this author and regretted it - he strikes me as one of the less gifted Trek authors...

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

I thought it was pretty funny that when the Fury commander talks to Voyager, it's said that the universal translator rendered his speech with "an odd, rumbling twang, like a moose from Texas".

 

[borgboy]

I like the book. I re read the whole Invasion! series several months ago. I thought the Furies were a really interesting antagonist.

 

[tomswift2002]

I'm finding that Tom Paris is coming off really stiff in this book. Sure he's cracking jokes, but in a way it's like he's afraid Janeway will maroon him somewhere if he misbehaves. But it reminds me of just how starchy-looking Paris' uniform looked in the first few seasons (not to mention Nick Locarno's uniform on TNG), whereas Janeway and the others all had less-starchy looking uniforms.

 

[tomswift2002]

In Chapter 10 I noticed that we actually got to see what some one-off characters are upto since their TV appearance, as Dalby, Jarron and Chell make an appearance and references to "Learning Curve" are mentioned, so Chapter 10 was probably part of the rewrite of the book. But it was nice to see Dalby and Jarron, since after "Learning Curve" I think we only ever saw Chell make future reappearances, even though Dalby and Jarron apparently survived the entire journey.