Spoilers VOY: A Pocket Full Of Lies By Kirsten Beyer Review Thread

Finished reading it just a while ago.
Nice one.
I liked how Voyager crew was able to gather information on what happened during the Year of Hell and 'reclaim' the temporal shielding technology they developed.

Btw... Icheb's development looked pretty good too, though, I mistakenly got the impression halfway into the book that he might end up in a romantic setting with Bryce.
That would have actually been interesting had it occurred, alas, no (kinda feel disappointed a bit on this bit - though I guess there's plenty of time left to discover which direction Kirsten takes his character next).

Btw, what's the name of a new upcoming Voyager novel (and when is it due to be released)?

 

Architects of Infinity, sometime in early 2017.

 

The back cover blurb did not do a good job at all of selling this book to me, but all things considering, it was more than likely the best they had to go on.

 

I also really liked the cover but it didn't have much to do with the story, or at least there weren't two Voyagers. Or was one of them ment to be the Year of Hell Timeline or something else symbolic?

 

I thought it might be representing the Voyager Denzit Janeway came from and the Voyager that we're all familiar with.

 

...loved it.

 

I had similar thoughts about Bryce and Icheb. Maybe in a future novel.

 

I'd like to read more about Regina Farkas, she's a quite interesting character and I'd like her to be further explored.
Any chance we learn something about Julia Paris' reaction about the birth of her grandson? Or John Torres, for the matter. Little scenes would suffice.

 

Loved this one! Definitely sets the bar high for Star Trek novels in 2016!

Check out my review here.

 

We can hope.
Icheb can easily go either way since the TV show never really implied anything about his potential sexuality... plus, he was a teen back then (I think).
But I think it would be refreshing to see Icheb and Bryce together develop in an intimate capacity (should Kirsten decide to give a romantic interest to Icheb in the first place).

Btw... it was relatively unexpected to see how 'Quinn' part of the plot got resolved (which was nicely done btw) - not to mention Tuvok's emotional state - this book actually managed to tie up loose ends from 'Eternal Tide' well.

One little thing though that bugs me... if Janeway from YOH was able to deploy those buoys detailing her encounter with the Krenim and Annorax, how did the timeline got reset back then in the first place?

We know that temporal shields effectively throw off the Krenim temporal inversions enough where they do not affect ships and planets equipped with them, and the alien fleet that assisted Voyager had to take their temporal shields offline before Janeway rammed Annorax's weapon ship.
But those buoys had them active to survive the temporal reset into a new timeline... my initial thoughts had me going towards the premise that this might have thrown off the temporal reset... however, not necessarily.
We saw that there WAS a temporal change when the temporal shields were active on Voyager the first time around and the shockwave hit Voyager when they first had them active - so Voyager was protected, but the Krenim and their space were not (and it apparently affected the changes in the timeline as well).

I guess my question is, how does having the buoys in subspace with active temporal shields still effectively resets the timeline to a state where Annorax apparently didn't wipe out their enemies and wiped out the colony on Kiana Prime?

Or would this be one of those times when the buoys were small enough to not produce any changes in the timeline and would just survive the reset without affecting anything else?

Alternatively, I guess Janeway could have worked with Seven (who probably knows much more about temporal mechanics) to allow for the buoys to survive while not throwing off the reset - unless they were part of a solution to try and bring the timeline to the most 'balanced' version for that part of space.

These 2 bits of explanations seem to fit best... namely that the reset occurs fine with the buoys being protected but not throwing off anything else - and the buoys surviving the reset and affecting changes which alerted the Krenim to what happened during YOH and at least made them to behave a tad more cautiously?

 

I think it was more Voyager's general participation in events that threw off Annorax's calculations, not their temporal shields (though that does raise the interesting question of what happened to the Voyagers indigenous to the post-shields timelines. Did the little version of the Krenim ship see a pristine Voyager suddenly get replaced by a beat up one?). The temporally shielded bouys, by design, wouldn't have influenced anything, since they were hidden from everyone except the Prime-Universe Voyager (at least, that was the intention. Clearly they weren't as well-hidden as they thought). That was probably Janeway's insurance policy in case Voyager was destroyed or lost their temporal shields— the Voyager from the next timeline Annorax created would find the logs, and have a leg up.

Of course, at the end of YOH, there was no fancy calculations, trying to find the right beat of the butterfly's wings to get the exact result you wanted. Annorax's ship erased itself, and likewise erased its erasure of everything else. Simple and clean, with no probably percentages or counter-indications.

 

It was a very strong story from the prospective of Janeway and her life decisions and possible other ones had things happened differently.

Seven and the Doctor's relationship has been sort of re-booted to season 4 Voyager from the Doctor's prospective. It's hard to say in regard to Seven. I am hoping things improve for them, it's terrible thinking of all your found memories of one person being lost. I am an old fan of the Doctor and Seven's relationship so the past few books have been constantly heart-wrenching on that score.

 

Same here. In retrospect though, I don't think it's on Icheb's radar at all. This is his first time actually forming a friendship with someone he can relate to as a peer, and to me it felt far more like happiness at having made a friend than anything else seen from his perspective. I wouldn't be surprised if he's completely clueless about romance, although he probably observed his fair share of it at the academy. I can totally see him talking to Bryce about it when it does come up though, far more than doing something like the awkward social lessons Seven subjected herself to.

Farkas is one of my favorite characters too. She's not so much a breakout character as either O'Donell or Glenn in terms of her captaincy, but I really appreciate her no-nonsense attitude. The crash of the Quirinal and the relaunch of the Vesta spoke volumes of her commitment to her ship and crew, and she's not affraid to confront Janeway when it's needed. We need someone like that in the mix.

This is something I glossed over, but you raise a valid point. Janeway purposely wanted the temporal shields down to reset Voyager´s history along with Annorax´s. It might be that if she hadn´t, we still would be left with the a timeline much like the current one only with Voyager in it´s Year of Hell state at the end of the episode rather than restored.

Then again, I don´t think we need to understand how this works. Time manipulation has never been portrayed consistently in Star Trek, so I can just accept this and move on.

 

I love Farkas but I always picture her taller than she is. To me she is sort of like Bea Arthur, but not quite.

 

When the first temporal inversion wave hit Voyager and that small Krenim ship that intercepted them while Janeway was negotiating with the Zhaal, neither seemed to have known what was happening (at least that was the impression I got).
The Krenim ship was unprotected from changes in the timeline as was Voyager at the time, and the crews memories of both ships were altered.
For the captain on that Krenim ship, he was a captain of a large Krenim battleship now (and always was from his point of view - and he wouldn't be the wiser for it), and for Janeway and her crew, the encounter with the Zhaal never occurred, and the Krenim attacked them it would seem (as is evident by a banged up Voyager).

When Voyager developed temporal shields though and was hit by temporal inversion, they saw the Krenim battleship change into a small scout ship (similar to the one that initially intercepted them before they experienced the changes) - but the Voyager crew would have no way of knowing of the original encounter except theorising... neither would the Krenim for that matter (apart from Annorax).
Up until Voyager developed temporal shields, only Annorax and his crew were protected and knew what was happening.

I agree with the idea that the temporally shielded buoys would most likely not really affect anything... but I got the impression during the YOH episodes that it was the temporal shields that threw off Annorax's inversion.
Obviously, the ship's participation in various events would have to be taken into account... but Voyager hadn't done that much except running from the Krenim and sitting there when the wave hit them and interacted with the shields - which Obrist himself said was enough to throw off their calculations.

Hence I was wondering if the temporal shields on buoys would have done the same, possibly even helped reset the timeline... or, since they were hidden from everyone as you say, they merely survived the temporal reset without affecting anything else and sat there until they could be found - which begs the question, how the heck did the Krenim get access to the buoys and their logs so they could alter them for alternate Janeway?
Unless I missed that part in the novel.

Apart from that... we also know the temporal shockwave affected a given area, which might indicate that Janeway could have placed the buoys in places that she knew were outside the largest part of Krenim space which would play a part in buoys surviving the temporal reset and not affecting it.

 

You know... I hadn't imagined Farkas as Bea Arthur... I got an impression of an older than Janeway looking woman (but not too old - because, if the average life expectancy of a Human is 150 in the Federation and increasing, then she would be basically middle-aged), with some grayish hair, etc.
Ah yes... the actress that auditioned before Mulgrew for the part of Voyager captain but wasn't really that good in the role - at least Farkas reminded me somewhat of her when she was initially mad at Janeway during 'Eternal Tide'.

 

What I want to know is, if you were looking back in time at a temporally-shielded ship, would you see them interacting with nothing? Like, say Voyager had a firefight with a ship, and then later that ship was erased. If you had a time viewer and looked back at Voyager at the time they had a firefight, would you just see them shooting at nothing and evading shots that weren't there? Or say they had a conversation with someone on a planet; in the new timeline if you looked back at that conversation would they just be having a one-sided conversation responding to things that weren't said, and really confusing the person they're talking to in the new timeline in the process?

Since Voyager screwed up Annorax's calculations after they got temporal shields, this is what would have to have happened, right? And I love the mental image of that, it's honestly hilarious to me. No wonder his calculations were screwed up, with this crazy ship talking to no one and shooting at ghosts flying through space.

 

In the earlier numbered Voyager novel series there is a book called "Echoes" which is a sort of sequel to the episode 'Deadlock'. Voyager is orbiting a particular planet and caught in a 'time thingie' ( I don't want to get bogged down in the author's explanation) where myriad universes come together. Prime Voyager is able to see into all these myriad Universes and are able to observed multiple Voyagers orbiting the same planet except in ever other Universe Voyager is missing....because those are the Universes where the Voyager self destructed (a la Deadlock).

Not sure if that is what you are talking about but that was the first thing that came to mind.

That is one of the better early numbered Voyager books btw. I recommend it.

 

Just finished it.

Once again, Kristen Beyer does the impossible - making me give more than just a crap about the Voyager crew (I never warmed to the TV series during its first run, but I've warmed to the characters, the family aspect and the post-Seven seasons since).

It would have been interesting to see denzit Janeway stay on, though, for at least one more book - the wrap-up was a bit too neat. I got a chuckle out of "Quinn", though - years of watching Trek have made me instantly suspicious of anyone whose name starts with that particular letter and I'm glad I saw that coming.

 

Funny that you mention it, Geneviève Bujold as Nicole Janeway is more-or-less my mental model, too. I imagine Farkas with a different accent, though.