Voyager Relaunch question

[TEACAKE'S PLEATHER DOME]

Agreed on the first two, but Christie Golden really flopped with the Homecoming/Farther Shore and Spirit Walk books.

(Yes the TENSION wankery in Imzadi is exactly what you get in the baby angst. Yes these idiots are carrying on like this over a decade later.)

I love the phrase "TENSION wankery". I shall co-opt it and use it for my own.

I give it freely to you, go forth and condemn things!

Eh...I didn't really like Admiral Montgomery ("key reasons the Federation won" my ass), thought that the Borg virus was lame, and really didn't like Brenna Covington. I didn't get the abuse angle at first (I was like "Who the hell is getting abused?!" and only much later did I connect Covington with the abused child), and I thought that what could have been a sympathetic character got twisted way too fast and easily (come on, you can't hide this kind of mental issue for years, particularly when you're in the position she was in). Further, I never got that sense of impending mass assimilation. It was like one minute everyone's screaming and going crazy, the next it's like it never happened. It was almost like everything had happened on the holodeck.

Wow. You obviously retain FAR more than I do because the only bit I remember from what you wrote is the last part about the impending mass assimilation being unconvincing which I agree with. I did read these books quite a few years ago and like I said it was following some stodgy stuff so I was just enjoying the readability of them, plus the coolness of it being VOY relaunch.

Just as Golden's actual books in a series taper off in quality sometimes the books themselves wrap up the story in a rush and really don't end well.

Spirit Walk, I could not finish the first and never read the second. I noticed with Golden writing Warcraft books that she will have something pretty tightly written and then follow it with a much lesser book and I think this was the case here. ONCE AGAIN we had lots of freaking Tom and B'Elanna angst.. what is with these writers?! Also I am a complete non-fan of the whole Klingon messiah deal. Boring, convoluted and did I mention boring. Yeah I'm very opinionated, I think Trek does spiritual stuff only slightly better than romance, and that's only in DS9 where they somehow managed to walk a nice balancing line and still keep their sci fi cred. Anyway I will always give Golden a shot but having experienced her inconsistency in two worlds my expectations are on hold.

I agree with everything here, except I won't give her a shot.

What if it's the next book in a series you are following?

The best TrekLit book I've read is Terok Nor, Day of the Vipers by James Swallow. I read that book with mouth open I was so blown away by how good it was.

That was a pretty freaking awesome book, though the best one I've read (it's hard to choose just *one* best) is Articles of the Federation.

I must now confess that I have NOT read Articles of the Federation despite KRAD having been my favorite for a long time. I tried to read the whole series of A Time to.. books first and I got hopeless bogged down and quite before I got to Articles. Do you think I can just pick that one up and read it?

 

[Quinton O'Connor]

Oh and YES the Destiny trilogy is excellent! I had to bleep over all the baby angst but the original characters and storyline, of Erika Hernandez is incredible. I loved it.

Heh. Awesome. teacake for the win; this is precisely what made me put down the first Destiny book after I bought it.

I need it give it a whirl again but the baby stuff was boring me to tears.

 

[Dancing Doctor]

I give it freely to you, go forth and condemn things!

Wow. You obviously retain FAR more than I do because the only bit I remember from what you wrote is the last part about the impending mass assimilation being unconvincing which I agree with. I did read these books quite a few years ago and like I said it was following some stodgy stuff so I was just enjoying the readability of them, plus the coolness of it being VOY relaunch.

I can understand that. I just finished reading this VOY book titled Bless the Beasts. It was...interesting.

Just as Golden's actual books in a series taper off in quality sometimes the books themselves wrap up the story in a rush and really don't end well.

Oh, definitely. There are quite a few Trek Lit novels that are like that, so Golden isn't necessarily the only one. What sucked is that, unlike the rest of the Trek Lit series, she was the only one really doing any VOY for the longest time.

What if it's the next book in a series you are following?

I'd really have to question myself, and look at what the book is about.

I must now confess that I have NOT read Articles of the Federation despite KRAD having been my favorite for a long time. I tried to read the whole series of A Time to.. books first and I got hopeless bogged down and quite before I got to Articles. Do you think I can just pick that one up and read it?

Oh, definitely. You may want to read the last three books in the A Time to... series, just because the events in those books set things up for Articles.

However, you should be able to get by just fine without them.

 

[TEACAKE'S PLEATHER DOME]

Oh and YES the Destiny trilogy is excellent! I had to bleep over all the baby angst but the original characters and storyline, of Erika Hernandez is incredible. I loved it.

Heh. Awesome. teacake for the win; this is precisely what made me put down the first Destiny book after I bought it.

I need it give it a whirl again but the baby stuff was boring me to tears.

I said this on the Treklit forum once and was soundly upbraided for it, I believe I was told that I would understand these things better if I had children of my own.. which I DO so I know first hand that people do not carry on this way like some hybrid of Days of our Lives and Twilight about babies. It's really very dumbchilling stuff.

 

[Quinton O'Connor]

Oh and YES the Destiny trilogy is excellent! I had to bleep over all the baby angst but the original characters and storyline, of Erika Hernandez is incredible. I loved it.

Heh. Awesome. teacake for the win; this is precisely what made me put down the first Destiny book after I bought it.

I need it give it a whirl again but the baby stuff was boring me to tears.

I said this on the Treklit forum once and was soundly upbraided for it, I believe I was told that I would understand these things better if I had children of my own.. which I DO so I know first hand that people do not carry on this way like some hybrid of Days of our Lives and Twilight about babies. It's really very dumbchilling stuff.

...I think every last one of those was necessary. I totally agree. I don't like reading, seeing, hearing people drone on such as they did, and it was really turning me off from it. I plan on starting off a couple of books prior to Destiny and really pushing myself next time, but for now I'm sticking with some DS9 stuff.

 

[Dancing Doctor]

Plus, with everything else that happened in Destiny, do we really need more drama and angst?

 

[Quinton O'Connor]

Yeah, I hear a lot happens in Destiny. Something about galaxy-threatening Borg stuff that shakes everyone to their very core or somesuch.

 

[Dancing Doctor]

Yeah, I hear a lot happens in Destiny. Something about galaxy-threatening Borg stuff that shakes everyone to their very core or somesuch.

Pretty much, yeah.

Let's just say the Dominion War got nothing on Destiny.

Also, there are some people who don't make it out the other side (63 billion, to be exact) but it might surprise you as to who some of those people are.

 

[Quinton O'Connor]

Sounds excitin'.

 

[Dancing Doctor]

It really is.

 

[Quinton O'Connor]

And do I get to see any Voyager folks while I'm reading this excitin' trilogy? Curious enough to ask since I'm on the Voyager board right now, anyway. DS9 is my big passion and I know I'd already read some Ezri stuff which excited me. I think I was reading some totally-DS9 things in the very beginning, too, with the Columbia.

It's really just all the baby stuff that was putting me off and I feel odd for saying it but I didn't finish the first book of Destiny because of it! My novelverse exposure is very limited so I didn't have any bearing on the Riker/Troi and Picard/Crusher baby stuff to begin with, plus it's not something that tends to interest me as a reader very much, plus the Riker/Troi aspects in particular were hurting my poor head.

 

[Dancing Doctor]

Seven plays a fairly big part in the Destiny books. Tuvok is on the Titan, Harry appears in two of the books (I think), Tom Paris appears, Owen Paris has a particularly important scene, the Borg Queen is huge (and we find out about her origins), and that's about it.

 

[Quinton O'Connor]

Good enough for me!

 

[Dancing Doctor]

The focus in Destiny is really on Titan, TNG, and some characters from DS9 and ENT.

 

[Deks]

Before Dishonor was an interesting book in my opinion.
I seriously get the impression though that Janeway was killed out of sheer hatred for the character though (although it may not have been the case).

Why would Janeway ignore lady Q's warnings and step onto a 'dead' Borg cube that for all intense and purposes could probably reactivate itself just like any other Borg ship could under the right conditions?

Then again, Janeway DID have a personal encounter with the Borg on more than one occasion, so I can understand her desire to go there and be on the spot before others.

But what I don't get for example is why did she behave towards Picard like other admirals did?
She non-chalantly discarded his worries about the Collective just like previous admirals had a tendency of doing when other crises were in question.
But she never gave an indication of becoming such a person.
If anything, she would give Picard most of her support in such matters.
Here we had a chance to see an admiral that actually didn't become a self-absorbed idiot (Nacheyev excluded because her subsequent appearances DID tone her ego down a peg or two).

 

[F. King Daniel]

Full Circle does shed a lot more light on Janeway's unhinged actions in Before Dishonor. Chakotay, during a massive breakdown (book Chakotay>TV Chakotay), tries to figure out why she took leave of her senses.

 

[Dancing Doctor]

That was always my impression as to how and why Janeway was killed off: because the author (and possibly the editor) didn't like her.

The argument was made was that "We couldn't think of anything else to do with her."

 

[Galekarens]

Peter David was picked to kill off Janeway by Editor Margaret Clark, who was not a fan of hers, because he was not a Voyager fan; he even called himself a "hired assassin." Full Circle was an attempt to appease KJ fans who rightfully protested how badly the main character of a TV show was treated in BD, but it hasn't worked. Many, many still want her back in Trek Lit, as the person she was, and the wrong done to her righted.

 

[Dancing Doctor]

I knew it was an anti-Janeway conspiracy.

 

[F. King Daniel]

Keep in mind that Janeway's death was two or three editors ago. Even if whoever it was had no idea what to do with her, the same may not be true now.

I loved The Needs of the Many, where Janeway's alive in 2405 and the only person who remembers her death is in an insane asylum.

(It's set in the STO universe. He's got temporal psychosis and "remembers" things from alternate timelines, including Janeway's death, the Borg invasion and even Vulcan blowing up over a hundred years ago)