Will Before Dishonors Ending Affect Voyager books? Spoilers!

[BrotherBenny]

(for example, the Klingon books don't particularly appeal to me--sorry, KRAD--though I'm sure I'll read at least a couple of them eventually).

I hope you do, as one of the most common comments I've gotten on my Klingon-based fiction over the years is, "You know, I usually hate Klingons, but I liked these books!"

I don't think I'd say that I hate Klingons, though it may be fair to say I hate the lazy stereotypical way Klingons are sometimes written. But the Gorkon bunch are individuals, each with his or her own distinct personality. And I really liked the way Klingon Empire: A Burning House broadened the canvas to let us see more of nonmilitary life on Klingon worlds, while still featuring the Gorkon characters I'd come to really like over the course of the previous books.

After all, Star Trek gives us just a narrow slice of each of its cultures. You can't have a functional society where everyone is a warrior and no one does all the other jobs. For that matter, you can't have a functional military where everyone's a gung ho frontline fighter who can't wait to die gloriously. Star Trek on TV tends to show us those kinds of characters because they're the ones people in Starfleet are more likely to meet. We don't see the opera singers and composers, the farmers, and all the other people who make Klingon society a society instead of an army. But in Burning House we do. We see how Klingons on colony worlds actually get along with the subjugated locals. We see how people live in the slums of the poorer cities. And, yeah, we see what goes into the making of one of those epic operas.

Nothing's been announced about future Klingon Empire novels, and I don't know how well A Burning House sold, but if anyone's resisted buying it because they don't like the usual Klingon cliches, they're missing the point of this series completely. This is good stuff, fun and thoughtful.

QFT

I'm hoping for another KE book too, but it'll 2010 now since '09 is all booked up.

And I would just like to say that while BD might have been a stinker for many people, it was what it was and it was sorted by Christopher. As for Janeway's treatment in Full Circle, I'm looking forward to seeing Janeway from a different perspective, and I'm interested to see how her death is handled.

 

[ClayinCA]

Now, this was almost twenty years ago, and I would contend that there was a period of time where content was less important to the books.

I would strongly disagree. I cannot imagine a ST editor saying, "Yeah, let's just slap this one out and the suckers'll buy it even though it's crap." As we've seen in other threads, everyone's least favourite ST novel is someone else's favourite. In the early 80s, there were people hungry for the next Marshak/Culbreath.

Sometimes a writer's pitch will sound much better than what arrives before deadline, but the ST novels have always been vetted to make them the best book possible in the time permitted, and by whatever rules were in place.

Yeah, you're right; I didn't express myself well at all. I guess what I meant to say was that there seemed to me to be a time (right around then) where the overall effect was less of each book being special in its own right, and more homogeneousness across the whole. Which is not at all the way I phrased it above! Even then, this is probably more to do with the way I perceived it than the way things actually were. So, y'know, just ignore me.

(for example, the Klingon books don't particularly appeal to me--sorry, KRAD--though I'm sure I'll read at least a couple of them eventually).

I hope you do, as one of the most common comments I've gotten on my Klingon-based fiction over the years is, "You know, I usually hate Klingons, but I liked these books!"

And if you still don't like the books, well, that's fine, too.

Fair enough, and it's comments like the one you mention that will almost certainly get me to pick these books up eventually, when I've got more disposable income for book-buying. As I've said before, I've enjoyed every one of your books that I've read, so I'm sure that would be enough to offset my initial reluctance to read about Klingons. The fact that they are about Klingons just makes them less of a priority for me than, say, a book with Kirk or Picard in it. As I say, though, I'm sure I'll get to them eventually!

 

[Therin of Andor]

You're making some assumptions here.

Nope. I asked a question.