David Mack (2)Recensioni
Autore di Destiny: Gods of Night
Per altri autori con il nome David Mack, vedi la pagina di disambiguazione.
Recensioni
Harm's Way (Star Trek: The Original Series) di David Mack
Some elements of the story, especially towards the end were a tad predictable, but only if you were paying attention I suppose. In fact I purposely had to cover the last few paragraphs so I didn't accidentally glance at them as I read the second-to-last page because I thought I knew what was happening but didn't want to spoil it for myself.
The characters are for the most part treated correctly. They may not be exactly as they were on the show, but a few years have taken place and people change. A lot has happened in those years.
I greatly enjoyed this book and look forward to reading the next one very soon.
A couple problems though. Sometimes authors make an enemy to powerful. So powerful that it almost feels like over the top. The massive Borg fleet at the end was way overkill. I mean I often wondered why the Borg didn't just send a few cubes, after seeing on Voyager how many they had. But this is kinda ridiculous. You kinda know its going to take some deus ex machina to prevent the Federation / Klingons / Romulans from being utterly annihilated. I'm also curious if we'll learn in the 3rd book why the Borg have abandoned assimilation in favor of destruction.
The Hirogen were way too powerful. They tough on Voyager. Really tough, but here they felt almost unstoppable.
I did like the exploration through the subspace tunnels though. Pretty nifty seeing such far away places, even if only for a little while.
Overall, despite some criticisms, I very much enjoyed this book, tearing through it in 4 nights. I look forward to reading the final book of this trilogy.
As with the other books, I enjoyed that he brought back characters that were previously guests on the series, like Melora Pazlar and Simon Tarsis.
The only criticisms I feel I can level is that the Voyager and its crew was done a disservice. I was surprised in the previous books to see that the ship was still in service and not a museum. I was surprised, pleasantly, to see that Chakotay and Paris ran the ship. I expected it to be featured a bit more, but then it gets absolutely wrecked and pretty much forgotten about. When the Enterprise, Titan and Aventine meet up, they help each other repair. They know the Voyager is out there - its mentioned before, but no one goes to help them....
Also, David Mack WRECKED the Federation, Klingon Empire, Romulans. So many known worlds absolutely destroyed. How do you follow that act? I guess I'll find out!
Took me about 2 and a half weeks to get through the 810 combined pages of all 3 books. That's pretty fast for me. I had a hard time putting the book down.
The Bashir / Section 31 strand of the Destiny-era novels has never really clicked for me. I think there's a couple reasons. Partially, it's because Bashir feels very passive in the middle of all of it, it doesn't seem like Bashir makes a lot of interesting choices. He's brought into Section 31, he goes on the mission, and then he does all the things he's supposed to do. The one part I found interesting was when Bashir is recognized as the killer of the mirror Odo in "Crossover" and the mirror Dominion seeks to sentence him to death—and eventually Bashir agrees to hand himself over for the greater good. But outside of this, Bashir does very little except carry out action sequences. Once he hands himself over, Bashir isn't who gets himself out of the situation; it's not Bashir either who does anything to foil the true Section 31 plot in the mirror universe. He just stand there as all these other people make the interesting decisions.
I also—and this just might be my fault—always expect more moral compromise on Bashir's part in these books. But it seems to me that he signs up with Section 31, and pretty much just acts as he normally would. I want a sense of Bashir going deeper, things getting beyond his control, him getting soiled, but this never happens. I don't know that the book promises this, but it's what I feel a Section 31 story ought to deliver, and this story doesn't.
On top of this, the Sarina relationship never works for me. I like the idea of it, that Bashir has finally a woman who can keep up with him... but in the actual book they mostly just exchange some weak banter. When do they click like no one else can? As a character, she has never interested me in her novel appearances, I find it hard to get a hold on her in a meaningful way.
Outside of Bashir, I found most of what was happening not very interesting. The other characters, Typhon Pact and Commonwealth alike, are pretty one-dimensional, and I found it tedious every time the narrative switched to them sniping at one another. As I said back in my review of Rise Like Lions, I never cared much for DS9's approach to the mirror universe, and it's particularly boring in prose form, where a character may be called "Saavik" but can basically be anyone for all she has to do with the Prime Saavik when she's not played by Kirstie Alley or Robin Curtis.
The whole plot ends up resolved with Memory Omega being essentially omnipotent, which takes a lot of agency away from everyone else, and I thought raised more problems than it solved. How did they even get into the situation of being threatened by the Prime universe Breen if they had quantum windows? Why did they let Cole and his friends attempt what they attempted if they knew all along what they were going to do?
It's competently written, of course, but it all felt pretty hollow and uninteresting—made worse by my consistent feeling that somewhere out there in the multiverse there's a different Section 31 novel that really spotlights Bashir's character in the way that the best Section 31 episodes of the show did.
Continuity Notes:
- Cole says new laws ban Starfleet Intelligence from operating in the mirror universe, thanks to a "reaction to blowback from certain recent operations involving your former colleagues on Deep Space Nine." But I wasn't sure what this was actually referring to
- Bashir says the last he knew of Odo, "[a]s of last year, he was leading the Dominion." But Odo was trapped in the Alpha Quadrant in September 2383, and had not returned to the Gamma Quadrant yet when Bashir left the station in September 2384.
- A guard that Bashir knocks out in "Crossover" is here identified as the mirror Cenn Desca. I don't think there are any great shots of him in the episode, and Memory Alpha doesn't know who played him.
- Though as I said above, I was disappointed in how Bashir played little role in his own fate, it was nice to see that the mirror Dominion was somewhat different and had a different way of operating. The follow-up conversation between Bashir and the Founder is pretty good, too.
- I appreciate the revival, twelve years later, of the Section 31 branding... though of course I would have preferred the same logo and even more importantly... spinal consistency!
- The idea that Section 31 has a uniform only becomes more hilarious the more times you read it. (And, of course, Discovery would take this to new heights later on. BLACK BADGES!)
Anyway, as you can see on the cover this is a book involving Data, B4 or Sooong or whomever. I happens over 4 years after the last movie Nemesis in which they killed Data and Data had dumped his memories into B4. This is the first of 3 books from one of the better Star Trek authors.
Overall I enjoyed the book pretty well. The characters are for the most part spot on to what they are in the shows and movies. The story works well I think and explains enough of things you may have missed not reading previous books or even seeing all the shows and movies.
This was a great story, full of swift changes, plans gone awry. With determined Pakleds, greedy Ferengi, honorable Ferengi(!), brutal Nausicans, along with Breen adversaries, there are plenty of corners for this story to bounce against. Not to mention a poor conflicted Vulcan!
From the back cover: Amoral, shrouded in secrecy, and answerable to no one, Section 31 is the mysterious covert operations division of Starfleet, a rogue shadow group committed to safeguarding the Federation at any cost. Doctor Julian Bashir sacrificed his career for a chance to infiltrate Section 31 and destroy it from within. Now it’s asking him to help it stop the Breen from stealing a dangerous new technology from the Mirror Universe—one that could give the Breen control over the galaxy. It’s a mission Bashir can’t refuse—but is it really the shot he’s been waiting for? Or is it a trap from which even his genetically enhanced intellect can’t escape?
Features:
- Burnham arguing for the nonviolent approach (just sayin’)
- Spock and Burnham working out their ~daddy issues~ together in a totally delightful way
- Saru! Lots of Saru! And lots about how his whole prey species thing works, which is really nice.
- Captain Georgiou listening to jazz on vinyl in her ready room, what is she Riker, come on, Georgiou would totally be like “I’m listening to 21st century masters” and it’s Harry Styles on vinyl AND I’M NOT JUST SAYING THAT BECAUSE I LOVE HIM but because jazz and classical, great as they are, are probably not the only thing that people in the future will listen to
- Captain Pike when he was not kept in a box
- Number One!! AKA Una, AKA Also Christine Chapel And Also Lwaxana Troi And Also Gene Roddenberry’s Long Suffering Wife. Well, I assume she was long suffering. And related to that...
- Some intensely Trekker fix-it fic shit about why “The Menagerie” is such a weird episode!
What can I say? This book, while not, like, probably the greatest Star Trek book ever written (DIANE DUANE, YOU HAVE MY HEART FOREVER) was definitely everything I needed from the first Disco book. It gave me backstory that I needed, reassured me that we were still in the Trek universe I know and love, and did it all with style. Also possibly it’s just nice to read something written with a contemporary sensibility after subjecting myself to all the early (70s, 80s) novels. I vote you read it.
Weakest in that it’s a victim of its own scope. When you are telling the story of the fate of a universe and pulling together so many plot lines it naturally becomes sprawling. As a result there’s an over-reliance on techno-babble and timeline gymnastics that at times made my head spin.
Strongest in that it carried the most emotional impact around the fates of certain characters.
The two-page “Grace Notes” conclusion was a surprising and effective way to bridge the legacy of the Trek novels to the developing on-screen continuity of the new TV shows.
Their adventure takes them to the Mirror Universe first seen in Stark Trek the original series. There they must prevent the Breen from acquiring technology that will be a game changer in our universe. On top of all that they must foil the plans of Section 31 to form an alliance with the denizens of the Mirror Universe.
The story had the feel of trying to do too many things well and only doing a fair job. The series how ever has caught my interest I will try to read the next 4 books in the series.
Having failed in his bid for supremacy through aggression, former Prime Minister Kinchawn - now ousted by his second in command and by the new Tezwan government - has gone into hiding while his loyalists carry out a war of attrition through terrorist acts that target both their own compatriots and the Federation relief personnel who came to help the distressed population of the planet. The crew of the Enterprise is also frantically searching for Cmdr. Riker, who was taken prisoner by Kinchawn’s loyalists during the commando strike against the weapon emplacements, a search that is made more difficult by the severe losses incurred from the loyalists’ strikes and by the rapidly deteriorating political situation, which is not helped by president Zife’s attempts at hiding the Federation’s hand in creating the present conditions.
By now I have become used to David Mack’s grimmer version of the Trek universe, and I appreciated his “no holds barred” choice of showing the harsher realities of war - which in this specific case is a war of attrition: Star Trek rarely dwelled on the stark details of war, even on Deep Space 9 where the conflict with the Dominion held such a large portion of the story. With the exception of a single episode, war - and here I mean ground combat, the close and personal kind - has more often than not been something that happened off screen, offering something of a sanitized version of the real thing. A Time to Heal takes us at the center of the events developing on ravaged Tezwa and we are not spared any detail of the bloody guerrilla tactics of Kinchawn’s loyalists who strike with equal ferociousness their compatriots and the Federation personnel, whose ranks are severely depleted - both in security forces and in medical staff.
These circumstances offer great opportunities for character development, because the reactions to the constant attrition of these attacks speak loudly about the way individuals are changed by events outside of their control: from the pain of the security officers forced to send their people into potentially lethal situations, to the heartbreak of medical personnel having to deal with the wounded, the maimed, the dying on a daily basis with no end in sight, to the grim resolve of those who until that moment had tried to adhere to higher ideals and find themselves forced to respond to cruelty with the same degree of ruthlessness - no one comes out of this page in Trek history unscathed, or unchanged.
One of the characters that is more dramatically altered is the otherwise serene Counselor Troi, as her anguish for Riker’s fate compels her to resort to psychological torture of a captured officer from Kinshawn’s army, in the attempt to learn where the Enterprise’s XO has been taken: Troi goes down a very dark road here, and only at the very last moment she is forced to acknowledge that despair and a desire for retribution have taken her almost beyond the brink of decency. It’s hardly necessary for her to recall the famous quote from Nietzsche to understand that her fight against her opponent’s darkness almost took her inside that darkness where monsters lurk and stare you in the eye.
Even Captain Picard is affected deeply by the rapidly degenerating situation, and it looks as if he’s more prone to reacting, rather than acting proactively as used to be his modus operandi: in later books by this author he appears less sure of himself, burdened by guilt and the awareness of having been forced to renounce some of his principles, so I believe that the downward spiral might have started here, as he finds himself confronted with a kind of brutality the Federation is not used to. We rarely - if ever - saw Picard out of his element as he’s shown here, but his decision to endorse Zife’s removal from office ends up being the less damaging path in a range of impossible choices. That this decision weighs heavily on his conscience, and will come later to haunt him and endanger his career, only manages to make him more human and approachable that he ever was before.
And to add more weight to the awareness that this is the start of a downward slide for the Federation and its professed ideals, there are the constant glimpses of something ominous moving behind the scenes: with the hindsight offered by the later books I read before this, it’s easy to perceive the long hand of Section 31 and its henchmen, and to find those hints even more disturbing as the realization of how pervasive the darkness already is. For this reason I’m still wondering, as I write this, at the choice of title for this book, because there is very little healing in here, if any, even though this did nothing to detract from my appreciation of a compelling story and my respect for this author’s skills in dealing with a well-know franchise and taking its tie-in books to a higher level.
A Time to Kill, and its companion novel A Time to Heal, portray the circumstances that led to the massive interstellar crisis which later decreed Zife’s removal from office: these books represent a prequel to the ones I mentioned before, and they helped me put in better focus the overall story - they are also part of a longer series filling the blanks between the end of the Dominion War and the events of the movie Nemesis, which marks several changes in the composition of the Enterprise’s complement.
In the darkest hours of the Dominion War president Zife and his closest advisors (probably prompted by Section 31) decided to arm the planet Tezwa, lying close to the Klingon border, with a new kind of devastating weapon as a last resort against the invasion, although it was a choice in direct violation of the treaties between the Federation and the Empire. Now that the Dominion threat is no more, Kinchawn - Tezwa’s new Prime Minister and a power-hungry individual - threatens to encroach on Klingon territory, knowing that those same weapons would give him a formidable advantage. Picard and the Enterprise are sent to defuse this potentially explosive situation, but lack of knowledge of the powerful armament’s existence, or of the Federation’s higher echelons’ involvement, places him and his crew in a disastrous situation that looks more like a no-win scenario with every passing hour…
As I found out with the two previous Star Trek tie-in books written by David Mack, this is not the kind of story we saw in the televised episodes, where no matter how dire the situation, or how troublesome the political implications, at the end of the episode’s 45 minutes a solution is found and everything is tied up nicely: A Time to Kill is a thrilling mix of action sequences and behind-the-scenes machinations that combine to depict what is probably the worst diplomatic crisis ever faced by the Federation and make this novel a compelling page turner. The story also focuses on a good number of new faces among the Enterprise’s complement, which helps in broadening the narrative scope and gifting the novel with a definite choral feel by presenting these people with a depth of background, motivations and dilemmas that turn them into something more than cardboard characters to be introduced in one scene and killed off in the next.
One major thread in the story concerns the commando-style mission carried out by the crew to destroy the six weapons emplacements scattered across the planet before the guns can be used against the advancing Klingon fleet: the POV shifts between the various teams, and the problems they encounter in the mission, provide all the adrenaline one could ask for - and more - and offer a dramatic counterpoint to the equally difficult diplomatic situation faced by Captain Picard, who’s compelled to ask his former officer Worf, now the Federation ambassador to the Klingon empire, to perform a covert and dangerous operation on his own homeworld.
Nonetheless, even though these sections offer a compelling read, I found that what happens on Earth in the rarefied heights of politics represents the true backbone of the story, mostly because I discovered that the infamous president Zife looks little more than a front for his Machiavellian chief adviser - a man gifted with great strategic skills but cursed with a chilling lack of empathy - and that the Section 31 masterminds are the real movers and shakers of the whole scenario. What I find fascinating here is the strong House of Cards vibes I derived from this part of the story, where cut-throat politics and scheming feel very unlike what we have been shown of the Federation so far, while making me wonder how much of its flawless public image was really just a façade. It all fits with what I’ve learned so far about Section 31’s involvement in the management of Federation politics, and it also shows the author’s skill in developing this concept of the darkness at the core of the utopia, and expanding it in the later books.
Character-wise, A Time to Kill offers some intriguing angles on the ones we know best, showing how recent events plagued them with some insecurities which weigh heavily on the choices they have to make: in a sense this makes them more sympathetic and helps to show they are normal people trying to deal with extraordinary issues, rather than larger-than-life heroes. Oddly enough, I find I like these characters more when they are less heroic and invincible, because they end up feeling more real.
As the first part of a duology, this book ends with something of a cliffhanger and I count myself fortunate to have had the possibility of reading the sequel back to back, because the wait would otherwise have been hard to bear…
The Destiny trilogy answers the question, "how much stuff/aliens/references can I pack into one piece of fan fiction?" The answers is "a lot."
You get all the captains*: Picard, Riker, (Ezri) Dax, passing references to Janeway and Archer. You get all the aliens*: humans, Klingons, Romulans, Andorians, even aliens whose race was never mentioned in a canon show or film but is part of canon like Efrosians (the President of the Federation in 2293 with droopy moustache and wild hair). You get all the bad guys*: Borg, Nausicaans. And you get bonus additional material, like a super-powered alien race you've never seen before, the Caeliar!
[*Surprisingly, though, you get no TOS crew and no Q.]
And are important things at stake? You bet! How about a war that might spell the end of galactic civilization as we know it (or know it through watching Star Trek on the TV)? How about minor romantic tiffs between characters we already know? How about a very detailed description of how to walk in a pair of self-fabricated snow shoes?
Seriously, though, I read these books because I am truly a fan of the Star Trek world and wanted to see what the written fiction was like while I took a completist romp through the entire body of existing TV episodes (both live action and cartoon) and movies (both regular time-line and Kelvin Timeline). The author is a professional writer who has written several Star Trek episode scripts and has done quite a few Star Trek books that garner a great deal of praise on the Internet. When I refer to these works as "fan fiction" I don't meant to suggest anything negative about the author, but rather to suggest a genre that assumes its readers know the basic background of the setting and characters and attempts to offer them something that they cannot get from the canonical works. Certainly, that describes these books.
Ultimately, though, I think I would have more enjoyed reading a fresh work by the author, as I had the feeling that he was a bit cramped by the overwhelming press of Trekness: someone has to drink a raktajino every hundred pages or so; Worf has to walk around with a Bat'leth on a regular basis. I found the sub-arc regarding humans who had found themselves chained to a "beautiful prison" with all their needs taken care of and no way out particular effective, and I imagine that the author is capable of even more when unleashed from the requirements of the canon.
So, I guess I learned a lesson about fan fiction.
The Destiny trilogy answers the question, "how much stuff/aliens/references can I pack into one piece of fan fiction?" The answers is "a lot."
You get all the captains*: Picard, Riker, (Ezri) Dax, passing references to Janeway and Archer. You get all the aliens*: humans, Klingons, Romulans, Andorians, even aliens whose race was never mentioned in a canon show or film but is part of canon like Efrosians (the President of the Federation in 2293 with droopy moustache and wild hair). You get all the bad guys*: Borg, Nausicaans. And you get bonus additional material, like a super-powered alien race you've never seen before, the Caeliar!
[*Surprisingly, though, you get no TOS crew and no Q.]
And are important things at stake? You bet! How about a war that might spell the end of galactic civilization as we know it (or know it through watching Star Trek on the TV)? How about minor romantic tiffs between characters we already know? How about a very detailed description of how to walk in a pair of self-fabricated snow shoes?
Seriously, though, I read these books because I am truly a fan of the Star Trek world and wanted to see what the written fiction was like while I took a completist romp through the entire body of existing TV episodes (both live action and cartoon) and movies (both regular time-line and Kelvin Timeline). The author is a professional writer who has written several Star Trek episode scripts and has done quite a few Star Trek books that garner a great deal of praise on the Internet. When I refer to these works as "fan fiction" I don't meant to suggest anything negative about the author, but rather to suggest a genre that assumes its readers know the basic background of the setting and characters and attempts to offer them something that they cannot get from the canonical works. Certainly, that describes these books.
Ultimately, though, I think I would have more enjoyed reading a fresh work by the author, as I had the feeling that he was a bit cramped by the overwhelming press of Trekness: someone has to drink a raktajino every hundred pages or so; Worf has to walk around with a Bat'leth on a regular basis. I found the sub-arc regarding humans who had found themselves chained to a "beautiful prison" with all their needs taken care of and no way out particular effective, and I imagine that the author is capable of even more when unleashed from the requirements of the canon.
So, I guess I learned a lesson about fan fiction.
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