TITLE: Drastic Measures

             (Star Trek: Discovery #2)

AUTHOR:  Dayton Ward

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DESCRIPTION:

"It is 2246, ten years prior to the Battle at the Binary Stars, and an aggressive contagion is ravaging the food supplies of the remote Federation colony Tarsus IV and the eight thousand people who call it home. Distress signals have been sent, but any meaningful assistance is weeks away. Lieutenant Commander Gabriel Lorca and a small team assigned to a Starfleet monitoring outpost are caught up in the escalating crisis, and bear witness as the colony’s governor, Adrian Kodos, employs an unimaginable solution in order to prevent mass starvation.

While awaiting transfer to her next assignment, Commander Philippa Georgiou is tasked with leading to Tarsus IV a small, hastily assembled group of first responders. It’s hoped this advance party can help stabilize the situation until more aid arrives, but Georgiou and her team discover that they‘re too late—Governor Kodos has already implemented his heinous strategy for extending the colony’s besieged food stores and safeguarding the community’s long-term survival.

In the midst of their rescue mission, Georgiou and Lorca must now hunt for the architect of this horrific tragedy and the man whom history will one day brand “Kodos the Executioner”…."

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REVIEW:

Flat characters, too much info-dumping, odd plot and erratic pacing.  The pace only picks up in the last third of the novel.  Despite the provided explanations/motivations for "Kodos the Executioner's" actions, they don't really make sense to me in terms of the events described in the novel, so the plot falls flat.  Kodos is something of a non-entity, despite being the villian of the novel.  Georgiou and Lorca have no distinctive personality - they may as well be any random generic StarFleet officers.  Young James T. Kirk makes an appearance, so I suppose there is some sort of canon tie-in with an Original Series episode (which I haven't seen so can't comment on it).  The kid Kirk is just as much an annoying, know-it-all smartass as the adult Kirk.

When I was a kid the original Star Trek series was among my favorite shows. Though dated today in many respects (I'm sure somewhere on the Internet there's an essay about those minidresses that the female crewmembers wore), it was an exciting and fun series that offered an optimistic picture of the future. That was not easy to envisage in the Cold War-dominated 1960s, and the show reflected this with episodes that referenced the nuclear tensions of the late-20th century and even the ominous-sounding "Eugenics Wars" of the then-futuristic 1990s.

As it turned out, the show went on and the Cold War didn't. As the Star Trek franchise spawned movies and additional TV shows, the canon on which it was all based looked increasingly outdated. The problem was that was impossible to ignore it. After all, how can you dismiss the "Eugenics Wars of the 1990s," which it was the basis of not just one of the best episodes of the original series, but the best movie of the entire franchise? So the solution was to construct an ever-more-elaborate backstory that connected it all together, one that, had to evolve to take into account additions made by subsequent shows and even novels.

This effort is at the heart of Dayton Ward's book. In it the Enterprise-E is on a mission in unexplored space that brings it into contact with an alien species still recovering from a nuclear war that took place centuries before. The war was tied to an exploration effort the species undertook three hundred years before — one that brought it into contact with early 21st century Earth. Through this premise Ward connects events in the 24th century to characters and plot strands from three different "Star Trek" series, as well as novels written by other authors. It's really an impressive exercise from a writing standpoint, though one that is hobbled by two problems. The first is the underlying plot, which staggers out the development of the backstory to cover for the fact that the story involving Picard and company just isn't all that substantial. The other is Ward's apparent need to incorporate nearly every possible character from the franchise's take on 21st century Earth history. It's an impressive effort in some respects, but it also left me thinking that Ward was more interested in creating a Grand Unified History of the Star Trek universe than he was in telling a good story. It makes for a frustrating read, yet one that should be enjoyed by fans looking to fill in some of the gaps in the Star Trek universe — at least until another series or movie introduces new elements that renders it all contradictory or irrelevant.

Archie?  What are you doing on the Enterprise?

Reading has been my past time in a long time. Growing up in the province my access to reading materials when I was a kid is very limited but I was contented with reading the short stories in my English and Filipino textbooks. In high school, I now have access to fiction books from the school library. Most of the books in the library are the classics and literary novels. These were required reading and we have to make book reports so reading them became a chore and not enjoyable. Until I found out about the Choose Your Own Adventure Books. I pretty much enjoyed those books. In college I may have forgotten reading for pleasure. Even if I had time to read, the college library does not carry fiction novels. The only time I enjoyed reading is from reading the comics collection of a friend. I remember reading issues of X-Men, X-Factor, Superman, and D.P. 7.

My interest in reading returned when I chanced upon a battered book when I already started working. It does not have a cover and the story is set on a world where technology is based on organic materials and not on metals. The story intrigued me and I kept on reading the book during my down time. Too bad I can’t remember the title of the story or who wrote it. This book showed me that my genre of choice is science fiction (or speculative fiction in general).

Since I am already working (meaning I have the means) and staying in the city (meaning I have the access), I can now buy my own reading materials. The bookstore is like a candy store! Too many books to choose from. The bookstore also introduced me to Star Trek original novels and media tie-in books in general. This is also the time that I started buying comic books, mostly from the X-Men line. And then I discovered used books stores. The books are dirt cheap. Then I started hording. I also branched to magazines by this point.

It came to a point that I acquire 5 but only finishing 2 then acquiring a new batch again. I realized that this a problem when I moved apartments more than 3 times now. I now have a book buying ban: buy one paperback book at most in a month. I am now shifting to electronic books and digital comics. Also a recent development, listening to audio books. I am pretty much becoming format agnostic as long as I like the story. In the next few months, I will try to unload my paperback books. (Cue Elsa, “let it go, let it go...”)

I have a bad habit of starting a book but not finishing it or reading multiple books at a time. Also when I read a book, I pretty much jump to another book immediately. I do not give myself enough time to reflect on the book I read. When someone asks me how I see the book, all I can say is “I liked it” or “not liked it” with no further elaboration. I would like to change that. Well, I tried it before but the only word that can describes my attempt to write reviews is “terse”. Most actually fits as a tweet.

How should I do it? I asked myself. I need a structure. So I made one that I hope I can follow (I might also use these guide questions as section headings).

1. Why did you pick this up?
2. What is it?
3. What is it all about? (for non-fiction)/What happened? (for fiction)
4. Did you liked it?
5. Would you recommend it?

There you go, a book review for at least 5 sentences!

I will also do a status update on the first 10% placing my initial impression of the book. And on the 20% mark or after 50 pages (whichever comes first), I will evaluate if I need to proceed reading. If I will DNF the book (short for did-not-finish), I will post a status update as to why and if I there is chance that I might revisit the book in the near future.

I now have a plan for this book blog. I hope I can stick with it. Crossing fingers.

Wow, I write more than 700 words this time! Nice!

This is the first of the Wildfire-aftermath stories. It features Corsi, who along with Stevens, returns home and learns why her father has always been so biased against her joining Starfleet - because during the Cardassian war, Starfleet asked to install sensor equipment on his ship to spy on the Cardassians... What should have been a run of the mill-trade run turned into a standoff with Cardassians, and his brother, Corsi's uncle, had to pay for it.

This story deals with guilt, regret and prejudice (and of course, stupid mistakes which lead to tragedy). In the small-universe-syndrom one of the Starfleet operatives Aldo Corsi had to deal back then, was William Ross.

Corsi is doubting herself, because, while she was incapacitated, lots of her staff died on the daVinci, and Duffy had to make the ultimate sacrifice; and of course, Stevens just grieves for his best friend. Frankly, I'd have liked to see the focus more on Stevens instead of on Corsi, because I'd rather have seen a best friend deal with his very personal grief than stuck up, duty-bound Corsi deal with her professional regrets. I'm not saying that Corsi's grief doesn't come across as very real (and the background story about her father and uncle did touch me), but given the often stated relationship between Duffy and Stevens as best friends I think that not exploring that angle a wasted opportunity. There should have been more, even clichéd tears, whatever, but not just Stevens as a sidenote to shed some light on Corsi... especially not in this "aftermath"-situation.