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Lädt ... Typhon Pact: Seize the Firevon Michael A. Martin
Lädt ...
Melde dich bei LibraryThing an um herauszufinden, ob du dieses Buch mögen würdest. Keine aktuelle Diskussion zu diesem Buch. A Slave to the Prime Directive. This book, the second in the Typhon Pact series, took me a long while to get into, which was disappointing because ordinarily I love Michael A Martin's work. Maybe it was the focus on the Gorn Hegemony and their people that made it hard to handle, or perhaps it was the proliferation of technobabble, some of which even my spell-checker didn't know what to do with, but the first third of the book was not what you'd call a page turner. However, after thinking that technobabble is one of the things that Star Trek is famous for - one often hears its actors speak of such things at conventions - I stuck with it, and I'm very glad that I did. The lengths to which the crew of Titan had to go to preserve the Prime Directive adds a further element to the already complicated problem, and the characterisation of the Gorn adds a fresh dimension all by itself. Also, I personally had much fun trying to spot the Enterprise references scattered throughout the novel, proving time and again just how much of a fan Mr Martin must be, and that alone gives him brownie points in my book. This is a good read, and definitely better than the first Typhon Pact book. There is definitely a good amount of back story for the Gorn, which I think the whole point of the Typhon Pact stories are meant for, to "relaunch" the villians of the Star Trek universe now that the Federation no longer needs to worry about the Borg. I don't know if I like the idea that a good number of stories need to have major alien antagonists--that seems to be too Star Wars more than Star Trek, and I think I like the series before the relaunch better, but overall, I'm not all that disappointed with this book. The one downfall of this book, which is the case for all Titan books, is that the author loves coming up with strange names and spellings for his characters, which does detract a bit from the flow of the story. I'm a huge fan of the Titan series. That being said, I felt that this book was less about the Titan characters and more about the Gorn. This is the second book in the Typhon Pact series and I enjoyed the first book much more than this one. If you're not a regular reader of the Titan series, honestly, you could probably skip this book. If you are a regular reader of the Titan series, this book may disappoint you a little, but I still recommend it as there are things that happen that will certainly be referenced in any upcoming Titan books. As I said, I really love the Titan series, but was a little disappointed in this book because the first half to 2/3 of the book focus much more on the Gorn characters than what is happening with the Titan characters. The last part of the book really picks up a lot as far as the Titan characters go, but not enough for me to rate the book higher than I have. As it is, my rating is probably a little biased as a result of my affection for the Titan cast. keine Rezensionen | Rezension hinzufügen
Gehört zur ReiheStar Trek (2010.11) Star Trek (novels) (2010.11) Star Trek Relaunch (Book 54) (Chronological Order) Star Trek: Titan (Typhon Pact #2)
SEIZE THE FIRE Shortly after revealing its union with the Federation's newest adversary--a coalition of galactic powers known as the Typhon Pact--the Gorn Hegemony suffers an ecological disaster that destroys the hatchery world of their critically important warrior caste. Fortunately, the Gorn had already been investigating traces of an ancient but powerful "quick terraforming" technology left behind by a long-vanished civilization. This technology, should it prove controllable, promises to restore their delicate biological and social status quo. But when a Gorn soldier prepares to use the technology to reshape the planet Hranrar into a new warrior-caste spawning ground, threatening to extinguish the native Hranrarii, he draws the unwanted attention of a mad Gorn trooper determined to bring the military caste into dominance. Meanwhile, as the U.S.S. Titan embarks upon a search for this potent technology in the hope of using it to heal the wounds the Federation sustained during the recent Borg crisis, Captain Riker must balance his responsibility for his crew's safety against the welfare of the Hranrarii and his duty to the Prime Directive. With a menacing Typhon Pact fleet nipping at his heels, Riker must not only stop the Gorn warriors but also plumb the secrets of an ancient terraforming artifact. But of everyone serving aboard Titan, Commander Tuvok may be the only one who understands how dangerous such planet-altering technology can be, even when used with the best of intentions. . . . Keine Bibliotheksbeschreibungen gefunden. |
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The Typhon Pact was promoted as giving readers insight into underseen Star Trek aliens, and thus Seize the Fire promises us insight into the Gorn. Well, unfortunately, anything interesting or insightful is a long time coming. Michael A. Martin focuses on the Gorn caste system, and it basically comes out to a monotonous tech caste good, military caste bad. There are two different military caste leaders, and both are depicted as barbaric belligerents without subtlety, even though they're on a mission to save their people from extinction. The Gorn captain in "Arena" was way more canny and principled than these guys even though he was primarily committing war crimes. Like, there's a basis for sympathy here that goes completely unused. We gain no real insight into the Gorn.
Occasionally the novel raises sort of interesting ideas, but it tramples over them. The Gorn scientist who spends a lot of time on Titan is a very adept mimic, imitating Riker's voice enough to get into the shuttlebay; Martin here is picking up on how the Gorn in "Arena" sent multiple messages to the Enterprise to bait it to Cestus III, including mimicking the base commander's voice. You could do something with this, presenting the Gorn as canny and adaptive but in Seize the Fire it's really jarring with how they're otherwise characterized. S'syrixx can't even get Federation names right in his internal dialogue, calling them things like "Rry'kurr" and "Troi-mammal" and "Tie-tan," but you're telling me he can imitate Riker's voice enough to fool his crew? The idea of genetic castes also seems interesting (and potentially ethically dubious; at the novel's end the "good" Gorn are just going to re-engineer the warrior caste to be more pliable!), but trust me, by the end of this novel you'll hope no one ever says "caste" ever again.
What really dampens any potential insight into the Gorn is that the Gorn-only scenes are just painful to read, not only because of the sledgehammer characterization, but because the poor characterization means all you have to hang onto are these terrible space names. When discussing the two Gorn commanders, Riker says at one point, "Krassrr isn't Gog'ressh," and I was like, He isn't? because I literally could not tell those guys apart the whole book. Plus there's some dopey space religion stuff, which flattens the Gorn, not expands them.
As a Titan novel, it's not much cop either. Riker and Titan are curiously inactive, spending much of the book just watching the Gorn while the reptiles prepare to "ecosculpt" an inhabited planet. When done right, Titan is my favorite novel series, back-to-basic Star Trek with a modern update, but the characters have no life here. There are so many ineffectual staff meetings it's like you're reading a caricature of The Next Generation. Which is weird, because it was a scene in a novel co-written by Martin that made Titan come alive to me, and that scene was about a meeting! (The Blue Table just chatting away in Taking Wing or The Red King, I forget which.) None of the characters pop, and they don't really have any kind of character threads, except that Vale goes from prejudiced against Gorn to still prejudiced against Gorn.
There are also times the book is just clunkily written, such as times a character does a thing that obviously indicates an emotion, and then the narration tells us that this emotion is obviously indicated. There are also a few times where it seems like the interesting things happen "off-screen" while we follow less interesting things, and then someone gets filled in on the interesting things. Why? Martin tries to cram exposition into dialogue, too, which weird given that this is not a tv show, such as this mellifluous exchange:
PAZLAR: Eviku and Chamish were the first to notice the pattern [...]
VALE: If anybody aboard Titan was going to find that sort of pattern, it would be our resident xenobiology and ecology experts.
PAZLAR: Apparently. Unfortunately, my expertise in those fields doesn't overlap all that much with that of the biospheric scientists. My specialties are cosmology and big-bore physics.
Like, there had to be a less clunky way of getting everyone's science specialties into the book. Surely Vale knows this! Though I'm not sure why it matters at all.
Between these factors, Seize the Fire makes for a dull read, and the weakest Typhon Pact novel yet. A poor exploration of the Gorn, and a dull novel otherwise.
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