Star Trek: The Destiny Era: Titan: Fortune of War

late 2386
A cut scene from David Mack's Fortune of War, exclusive to Science's Less Accurate Grandmother:

"You know," said Riker, "my life has been very strange recently."
     "How so?" asked Deanna.
     "This is my fifth adventure in a row that follows up something that happened while we were on the Enterprise-D. First we went into interphase again, then we met the Cytherians again, then we met the Solanae again, then we met Arda's people again, and now we're looking at Husnock artifacts again."
     "That's odd," said Deanna.
     "The reason I wanted to captain the Titan was to explore strange new worlds, but it seems like we spend most of our time chasing down small lingering plotlines from two decades ago."
     "Well," said Deanna, "TNG was a very popular tv show. Even a follow-up to a mediocre episode is going to sell more copies."

Star Trek: Titan: Fortune of War
by David Mack

Published: 2017
Acquired: August 2024
Read: November 2024

I jest, of course, and I cheat by including some stories that aren't Titan ones even if they are Riker ones, but even so, this is the third Titan story in a row to sequelize a TNG episode (in this case, "The Survivors" from season 3). The original selling point of Titan was that it took a diverse group of characters into interesting new sfnal situations; Fortune of War, alas, does not really accomplish this. We have, on the one hand, a character focus mostly on Riker, Vale, and Titan's new XO, Sarai, and an action-adventure plot. Many people seem to think David Mack does these kinds of plots well, but Mack in action mode has never really appealed to me, and in any case, this isn't the kind of thing I come to Titan for.

Even within those confines, though, I didn't find much to enjoy here. I've repeatedly stated that while I think the promotion of Riker to admiral could be interesting, the novels that have followed The Fall haven't really capitalized on it. Fortune of War continues this trend; Titan is part of a fleet action here, which you think would be great for Admiral Riker... but weirdly, the character who does the most with this is Vale. I did appreciate the focus on Sarai, a character I enjoyed in Sight Unseen, but Mack's version reads a bit flatter than Swallow. The rest of the Titan crew don't get much focus that's very memorable or interesting. On top of that, a lot of time is spent on the various factions competing with Titan to get the Husnock artifacts, but I found these characters were almost universally one-dimensional and unpleasant.

Some of these TNG sequels have at least fleshed out the concepts in interesting ways (mostly Sight Unseen, I guess), but there's nothing interesting to be learned about the Husnock here. I find depictions of empire in sf fascinating, but the interminable glimpse we get of them makes them into snarling one-dimensional monsters.

This was a quick read, Mack always is, but other than that, I found this had little to recommend it. Competently done, but not what I want from a Titan book... which is a bit disappointing, as it's the final one. This series peaked back with Sword of Damocles, in my opinion; the post-Destiny run was too inconsistent and largely failed to tap into the series's original potential, installments by James Swallow aside.

Continuity Notes:

• Vale claims that "[t]here is no precedent in interstellar law for your claim of annex to a territory not contiguous with your own." But surely this must happen all the time in the three-dimensional, mostly empty environment of space, and indeed, there are a lot of discontiguous nodes of the Federation itself according to Star Charts.

Other Notes:

• I complain a lot about how all the captains in the Destiny-era fiction are parents; I think what makes it particularly grating is very few of the writers are. You can tell, because no one whose five-year-old had actually done ballet would ever write a sentence like "she had tears of joy in her eyes while she watched their daughter float like a sylph in time with a melody stolen from a dream." My (currently six-year-old) kid is very enthusiastic about ballet, but them and their classmates are lucky if they remember what they are supposed to be doing when they perform in a recital.
• Having Pakleds and Nausicaans, two different alien species who apparently never discovered the article, in the same book ends up being a bit grating.
• Admiral Batanides threatens Sarai with internment in a Starfleet Intelligence "black site." I just really hate this idea, which is part of a generally unpleasant way that Starfleet is depicted in Mack's fiction. Section 31 having "black sites" they deport unwanted people to, sure, I guess. But regular Starfleet? Ugh, no, I don't buy this at all, and I don't want to read Star Trek books where it can happen.

I read Destiny-era Star Trek books in batches of five every few months. Next up in sequence: Section 31: Control by David Mack