Doctor Who: Destination Prague by Steven Savile (ed.)

Back in the LiveJournal days, I had a friend there who was invited to pitch for this book; he reached out to me and my friend Michael for Doctor Who advice because he hadn't really seen the show. (In retrospect, he was kind of obnoxious; he got in the book, and I saw him making comments in promotion of his story like, "I always liked x Doctor because of y," when I know for a fact he'd never seen a story featuring x Doctor until we recommended one to him!) Because of this, I seem to recall (it has been almost two decades, so I may be wrong) that editor Steven Savile wanted to do an anthology covering the history of a city, and was torn between doing London and Prague. Prague has a rich history, but it seems kind of random to be honest (I explained the premise of this book to my wife while reading it and she laughed), and how many Doctor Who authors know a lot about the history of Prague? London would be more familiar territory... but of course, probably too familiar. What's the USP of a book made up of Doctor Who stories set in London?

Doctor Who: Short Trips #20: Destination Prague
edited by Steven Savile

Published: 2007
Acquired: May 2009
Read: July 2025

Obviously, Savile decided to go with Prague in the end. I thought the book opened a bit oddly, with a story about an inhabitant-less Prague being taken out of time, hardly the kind of thing that makes the reader experience Prague and thus see the upside to setting a bunch of stories there. The next story takes place in Prague's future, and so does the next, and so does the next. I found this a bit of an odd choice, too—I felt like if the selling point of this book was Prague's rich history, then maybe we ought to lead off with a story set in that rich history.

Halfway through, though, I realized we still hadn't had a historical, and so that must be intentional in the sense that I was wrong about the book's premise. It wasn't chronicling past and future history, but only future history. I feel like this is an okay idea, though in that case, I think it probably would make more sense to go with a city readers are more familiar with, like London. But I also think that if you are going to tell just future history, it would be better to do it in chronological order. If the book had a mix of historical and future-set stories, then jumping around would definitely be the right choice for the sake of variety. But if the decision is to only tell the future story of the city, then jumping around makes that future story hard to discern. It would be neat to get a series of snapshots of Prague's future, chronicling its various ascents and descents moving ever further into the future... but what we get instead is dispersed and fragmented and hard to glom onto.

On top of that, I think the choice of just telling future-Prague stories doesn't play to the authors' strengths. I suspect a bunch of authors largely unfamiliar with a city could do some research to find interesting historical incidents to build stories around, and I think a bunch of authors familiar with a city might have found something to say about its future. But telling stories about the future of a city you don't know much about is a tricky business, and mostly what we get are pretty generic sci-fi stories and/or repetitive transpositions of classic Prague things into the future, like (if I counted correctly) three different Golem stories and three different Kafka's "Metamorphosis" riffs.

Like the last Short Trips volume I read, The Quality of Leadership, this one has a second, implicit USP: the editor is not part of the usual cohort of mid-2000s Doctor Who tie-in writers, and thus they have a different Rolodex of authors to call on, most of whom had never written a Doctor Who story (or maybe just one) and many of whom never would again. Some of them are people who have had (or would go on to have) pretty decent writing careers outside of Doctor Who in fact: names I knew from other contexts included Mike W. Barr (a number of DC comics from the 1980s, including Batman: Year Two and Star Trek: The Mirror Universe Saga), Keith R.A. DeCandido (innumerable Star Trek stories, including editing the S.C.E. series), Kevin Killiany (S.C.E.: Orphans), Mary Robinette Kowal (the Lady Astronaut series), Paul Kupperberg (JSA: Ragnarok), Todd McCaffrey (Pern, though I've never actually read any of his contributions), and Sean Williams (The New Jedi Order: Force Heretic).

Bringing in outside writers to an existing tie-in franchise can be hit-or-miss in my experience. Sometimes those outsiders have an expanded way of seeing it, and they come at it from atypical, interesting angles. But conversely, sometimes they have a more limited understanding of it, because their understanding is mostly shaped by what's on screen; because they haven't been living and breathing tie-ins for a decade, they don't see the dynamism that the premise really allows for. Doctor Who can do really interesting stuff in the medium of prose short fiction... but I don't think you'd know it by reading this book, where it seemed to me that most writers were trying to tell fairly "typical" Doctor Who adventures with aliens invading or time-travel shenanigans or rogue Time Lords, stuff that might work very well on screen with a canvas of ninety minutes, but comes across as superficial on the printed page. In particular, the book suffers from the sheer quantity of stories; some Short Trips anthologies have as few as seven or eight, if I recall correctly, but this one crams in over twenty, meaning many of them are by necessity quite short. You just can't do the "typical" Doctor Who story in fifteen-ish pages in a satisfactory way.

Thus, I found this one a bit of a struggle. Indeed, I think it's indicative that of the three stories I did think were very good, two of them were by authors who have written multiple other Doctor Who stories. The first story that really clicked for me was Mary Robinette Kowal's "Suspension and Disbelief"; it's weird and short (the Doctor has to help a woman whose husband is going to be executed for chopping down a tree so she can make a puppet; the resolution involves a giant puppet) but inventive and well told.

The second was James Swallow's "Lady of the Snows," which was a beautiful story about an artist falling in love with an amnesiac Charley Pollard, using her as his muse, with some great imagery and interesting thematic resonance between what the artist is doing to Charley, and what has happened to Prague in the far future. (To be fair to Swallow, who has gone on to write a lot of Doctor Who stories, I think this was just his fourth one or so.)

The last one was also the very last in the book, Stel Pavlou's "Omegamorphosis." (And to be fair to Pavlou, though he has written other Doctor Who stories, it's literally just two of them. But all three are bangers!) This is the book's third and final Kafka riff... but it's the only one of them that actually feels Kafkaesque, surreal and disconcerting. 

So, I think there are better Short Trips volumes out there, and I unfortunately suspect this one was fundamentally misconceived from the beginning.

Every three months, I read the unread Doctor Who book I've owned the longest. Next up in sequence: Short Trips: How The Doctor Changed My Life

Star Trek: Toward the Night by James Swallow

The most recent tie-in novel to the best of the Paramount+ Star Trek shows comes from James Swallow, who is probably my second favorite of the current working Star Trek novelists. So this is a combination I was particularly looking forward to, especially as I very much enjoyed the previous SNW novel, Asylum.

Star Trek: Strange New Worlds: Toward the Night
by James Swallow

Published: 2025
Acquired: April 2025
Read: June 2025

Toward the Night is set during the second season (there is a bizarrely specific "Historian's Note" explaining this) and focuses on the Enterprise tracking down a distress signal from a Starfleet vessel lost a century ago, from the Federation's early day. (There are a number of callbacks to Enterprise, but also Star Trek Beyond; the lost ship is Freedom-class, just like the USS Franklin the crashed ship from a century ago that the Enterprises finds in that story!)

There's a certain breed of tie-in novel, though, that I find frustratingly disappointing. Now, I think writing tie-ins can be tricky—and this is only made even moreso when you're trying into an television program that is still ongoing. But ideally, what makes a tie-in novel worth reading is that it can approach the characters novelistically, that it can give them a different kind of depth than a tv show can. Tv shows can give depth, of course, but the novel can carry you into the thoughts of someone in a way no visual representation ever can. I think the best tie-in novels leave you feeling like you learned something about a character you didn't already know. The obvious way is to do this via backstory—that's what McCormack did in Asylum—but it's not the only way. Ideally, the character is put in situations you haven't see and you get to see them react. John Jackson Miller did this to good effect in what is essentially the zeroth SNW novel, The Enterprise War, by showing us the Enterprise crew in a situation we hadn't seen them in before.

The trap that Toward the Night falls into—though I don't think "trap" is a terribly fair word for it, because this isn't remotely a bad book—is that Swallow does have a great handle on all the characters. In terms of voice and action, Swallow does a great job across the board, in small moments and big. Pike is recognizably Anson Mount, there are some good moments of apt humor from Spock; in particular Ortegas and (my favorite) La'an get some threads, and they are who they ought to be from the show. But though the book has the potential to tell us something new about these characters, I found it didn't really hit that point. We learn about about Ortegas's backstory, which I appreciate; one of the characters on the crashed ship is in her family, long thought dead of course. But I didn't think we learned much about her as a person, something about how she thinks or acts that we didn't already know, even though it seems like the potential was there, of course.

It's well put together, of course; like I said, Swallow is good at capturing character voices. The basic scenario is strong (I want to rip it off for an STA scenario, which is always a good sign), and the action is interesting and well done. (I did find the resolution to one dilemma particularly obvious, though.) But ultimately it's frustrating because I think the elements are here for a slightly better book than we got.

Doctor Who: The Quality of Leadership by Keith R.A. DeCandido (ed.)

Doctor Who: Short Trips #24: The Quality Of Leadership
edited by Keith R A DeCandido
based on a concept by John S. Drew

I bought this direct from the editor at a convention back in July 2008. A few months later, I think he asked me on LiveJournal when I was going to review it—early reviews being very helpful to the early sales of books. I told him I would read it when I got to it on my reading list, and he seemed a bit peeved.

Published: 2008
Acquired: July 2008
Read: March 2024

He was probably right to be peeved, as it's over fifteen years later, and my review cannot be of any use to him, as the book is long out-of-print. But anyway, I've finally got to it. The book is an unusual Short Trips installment, as editor Keith R.A. DeCandido is American, and thus has a different set of contacts than your usual Short Trips editor, many culled from the world of Star Trek tie-in fiction; you will not find your obligatory Justin Richards or Stephen Cole story here. Instead the volume features Star Trek novel luminaries Peter David and Diane Duane, and also a lot of people who worked with Keith on the Corps of Engineers ebooks, like Terri Osborne and Richard C. White. It even features the first Doctor Who fiction of Una McCormack, who would later become a prolific contributor to the Doctor Who audio and novel lines.

The anthology has an interesting premise, of the Doctor's encounters with various leaders, but the way the premise is implemented makes it less effective than it could be. The anthology has a frame story, about a dying ruler of an alien world who met the Doctor at the beginning of his reign; the Doctor told him stories about leadership to inspire him. Unfortunately, though there are many stories here about leaders, few seem to have anything to do with leadership. The very first one he tells, for example, Peter David's "One Fateful Knight," is supposedly about King Arthur... but it's more a story that King Arthur is in than a story about King Arthur. Mostly it's a pretty poorly thought out prequel/sequel to Battlefield, which is one of my favorite seventh Doctor tv stories, and which this tie-in totally fails to get. It does have a couple okay jokes, but it's a big misfire to lead off with.

Other stories seem to have similar problems: the Doctor's companion Romana replaces Boudica in "Good Queen, Bad Queen, I Queen, You Queen," but the complications of this, the leadership lessons of this, seem largely skipped over. Like, could the original Romana really replace a warrior queen? I think we need more than we get here. Plus there's a wacky twist I did not see the point of. Along those lines, I felt we got little of King Theodoric's leadership in Diane Duane's "Goths and Robbers" (though she does good Tegan) or Martin Luther's in Richard White's "The Price of Conviction" or King Henry VIII's in Linnea Dodson's "God Send Me Well to Keep." These stories weren't bad, but I couldn't imagine the Doctor choosing to tell them to inspire a young prince to greatness. 

One of only a few to really hit the theme right was Kathleen O. David's "On a Pedestal," where the Doctor, Jamie, and Victoria meet William Wallace (the Braveheart guy), though bits of it were pretty rushed. Some didn't fit the theme terribly well but got away with it; I'm not convinced that Plato counts as a "leader," but Allyn Gibson's "The Spindle of Necessity" is an interestingly written story with a good grasp of the sixth Doctor's voice and a neat conclusion, so who cares.

You might imagine the premise lends itself to "historicals," and you'd be right. Mostly this is fine, but many of them have to contrive reasons for the Doctor to be there, and they don't always convince. There are just three stories about fictional leaders; two are really tedious sci-fi tales where I wasn't even sure who the "leader" character was supposed to be.

One, though, was my favorite story in the book, James Swallow's "Clean-up on Aisle Two," about a night manager at a 24/7 market. More than any other story in the book, it actually has something to say about leadership, plus it has a strong sense of voice and a well-characterized seventh Doctor. (Several of the stories in the book suffer, I think, from being written by Americans trying to do British.) In moving away from an actual leader, it seemed to me that Swallow was the one who came the closest to what I thought the book was actually going to be about.

Every three months, I read the unread Doctor Who book I've owned the longest. Next up in sequence: Doctor Who in an exciting adventure with the Daleks

Doctor Who: Dalek Empire by Nicholas Briggs (ed.)

Doctor Who: Short Trips #19: Dalek Empire
edited by Nicholas Briggs with Simon Guerrier

Dalek Empire is a 2001-08 audio spin-off series from Big Finish (its first, actually, I believe), chronicling a Dalek invasion of the galaxy, focusing on the humans caught up in it when the Doctor's not around to save anyone. I picked it up in a sale a few years ago, but have never actually gotten around to listening to it; there is always too much new Big Finish to listen to first! The range engendered a tie-in of its own, the sixteenth volume of Big Finish's Short Trips series of anthologies, which was released between the third and fourth series.

Published: 2006
Acquired: July 2008
Read: December 2023

I haven't heard Dalek Empire, but I know the broad outlines of the plot; probably there's stuff here I'd get better having heard it, but I felt okay for the most part. Most of the stories here fall into two buckets. The first is made up of character studies of Dalek Empire's three human leads: "Kalendorf" by Nicholas Briggs and "Alby" and "Suz" by Sharon Gosling. "Kalendorf" takes place at the very beginning of the series, during the initial Dalek assault, while "Alby" and "Suz" take place later on, delving into the thoughts of those characters. They were all decent stories (I liked the horror of the Daleks in "Kalendorf") best, but also the ones that I suspect would most benefit from actually having heard the series.

Most of the rest of the stories are side stories to the Dalek invasion of the Milky Way, many of them including the Doctor in some capacity. But in these stories, he doesn't go around defeating dastardly plans; because the events of Dalek Empire already proceed without him, they're kind of what you might call "future historicals," featuring the Doctor on the fringes of future history, helping the little people, but not making any significant changes. My favorites among these included Ian Farrington's "Hide and Seek," where the third Doctor and Jo help a group of refugees evacuate; Farrington captures the Doctor and Jo particularly well.

The best of them as definitely Joseph Lidster's "Natalie's Diary," which is about a young woman named Natalie trying to stay alive during the Dalek assault on her planet, aided by the seventh Doctor, Ace, and Hex. As usual for Lidster, the strength of the story is in its characterization, as Natalie slowly discovers the hardness of the world she has come into. Ace and Hex aren't focal characters, but are deftly drawn, recalling one of Big Finish's best runs. The story is framed by a history student reading Natalie's diaries sometime later, which I think is set during the events of Dalek Empire III (when the Daleks return). The other ones are fine enough, though I found Ian Farrington's "Private Investigations" and Justin Richards's "Mutually Assured Survival" kind of pointless and dull.

There are two stories that break from this format. One is Simon Guerrier's "The Eighth Wonder of the World," which isn't a Dalek Empire tie-in at all, but a follow-up to the first Doctor serial The Daleks' Master Plan, featuring the sixth Doctor and Evelyn investigating what happened to a Dalek left behind in ancient Egypt during that adventure. Guerrier does his usual clever and interesting work, but it feels too fanciful in this context; Dalek Empire just isn't this kind of Dalek story.

The other is the volume's definitely standout, "Museum Peace" by James Swallow. Long after the events of Dalek Empire II: Dalek War, Kalendorf is retired and visiting a museum devoted to the Dalek War, contemplating how time has moved on. The Doctor is there, too (who he already knows; more on that in a minute), in his eighth incarnation, contemplating some terrible action against the Daleks. It's a deftly written, powerful story about grief and anger and moving on. Clearly when it was written, Swallow intended the eighth Doctor to be thinking about obliterating the Daleks, though subsequent revelations in "The Day of the Doctor" mean that can't be the case. But it holds up regardless—you can imagine the Doctor is at some terrible low during the Time War. (Or, in a very tenuous pet theory of mine, it takes place between To the Death and Dark Eyes, with the Doctor driven to despair.)

The book also includes the script for The Return of the Daleks, a 2006 audio drama that crossed the seventh Doctor into the events of Dalek Empire, as well as a sequel to the tv story Planet of the Daleks. (Hence, how Kalendorf knows the Doctor.) It wasn't a particularly great audio (I have actually heard it; it was a freebie for subscribers to Big Finish's main Doctor Who range), and reading a script is honestly never really that interesting. It feels like it's there to pad the book out—a whole forty pages! Given how many authors contribute two stories, one wonders if the volume was put together in a hurry.

(Despite the cover, the first, second, fourth, and fifth Doctors do not appear in this book.)

Every three months, I read the unread Doctor Who book I've owned the longest. Next up in sequence: Short Trips: The Quality of Leadership

Star Trek: The Destiny Era: Titan: Sight Unseen

Star Trek: Titan: Sight Unseen
by James Swallow

early 2386 (a few months after The Fall)

I remember enthusing to Marco Palmieri about Titan at Shore Leave 2008, calling it my favorite original Star Trek fiction concept. There was a scene in the first or second book (I forget exactly which) that brought it all to life for me: a conversation between a bunch of Titan junior officers at the "Blue Table," where we saw this delightful array of perspectives and ideologies all in play together, all working toward the same goal. Subsequent novels tapped into that too; my particular favorite was Geoff Thorne's Sword of Damocles, but many were good.

Published: 2015
Acquired: February 2022
Read: July 2023

The last few Titan novels, though, have foundered. Seize the Fire was dreadful and Fallen Gods was even worse. The Poisoned Chalice was a good read, but its events promised a big change to the Titan format: the promotion of Will Riker to admiral. What would Titan look like with its lead assuming new responsibilities?

Sight Unseen only kind of answers that question. I don't think it's impossible for a Star Trek series to have an admiral as its lead, but it would have be different from what we are used to. Sight Unseen kind of plays lip service to that, and it informs the character details of the novel in important ways, but not the overall plot. Admiral Akaar pulls Titan off its mission of exploration to serve as Admiral Riker's flag in handling a sector on the Federation frontier... but Riker doesn't do any of the kind of things you might do as an admiral; the ship goes to answer a distress call and does some investigating. Not to complain about what this book isn't and probably isn't even trying to be, but I kept thinking about C. S. Forester's Admiral Hornblower in the West Indies, which really effectively took a captain character and gave him the new problems of admiralcy.

So I am of two minds because in sort of ignoring Riker's promotion, the book sticks closer to the core of what makes Titan appealing, but also it undermines the integrity of the series as it's developing because it is clearly shying away from its own status quo changes. This isn't exactly an "exploration novel" like many Titan books have been, but it does hew closer to the strengths of the Titan series than we've seen since James Swallow's last contribution, 2009's Synthesis. We have mysteries in space, daring rescues, clever problem-solving, good teamwork, and meaningful character conflict all in a fairly slick, well-written package.

Titan goes to rescue another Starfleet vessel that itself was assisting a recently contacted alien race with their new warp drive technology... only it discovers that both have fallen victim to the "Solanae," the mysterious aliens responsible for the events of the TNG episode "Schisms" (one I've never seen, fact fans). The creepy aliens begin preying on Titan's crew, and for Will Riker and Sariel Rager in particular, it brings back some bad memories. Soon, though, things get ever more complicated.

It's one of those books that's filled with little bits that work and all add up to make it fairly effective. Like I said, it doesn't feel like Riker is really doing admirally things... but the book does make good use of his and Captain Vale's new sets of responsibilities as well as Riker's previous experience with the Solanae. Riker is untrusting and paranoid, Vale is more open-minded and idealistic. It's not what we usually expect, but it makes sense for both characters, and it leads to some good conflict and moments between them. Riker getting to meet his own torturer (and what that torturer does) was good, too.

I also liked new characters Ethan Kyzak, a Skagaran rancher, and Sarai, the new executive officer. Kyzak is fun, and gives us a few good moments in the book, and Sarai brings some useful tension to the perhaps overly cozy Titan crew without crossing the line into villainy.

We also get good moments for lots of other Titan characters: Ra-Havreii and Pazlar and Torvig and WhiteBlue and especially Zurin Dakal. Some long-running threads are paid off; I have felt like the minor Titan characters have kind of been in stasis since Synthesis, so it's good to see them in motion again.

There are also lots of great sequences: the away team drifting in space, the creepy action on the Titan against the Solanae replicators, the Titan's purposeful creation of a wormhole, the way the transporter is used as a weapon, the rescue operation from the Solanae prison. Lots of clever, interesting stuff; the book was... well, fun isn't the right word given how grim it could be, but it balances the darkness well with punch-the-air moments.

There's an implacable enemy here, but the book also reaffirms in post–The Fall fashion the return to optimistic Federation values at the same time. This isn't going to be my favorite Titan novel, but it is a solid one, and despite my misgivings about its premise and the series's change of concept, proves that my favorite original Star Trek fiction concept still has legs on it. (I also have a bad feeling it may be the last Titan novel to do that, but I'll try to stay open-minded.)

screencap from "Schisms" courtesy TrekCore

Continuity Notes:

• I feel like, some small mentions aside, you could go straight from The Poisoned Chalice to Sight Unseen. The scenes in the beginning about Riker becoming an admiral and Vale becoming a captain feel like they pick up right from Swallow's previous book, without the events of Absent Enemies and Takedown; it doesn't feel like Riker has done any admiralling or had any meaningful interactions with Vale.
• The book is right to point out that Seasons 4-6 was a pretty creepy time on TNG: Rager mentions "Schisms" and "Night Terrors," but you could add "Violations" and others I'm sure I'm forgetting. (Despite Rager saying "that year," though, "Schisms" and "Night Terrors" are set in 2367 and '69 if you believe the Okuda Chronology, or 2366 and '68 if you believe me.)
• There's a reference to the TNG Dominion War novels by John Vornholt, which surprised me... but I actually feel like I read a different one of those recently. In one of David George's DS9 books? Am I imagining this?
  
• Despite a mention of Vale fighting Remans in Absent Enemies being acknowledged as a mistake (and even deleted from the text, thanks to the magic of ebooks), this book reiterates that she was on the Enterprise-E during Nemesis, despite what we actually saw in A Time for War, A Time for Peace.

Other Notes:

• It was cute to see Starship Spotter established as an in-universe text.
  
• I guess I will never get my dream of a Ravel Dygan / Zurin Dakal team-up, alas.
  
• This is the third Riker story in a row, after Absent Enemies and Takedown, to be a direct sequel to a TNG episode. It's beginning to make the world of Titan feel a bit insular.

I read Destiny-era Star Trek books in batches of five every few months. Next up in sequence: Deep Space Nine: The Long Mirage by David R. George III

Star Trek: The Destiny Era: The Fall: The Poisoned Chalice

Published: 2013
Acquired: October 2020
Read: November 2020

Star Trek: The Fall: The Poisoned Chalice

by James Swallow

20 September–12 October 2385
The Fall is back in thriller mode for The Poisoned Chalice-- a mode I knew James Swallow was pretty successful at from his earlier Cast No Shadow. I complained that I found David Mack's attempt at a thriller in A Ceremony of Losses weak; reading The Poisoned Chalice left me better able to understand why. I don't read a lot of governmental thrillers, but I do like those stories where someone has to turn against their own government because it's corrupt. A good thriller is disconcerting, and I think I respond well to that, arguably for the same reason that I like science fiction, and cosmic horror, and mystery stories, and Victorian novels: a good thriller is a story of epistemological crisis. The world does not work the way you thought it did. In A Ceremony of Losses, it was all too clear how the world worked: Bashir was good and Ishan was evil. The Poisoned Chalice is more complicated. Our protagonists-- Riker, Vale, and Tuvok most prominent among them-- don't just not know who to trust, they don't really even know what they should be trying to do because they don't have enough context.

Will Riker is promoted to admiral here. I have a feeling that this is going to mean the Titan series once again is dragged away from its original remit of exploration, but I also have a feeling that a good writer can do something with this, and Swallow does here, as Riker tries to figure out what kind of actions he can take on Fleet Admiral Akaar's behalf to save the heart of Starfleet. It's engaging stuff, though how much Akaar kept Riker in the dark ultimately turned out to be kind of contrived, as once Riker tracks Akaar down, Akaar just tells him what's going on and doesn't really have a clear reason to not have told him earlier. This leaves the disconcerting nature of the earlier parts ringing a little hollow, even as they were engaging as I read them. I did like the subplot about Troi and the Andorians; the Titan series made Deanna chief diplomatic officer, and The Poisoned Chalice shows her putting her empathy (like, normal empathy, not space-talent empathy) to good diplomatic use.

I think the Tuvok plot also suffers a little in retrospect even if it's engaging while you read it. Tuvok, Nog, and Tom Riker are among those assigned to a secret unit of both Starfleet and non-Starfleet personnel trying to track down the killers of President Bacco. This is more action-y than the Riker subplot, and Nog especially gets to show off a bit (which is good, given how David George's Deep Space Nine novels have sidelined him), and I always like a bit of Tuvok. Swallow does a good job with Tom Riker, too, balancing the line of making you believe this is someone Will Riker could have been-- or rather that he is Will Riker, just one who lived a different life. But what doesn't quite work for me is the end of the story reveals why Tuvok and Nog were chosen for this mission: the assembler of the group thought they were both the kind of people who might put ends about means and be willing to countenance extreme measures in bringing down Bacco's assassins. This actually makes sense; the novel highlights Tuvok's time as a spy in the Maquis (where I feel certain he must have done some morally dubious things), but I kept thinking of "Prime Factors," where Tuvok is the one who breaks Janeway's orders in an effort to bring Voyager home. Nog has a pragmatic edge thanks to his Ferengi upbringing (seen in, for example, "Treachery, Faith, and the Great River"). But there's never a point where you think Tuvok or Nog might actually do something ethically dubious, and I wish there had been; I think it would sell the themes of both the book and the whole series better.

Vale's subplot-- she's made brevet captain of a medical transport as an excuse to get her near the prison where Bashir is being held-- is the least complicated of these, but it works well enough. Like Tuvok and Nog, the book mentions the idea that she's actually sympathetic to the Ishan/Velk political axis. There's a lot of characters in this book who are, and unlike in A Ceremony of Losses, they're not all obviously evil. Much moreso than in the last book, I understood how Ishan could have had some actual political success... though I do think The Fall would have benefited if previous books had laid this groundwork more.

My favorite part of the book, though, is really nothing to do with the thriller elements. There's a bit where the Titan crew discover a piece of sensitive information has been transmitted as an encoded holo-matrix. If you know the right code, it will tell you want you need to know; give the wrong one, or try to de-compile it, and it will delete itself. (Shar actually used a similar method of contacting Bashir in Ceremony.) The Titan crew has the most delightfully Star Trekkian solution to this dilemma: if they uplift the program to sentience, they can reason it into giving them the information they need! It's so out there I love it.

Continuity Notes:

• Like in Cast No Shadow, Swallow references some very old-school continuity elements: the Triangle from FASA and the Mann class from the Spaceflight Chronology. Vale's first officer, Commander Atia, is from 892-IV of "Bread and Circuses" fame; The Poisoned Chalice draws on the 1980s Next Generation novel The Captains' Honor in its references, including calling the planet "Magna Roma."
• The book has to clarify that Tom Riker is not dead; I think Titan: Fallen Gods was the first book to indicate that he was. I skimmed back through Fallen Gods; it was done in a passing reference when the Titan's transporter officer is thinking about transporter duplicates (p. 321), so it's easily retconned by having Riker say everyone was just misinformed. The Poisoned Chalice also brings up the fact that Tom Riker had been having sex with Sela in Peter David's Triangle: Imzadi II, a thing I would have been happy to not recall.

Other Notes:

• "The Poisoned Chalice" is an expression from Macbeth. I guess technically Macbeth is a work of literature in the Star Trek universe, but this does rather break the pattern of the titles of the first couple The Fall installments for sure.
• Vale frets that she wants to be helping investigate Bacco's death, but "she knew that the best investigative minds in the UFP were already finding answers" (21). You're wrong, Vale; they assigned Jefferson Blackmer instead.
• The book uses the adjective "Magna Romanii" when referring to Atia. No, just... no. Latin might be a dead language, but Swallow murders it all over again ever time he uses that.
  
• There are currently 58 books in my Destiny-era reading list; The Poisoned Chalice is #29, meaning I am now exactly halfway! I read #1, The Original Series: From History's Shadow, in June 2017, meaning I might hope to read #58, The Next Generation: Collateral Damage in March 2024! (Though later in 2021, three more will come out, extending this journey even further.)
  

I read Destiny-era Star Trek books in batches of five every few months. Next up in sequence: The Fall: Peaceable Kingdoms by Dayton Ward

Review: Star Trek: Picard: The Dark Veil by James Swallow

Published: 2021
Acquired and read: January 2021

Star Trek: Picard: The Dark Veil
by James Swallow

Like the early Discovery tie-ins, it looks like the Picard tie-ins will be prequel stories; this one is a story of Riker and Troi and their son Thaddeus on the Titan, about a year after The Last Best Hope and fifteen years prior to season one of Picard. It's not just a random adventure, but one which ties into the Romulan machinations of season one and sets up some aspects of "Nepenthe," the Picard episode featuring Riker and Troi.

The actual story is fine; to be honest, it's somewhat generic Star Trek stuff: an alien race with a secret, a battle against Romulans. Generic can sing with the right sparkle, and Swallow has shown himself capable of such sparkle in the past, but this one didn't quite succeed on that level. Maybe it's because I found most of the Titan crew pretty bland? I'm not sure I could point at something done wrong, but I found it hard to invest in the plot. I did like the original character of the Romulan commander, who was very interesting, and a good portrayal of a more open Romulan who was nonetheless recognizably of his culture.

Where the book does really succeed, though, is in its portrayal of the Troi-Rikers. I could imagine everyone one of Riker and Troi's lines being read aloud by Jonathan Frakes and Marina Sirtis, and the characters convinced as older versions of the people we saw on screen so long ago in The Next Generation-- this is what Riker would be like as captain and father, and what Troi would be like too. Thad was a pretty lively character, too, building on the hints we got about him in "Nepenthe." Probably my favorite scene is one where Riker's executive officer talks to him about how it's hard for him to be captain when his son is in mortal danger... but then Riker just goes ahead and does it anyway. It rang true. I'd be up for more Riker-Troi-Thad(-Kestra) Picard prequel novels. Even as I think Picard is the worst of the new CBS All Access Star Trek shows thus far, the Riker-Troi family is one of its strongest parts.

Star Trek: The Destiny Era: The Stuff of Dreams

Published: 2013
Acquired: March 2019
Read: October 2020

Star Trek: The Next Generation: The Stuff of Dreams

by James Swallow

2384 ("some months" after The Body Electric)
I can't claim I ever wanted a follow-up to Generations. "What was the nexus?" is a question I never even thought about. But The Stuff of Dreams brings the Enterprise crew back into contact with that phenomenon, several decades ahead of schedule. Instead of passing through local space every 39.1 years, it's returning 25 years early... and coming within the reach of the Typhon Pact, who might like to have some easy access to time travel.

At first, I will admit I really didn't see the point of all this. The nexus (always lower case, which feels wrong to me, like it's just some nexus, when surely it's the Nexus) is kind of a maguffin. The Enterprise has met up with the science vessel Newton, which has been studying the nexus for months; with the nexus about to enter Kinshaya space, the Newton is going to destroy it so that no one can get their hands on it. But there's a saboteur on board: it felt like this could have been any space thing in any Typhon Pact story.

But then Picard returns to the nexus about halfway through the novella, and the story gets wistful and melancholy and true. Picard has to convince another man to give up the fantasies of the nexus while once again confronting his own. The writing is tight and evocative and character focused; as it goes on, it becomes genuinely moving, and I found myself tearing up as I finished the novella over lunch. (Warning: parenthood makes you into a total sap.) The reappearance of a certain Generations character seemed obvious once it happened, but I didn't expect it, and I really like what was done with him. It gave him good closure. Swallow has a good grasp on Picard, and this is the first Destiny-era story to convince me that there's something interesting in marrying Picard off and giving him a family, the first one to tell a story that could not have been told before.

And, I must admit, the more thriller-focused elements in the first half work well; the culprit seems obvious, so I was surprised to be wrong-footed. (And then Swallow puts a second surprise on top of the first-- sneaky!)

It's quick, and that's to its advantage. One of the things I like about these novellas is that they read like episodes of the television series; Destiny-era fiction can often feel bloated, but The Stuff of Dreams gets right to it and never really wastes any time. It kind of makes me think all Star Trek tie-in fiction should be novella-length! Another thing I like is its perspective. A lot of Star Trek books jump from character to character to character in a way that makes it hard for the book to maintain any real throughlines; the choice of viewpoint feels like it says more about the plot than anything else. The Stuff of Dreams focuses primarily on Picard, using him as the focal character for the majority of its scenes. But not every scene is a Picard one; we'll segue into Worf or whoever when it's needed, but we always quickly come back to Picard. So while this might read like an episode in terms of pacing, in terms of character focus, I think it plays to the strengths of prose instead of trying to emulating tv-style ensemble storytelling.

So despite my initial skepticism, this turned out to be nice little adventure of the kind I wish we saw more of. I think all of Swallow's Destiny-era books were Titan ones outside of this, so it's nice to get to see him do something different. I'd like to read more TNG by him.

Don't worry, these guys don't come back.

Continuity Note:

• One character, Kolb, is an old friend of Picard; it's mentioned they met when the Enterprise-D saved his planet, Styris IV, from Anchilles fever. I vaguely recognized those names, so I assumed he had appeared on some old episode of TNG that I had mostly forgotten. I was surprised when later I discovered he was an invention of this book-- Styris IV was where the Enterprise was going after "Code of Honor." I do wonder if there's a pre-established character Swallow could have used again to give things slightly more oomph. I am not a huge fan of the never-before-mentioned-old-friend trope!

I read Destiny-era Star Trek books in batches of five every few months. Next up in sequence: Department of Temporal Investigations: Shield of the Gods by Christopher L. Bennett

Review: Star Trek: Discovery: Fear Itself by James Swallow

Trade paperback, 292 pages
Published 2018
Acquired June 2018
Read August 2018

Star Trek: Discovery: Fear Itself

by James Swallow

Prequels are the thing of Star Trek: Discovery novels-- there will be no Discovery in Discovery. This one gives us some backstory for Lieutenant Saru, probably my favorite character in the main cast. Not backstory in the sense of showing his origins (I believe one of the upcoming Short Treks will do this), but it's an adventure for the USS Shenzhou set about two years before the Battle of the Binary Stars, showcasing Saru during his time as a junior science officer.

The actual story is kind of like, eh, whatever. I didn't really care about what happened to the Peliars or the Gorlans. Not that it was poorly done per se, but it did seem to run afoul of "Planet Zog" syndrome (from Doctor Who): a lot of people with strange alien names that were hard to grab onto at characters. Though I'm making it sound worse than it was, as they and their society did have their moments.

Anyway, the real highlight of the book is the thought and care it puts into its central character, Saru. Saru is, of course, a coward, but justifiably so in his own mind, and Swallow does a great job of keeping us inside Saru's mind throughout the novel. He's fearful, of course, but Swallow marries this with a sense of determination and obstinacy that the character also possesses, along with the occasional plausible instance of recklessness. I liked that Saru's most un-fearful moments came when he was able to empathize with someone else's fear, and then help them move beyond it. It's not something we've seen on screen, but it makes perfect sense with the screen portrayal of the character thus far.

Saru also gets thrust into command of a boarding party, and flounders at first but eventually shows some aptitude for it, culminating in a decent speech that I could see and hear Doug Jones performing (coinciding with his arc in chapter 2 of Discovery's first season). Additionally, there's a great scene that gives insight into Saru without him being present, where Michael Burnham explores his quarters, and starts to see the universe from his perspective. And finally, the novel's last chapter, where Saru and Captain Georgiou reflect on what he's learned from the experience, was very effective in showing Saru's slow growth, as well as Georgiou's strengths as a commanding officer. I felt Swallow had a better handle on the Burnham/Saru rivalry and Georgiou's tolerance of it than David Mack did in Desperate Hours, where it came across as unprofessional.

Overall, another solid Discovery novel. Between these three books and the 2018 Star Trek Annual, we're racking up backstories for the crew at a fair clip. Sylvia Tilly is next, and with Una McCormack writing, I can't wait!

(Fun bonuses: 1) the cover is the best in the series thus far, with the background making it look less like a generic stock photo, and 2) the writing on the cover is embossed! I don't know the last time a Star Trek book did that. It made me nostalgic for the 1990s when it happened all the time.)

Review: Star Trek: Cast No Shadow by James Swallow

Mass market paperback, 360 pages
Published 2011
Acquired June 2012
Read December 2015

Star Trek: Cast No Shadow
by James Swallow

Cast No Shadow is about a secret mission into Klingon space to stop a war, set seven years after The Undiscovered Country, and featuring Valeris (from that film) and Elias Vaughn (from the Deep Space Nine relaunch novels), with Spock and Sulu in minor supporting roles. I've never read a Tom Clancy novel, but I've seen Hunt for Red October, and I can recognize that this is a Star Trek take on Clancy, down to the attention to technical and political details; Swallow fills in a lot of the gaps in Star Trek's loose approach to worldbuilding by drawing on the old FASA sourcebooks, which just seems tonally right.

The book is a decent, well-executed example of its genre. Vaughn starts out as a desk analyst, and ends up deeper and deeper as the situation escalates, and I enjoyed that, and Swallow's attention to detail serves him well. But the character stakes aren't quite strong enough (though I wouldn't be surprised to find out that this is true to Clancy novels). Vaughn feels like he's along for the ride, and though that's accurate to his position and status, I didn't have a sense of what this adventure meant for him. Meanwhile, I really liked Swallow's handling of Valeris at first, but ended up feeling that he'd taken a potentially fascinating character-- a counterpart to Spock who decided that because the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few, peace was not the answer-- and flattened her into a simple victim of childhood trauma.

Professor Bernice Summerfield and the Alternate Timelines

Hardcover, 202 pages
Published 2006
Acquired February 2012
Read May 2012

Professor Bernice Summerfield VII: Something Changed

edited by Simon Guerrier

This Bernice Summerfield anthology has a somewhat odd premise: a man named Doggles brings a "history machine" to the Braxiatel Collection just after the emotionally devastating events of Parallel Lives.  At the end of the first chapter (Simon Guerrier's "Inappropriate Laughter"), the history machine malfunctions, and the devastating consequences are explored in the second chapter (James Swallow's "Siege Mentality"). But at the end of that chapter, everyone dies, and there's another second chapter (Joseph Lidster's "Dead Mice") where we pick up again in a reality where the machine malfunctioned in a different way.  And so the book goes again and again, sometimes picking up immediately after the malfunction, sometimes months or decades later, but always showing a different possibility.

What stops the book from feeling like a collection of pointless alternate-timeline stories is that they all use the premise as a way to create genuine insights into Bernice herself and her supporting cast. I didn't fully understand what was happening in "Dead Mice," but it was a great look into Braxiatel and his levels of manipulation, as is "Family Man" by Ian Mond.  Pete Kemphshall's "Acts of Senseless Devotion," where Bernice is blinded and her son is dying, showed the all-too-plausible depths to which Bernice might sink to save her son.  Jason Kane gets a good showing in Dave Hoskin's "Writing in Green," where he attempts to show Benny the depth of his love with the help of Hass, the Collection's Ice Warrior gardener.  Another dark story was Ian Farrington's "A Murderous Desire," where someone kills Doggles.  Very dark actions from all of our main characters, but seemingly all too plausible.

Of the stories that picked up much later, I most liked Eddie Robson's "Match of the Deity," where Benny and Doggles are reunited eight years later to try to return a religious artifact to an alien planet, with hilarious consequences.  But even though it's set eight years in an alternate future, it still tells us something of both Bernice and Doggles.

Some take odder approaches, but that's okay.  In Ben Aaronovitch's "Walking Backwards for Christmas," the history machine makes Bernice relive her own past, and thus we get a great story of the little-explored period where Bernice was at a military academy and subsequently went AWOL. It's neat to see a very different, but very recognizable Benny. I also liked Dave Stone's "There and Back Again," where Jason uses the constantly shifting timelines to try to help his other selves break free from Braxiatel's conditioning.  Poor guy.

A couple, though, I couldn't see how the worlds they showed were related to the premise at all.  Why is Bernice fighting with a fanatical resistance army in "The God Gene" by Ben Woodhams? No one really ever says. Or why is Bernice fighting for the Fifth Axis in "The Ice Garden" by Jonathan Clements? I have no idea (though it yields the excellent cover image).

Those are just two stories, though, out of an excellent bunch. Once again, Simon Guerrier has knocked it out of the park with a Bernice Summerfield anthology: we have here a collection of deeply character-driven, unique sf stories, which only an open-ended, multi-author series like this could do. A variety of voices and styles, all giving their perspectives on a small group of people, but able to do almost anything like them. Excellent stuff, which once again has me excited for the continuation of the Bernice line.