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Seize the Fire (Star Trek: Typhon Pact #2) ReviewThere are SPOILERS, so please read at your own discretion.I really wanted to enjoy this book. The earlier Titan novels written by Michael Martin and Andy Mangels were very enjoyable - I have read them several times which I think is the highest compliment you can give a book. I will never read this book a second time. It was a struggle to get through it once.
I read books to escape, so when a book has continuity errors, makes incorrect references within the story, makes significant errors with the character's back-stories, etc. I can't enjoy the book. There are multiple instances of each of these:
- There was a reference to Sean Hawk being murdered by the Gorn. Major plot point for Keru - probably should be correct (it wasn't the Gorn btw)
- Early on in the book Torvig was listed as a sciences officer, he is an engineering officer (it even says so in the who's who crew manifest at the end of the book
- There was a reference to Pazlar and the Ra-Havreii as being Riker's sciences officers, one is, and one isn't. I think what he meant was that they were Riker's "senior officers" as opposed to "senior science officers"
- There was a scene mid-way where the author sets the scene indicating that Lavena and Rager were at conn and ops respectively. Like a paragraph or two later, Ensign Dakal responds from the Ops station. Confused, did they do a shift change within the scene? Continuity with the scene, please.
- Towards the end of the story Rager is firing phasers and handling tasks traditionally handled via the tactical station rather than Ops. Why not a tactical officer? The authors have created many tactical officers, use one!
- I understand that the author wanted the holographic tele-presence thingy to use to "cleverly" resolve a later issue - however - in the previous books they indicated that it had been deactivated so that Pazlar would not let her physical capabilities atrophy. I don't care if that is reversed, but tell the audience why.
These are a few examples of many more similar issues. All of them are minor and petty, but they build on one another and it gets to the point where I can't stay in the story.
Next, there are issues with talking heads throughout the book. The characters are in the middle of emergency situations and chatting, chatting, chatting - typically stating and restating the obvious. Exceptionally distracting - the book could have benefited from some serious editing in this regard. There were multiple occasions where Riker was posturing and asserting his authority when it wasn't necessary. I have a hard time believing that Riker has control issues, let's not write him that way.
The characters make decisions that make absolutely no sense. Why does the female Gorn keep the warrior caste Gorn from coming aboard? I don't think it was clear why she chose to obey him rather than blow up his shuttle and be done with him - other than if she had not acquiesced we would have not had the contrived climax.
Further, not understanding why Riker agreed to beam over to the crazy warrior Gorn's ship - except that was a convenient way of getting the female Gorn to Titan to reunite with her partner.
Also not understanding why the crazy warrior Gorn - who wanted the ecosculpter to rebuild the warrior caste - in the end decides to ram it. Makes no sense.
Why is Riker exclusively worried about getting the away team back from the ecosculpter, yet his WIFE is on the surface of the planet, held by the natives AND threatened by being erased by the ecosculpter.
The ecosculpter is an artificial intelligence. OUT OF NO WHERE. You would think that the Gorn scientist might have mentioned that at some point... Not getting why he decides out of nowhere that the ecosculpter is their diety. Naming the ecosculpter Brahma-Shiva seemed forced.
I get that the author wanted us to feel like we were in the mindset of the Gorn by referring to the Star Fleeters as mammals, referring to their hands as "manus", the glorious multiple references to the Gorn cloaca (really? really? really?), the Borg as the machine mammals, etc. The more the author did this, the more distracting and ultimately annoying it became to read.
Further, we understood in the first chapter that the Gorn refer to the Borg as "machine mammals". It really wasn't that hard to put it together. The author, however, repeatedly explains to us what that means. WE GOT IT. The characters got. Everybody got it. Also, the Gorn are repulsed by mammals - the hair, the flaking skin - the horror. It gets boring, redundant and annoying when this is referenced repeatedly.
One of the central ideas behind the book is that the Gorn warrior baby eggs can grow only in certain conditions. What are those conditions? The book doesn't make it really clear what that characteristic is specifically. Given how aspects of the story are hashed and re-hashed, it grows obnoxious that the reader can't be let in on what specific condition is required to grow the warrior eggs. As this is not made clear, I have to question how they know the ecosculpter can make those conditions happen? Insisting that it has to be used on the populated planet - again without any indication WHY this is the perfect planet makes it feel contrived as well.
The characters don't have any soul. Ra-Havreii is leacherous. Riker is laid back and humorous. Vale has that sarcastic edge. None of the characters seemed like themselves - they seemed to be slaves to the needs of the story and as the story did not always make sense they came off as... wrong.
Michael, please write with Andy. You don't have to be alone.
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