I meant this as a reply to an earlier post, but now I can't find it. I, too, felt that the description of the "big bad" was based on an actual person whom I wish would remain nameless. Also, I enjoyed the story of the boy and the horse. Was that original or was it taken from an actual old parable?
It is a real, and very old Zen parable. A similar version of it was memorably used in the film Charlie Wilson’s War, written by Aaron Sorkin.
I tore through this book very quickly and think it's very good, one of the best books I've read this year and a reminder that I *REALLY-REALLY* like the Star Trek: Picard era and would love many more books set in the time frame. Still, I would argue that there are some darker elements than is typical in the setting. 1. The bigotry against Seven as a Borg is something that is societal wide as there can't be that many ExBes in the galaxy unless the neurolytic pathogen freed a bunch more than we know about. Indeed, barring retcons, all of them have to come from the Artifact in Romulan Space other than Picard, Hugh, and Seven. Yet, Seven gets hate speech graffited on her house. It shows a nasty side of the Federation that Picard's statement of having evolved past that is false. 2. Starheim is the first sign the Federation has places that are absolutely sh**** places to live. We know there's terrible places to live in the galaxy but usually, places like Ezri's homeworld or Tasha's homeworld are not parts of the Federation. Being a "Protectorate", its suffering from immense poverty and exploitative boring labor of the kind we usually are meant to think has been eliminated in the future. 3. Janeway seems really insistant on Seven staying on Earth as if she can't conceive of the idea that there's places in the galaxy better or at least equal to Earth. It's a bit of cultural centism that seems very strange to possess in the supposedly diverse Federation. Akin to, "Why would you ever want to leave the USA?" This seems to be a more cynical, dark, and grounded take on the Federation. I had similar issues with the fact that apparently the Illyrians were subject to hate speech and segregation in Una's time. The Federations citizens should be more flawed than Roddenberry envisioned but ghettozing and terrorizing others seems like they haven't evolved at all. This is my opinion but I also feel like PICARD Season One presents a more nuanced position on the subject of what the Federation actually did than many fans seemingly give them credit for, made even more nuanced by Una McCormack's take on why things went down they did. Even in the show, Picard acts like the Federation went full Kirk, "Let them die!" That they just sat back and watched the Romulan genocide but they actually emptied their pockets and built a massive fleet which was destroyed along with what I think should have been a full member world of their ranks. Possibly creating its own refugee crisis depending on whether we think Mars is settled like Mars in The Expanse (an entire planetary population) or is just really the families of the Utopia Planetia yards (which would still be a lot). Also, Doctor McCormack shows that the Federation had been prioritizing the Romulan evacuation over a lot of their other humanitarian efforts. It's not the case of sitting on the sidelines, it's the case of creating a huge fleet of boats and then having that fleet destroyed. I feel the level of trauma and damage involved gets underplayed. Certainly, no other parties seem to have been involved in the relief efforts. I guess I just think that saying the Federation was guilty after losing so much is a bridge too far.
TOS: "Court Martial" and "Wolf in the Fold" both established the existence of the Martian Colonies. The former cited their Fundamental Declarations as being as important as the Magna Carta and the US Constitution in the history of human rights, and the latter established that they existed as early as 2105.
Which is a thing that kind of bugs me then. A member of the Federation, a world, is destroyed and it barely gets mentioned as one of the worst disasters in the history of the Federation. Maybe not as bad as the destruction of Vulcan in the Kelvin timeline but have any other Federation members ever been destroyed in canon? I'm presuming that Federation worlds aren't just limited to "member" and "colony." So Mars would presumably have its own representative.
On the contrary, I think it's clear throughout season 1 that the Federation was left reeling from the attack to a much greater degree than if it had merely been an attack on a shipyard. The impact is there implicitly even if it isn't spelled out in black and white. And it's been about a dozen years since the attack, so it makes sense that people wouldn't be actively talking about it as much, that its impact would be felt more than spoken of.
There are questions I'd like to ask about Mars and all of them fall into "story idea" turf, so I think I'd best keep my keyboard still here.
*plays Return of the Mack by Mark Morrison* Yay! David Mack has returned to writing Trek fiction! MY STAR TREK: PICARD: FIREWALL REVIEW Star Trek: Picard is a controversial spin off in my circle as it draws out very strong emotions from its viewers. Some people love it, some people hate it, and some people's feelings change between the seasons. On my end, I think the Picard show was of varying quality but came up with some of the best ideas the franchise ever had. Also, I think that it has consistently produced some of the best novels that Star Trek has ever produced. THE LAST BEST HOPE by Doctor Una McCormack and ROGUE ELEMENTS by John Jackson Miller are two of my all time favorite Star Trek novels ever. FIREWALL by David Mack is now up there as well. The premise is that Seven of Nine has found herself adrift after the ship's return to the Alpha Quadrant. Starfleet has made the possibly justifiable decision to exclude her from Starfleet based on the idea she might be a danger. Which becomes considerably less justifiable when you remember that if she could be remotely hacked or was going to taken over by the Borg, would have probably happened during the show's seven year run. It becomes even more spiteful and prejudice-filled when you find out they've also denied her Federation citizenship. Which doesn't actually prevent her from living there but exists purely to make her feel unwelcome. I wasn't a big fan of "Ad Astra Per Aspera" from Star Trek: Strange New Worlds because it depicted a Federation that was engaged in hate crimes and ghetto-ization of a large chunk of its population in the Illyrians. I like to believe in Roddenberry's future, we may not be perfect but we've moved past Nazi/Terran Empire behavior. I'm more inclined to accept Seven's treatment, though, because it is far more isolated and we see pushback from Janeway and others. It's also practiced only by a handful of individuals in the Federation which, sadly, include people of power. Anyway, Seven seeks to find herself by living on the fringes of Federation society that are also pretty dystopian and seem capitalist despite the fact they don't have money. This is a pretty common issue in many works, though, so I don't mind. That's when she's offered a chance to get her membership in the Federation and possible Starfleet commission if she infiltrates an organization called the Fenris Rangers. Like all prequels, the actual destination is less important than the journey. There's a lot of interesting character beats in this book like Seven coming to terms her bisexuality and also analyzing the idea that the Federation's Romulan Rescue Plan resulted in a total collapse of necessary humanitarian relief in other parts of the galaxy. It makes the question to cut their losses after the destruction of Mars seem more justified. Some fans were offput by Seven's attraction to women but I think it results in some of the more interesting parts of the book. We also get a relationship that is surprisingly drama free and one that I feel like will resonate with queer reader. I really liked the character of Ellory Kayd and hope she shows up in future Star Trek material. I understand that David Mack envisioned her as playd by Jessica Henwick and I think that helped my mental picture a great deal. The Fenris Rangers are actually given a backstory and we get a sense of what they are, other than having a cool name and fighting crime. Apparently, they were once a legitimate law enforcement/security company (for lack of a better term) contracted to protect the Qiris Sector. When the governments collapsed, they continued carrying out their jobs of enforcing the law of the previous regimes. Frankly, Starfleet labeling them vigilantes in that respect is a sign of Federation arrogance as who else would qualify as a legitimate government in that situation? The villains of the book are also interesting because they're some of the vilest ones in Star Trek, up there with the Cardassians, but some of the most easily understood too. General Kohgish and Erol Tazgül are guilty of horrific crimes against sapience but their motives are both believable as well as extremely petty. General Kohgish just wants to make as much bank as humanly possible while Arastoo believes that he's able to keep the Romulans out of the Federation by making a buffer state via any means necessary once the Neutral Zones collapses. I also appreciate Erol isn't a part of Section 31 as that would be the "easy" way to do it. No, he's just a guy who got fired for his extreme politics. Admiral Janeway gets something of an off kilter performance and why I put this book as a 9.5/10 instead of a 10 out of 10. Well, that and because I feel like some of the locations like Starfield are a little too like capitalistic intolerant Earth than the Federation should be. Basically, Janeway seems awfully naive throughout the book. She doesn't seem to understand how much pressure and prejudice Seven is getting or that Starfleet's opinion on the Rangers are wholly unjustified. I wonder if those blinders are just something every Federation citizen has or it's because she wasn't in the Dominion War and saw how falliable the Federation's leadership could be. In conclusion, I find this to be a fantastic novel and one I really enjoyed. Seven of Nine has always been one of my favorite characters in Star Trek and this is a great bridge between her VOY and Picard personas. I really liked the Fenris Rangers as a concept and hope they eventually invite David Mack to do a sequel or perhaps even a series of novels set between this one and Season One of Picard. I have to say that I prefer the audiobook version to the text and think January Lavoy does a excellent set of voices throughout even if her Janeway doesn't quite land.
It's extra funny in a book with so much adult content and dark subject matter that you threw in a quirky word used to fool standards and broadcasters.
Speaking of vocabulary, another deep thought triggered as I was reading the book was whether “cromulent” was a deliberate ancient comedy reference by the character, or if the word had entered common usage by that point (which I was reminded of when I heard someone casually use the word in a podcast with no wink). And that got me thinking about the connotative difference between “cromulent” and “valid,” and why you’d use one over the other…
IIRC, I believe cromulent as well as embiggens are now official words in the dictionary. Writing this post reveals that both words are accepted by my internet spell checker.
Which is kind of sad, because it means a lot of people probably no longer realize that that scene in the Simpsons episode was a joke.
Ms. Marvel uses Embiggen unironically. I wonder how Ellory Kayd and Seven's relationship ended over the next twenty years. That's longer than most marriages potentially so anything could happen from them being separated by death, breakup, or simple circumstance. It may last a long time or a short time.
The framing sequence suggests their relationship likely was already over by 2386, when Seven met Bjayzl. As for how it ended, I'd prefer not to speculate. I let them have their "happy ending for now" on purpose. If I get asked to write more stories of Seven as a Fenris Ranger, maybe I'll come back to that story line. Time will tell.
Fair point. I admit, I would actually really like (and this isn't a story suggestion as is terrible to give licensing authors, just a thought) a book that follows Seven's relationship with Bjayzl. It didn't have to be romantic in Season One but it certainly came off that way as to why Seven felt so personally betrayed. Also, kudos for the focus on Seven's identifying as Borg being Starfleet's main sticking point. In addition to the obvious deadnaming parallel, it also reminds me of how personally Starfleet took the Marquis in DS9. It's not that they're terrorists, it's the fact they turned their backs on the federation and thus called into question that they're the bestest of the best.