Spoilers SNW: Asylum by Una McCormack Review Thread

[Avro Arrow]

Blurb:
A new Star Trek adventure based on the thrilling Paramount+ TV series Star Trek: Strange New Worlds!

When Una Chin-Riley and Christopher Pike meet at Starfleet Academy after one of his lectures, they immediately become friends. A stellar student, Una is the “poster girl” of her class, and Pike is determined to become a Starfleet captain with his own ship, rhetorically assembling his dream crew. As their friendship evolves, Pike also suspects Una is involved with the Euxhana, a Chionian cultural minority, who are seeking asylum in Federation space, leading to more questions than answers.

Twenty-five years later, Una and Pike are working together on the USS Enterprise to settle a Chionian trade agreement when a pro-Euxhana saboteur launches a terrorist attack. When the suspect is taken into custody for interrogation and is discovered to have a history with Una, her past associations resurface, threatening to expose a secret she’s been harboring all these years…

About the Author:
Una McCormack is the author of ten previous Star Trek novels: The Lotus Flower (part of The Worlds of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine trilogy), Hollow Men, The Never-Ending Sacrifice, Brinkmanship, The Missing, the New York Times bestseller The Fall: The Crimson Shadow, Enigma Tales, Discovery: The Way to the Stars, the acclaimed USA Today bestseller Picard: The Last Best Hope, and Discovery: Wonderlands. She is also the author of five Doctor Who novels from BBC Books: The King’s Dragon, The Way Through the Woods, Royal Blood, Molten Heart, and All Flesh is Grass. She has written numerous short stories and audio dramas. She lives with her family in Cambridge, England.

Star Trek: Strange New Worlds: Asylum

A new Star Trek adventure based on the thrilling Paramount+ TV series Star Trek: Strange New Worlds! When Una Chin-Riley and Christopher Pike meet ...

www.simonandschuster.com

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The second Strange New Worlds novel is here!

I picked this one up at Chapters today! Since it is now out in the wild, I thought it was time to get a review thread started!

 

[Tosk]

Am I crazy, or is that species name a Majel wink? Y'know, is Euxhana supposed to be pronounced a little like Lwaxana?

 

[Una McCormack]

How exciting! I haven’t seen a copy myself yet!

 

[Una McCormack]

Am I crazy, or is that species name a Majel wink? Y'know, is Euxhana supposed to be pronounced a little like Lwaxana?

It wasn’t intended that way!

 

[Tosk]

Oh well. It's still gonna be hard for me not to read it that way regardless.

 

[Una McCormack]

Oh well. It's still gonna be hard for me not to read it that way regardless.

Go for it

 

[Christopher]

Interesting how "The Cage" portrayed Pike as being in his mid-30s ("The Menagerie" even had the flub of Mendez saying Pike was about Kirk's age 13 years later), but Kelvin and SNW both depict him as fiftyish only a few calendar years later. Pike being 25 years past the Academy makes that pretty unambiguous. It also bumps up Number One's age, since Majel Barrett was 32 in "The Cage."

 

[Ronald Held]

Pike's age in the Cage is now reconned to be 40 to 50?

 

[DarrenTR1970]

Didn't Discovery establish that Pike and Philippa Georgiou were contemporaries at Starfleet Academy or Pike at least knew of her?
Her Memory Alpha entry says she attended the Academy from 2220 to 2224 where she met Pike.
If Pike entered the Academy at the same time as Georgiou, that means he would have to have been born in 2202; making him in his mid to late fifties during the second season of Discovery and the first season of Strange New Worlds.​

 

[Avro Arrow]

How exciting! I haven’t seen a copy myself yet!

Feels kinda wrong that I have a copy of the book before the actual author!

 

[Reanok]

Looking forward to getting a new SNW story soon.

 

[The Wormhole]

I picked this one up at Chapters today!

Damn, that's early for them. Checking their website out, there is a Chapters in my are that currently has two copies. Though given it's a two hour trip to get to that particular store, and I likely won't have time to read it until the scheduled release date anyway, I think I'll just stick with my original plan of ordering it from Amazon.

Didn't Discovery establish that Pike and Philippa Georgiou were contemporaries at Starfleet Academy or Pike at least knew of her?

Indeed it did.

 

[hbquikcomjamesl]

The second Strange New Worlds novel is here!

Only the second? I thought we'd already had a few out. . . . . . sure enough, it is. Only The High Country until now. I stand corrected.

 

[David cgc]

Only the second? I thought we'd already had a few out. . . . . . sure enough, it is. Only The High Country until now. I stand corrected.

The Enterprise War is a de facto SNW novel. Even Desperate Hours, if you squint.

 

[Ronald Held]

I suppose I have to wait until next week to get it....

 

[Enterpriserules]

The Literary Treks interview with Una is out now!

 

[Tuskin38]

It came out 4 days ago? Oops

 

[thribs]

I only just found out about this book. Might give it a read.

 

[hbquikcomjamesl]

All I know at this point is that it's a nicely bound hardcover. But I finished re-reading Dillard and O'Malley's Possession this morning, not much more than an hour ago, so I should be able to start on the present opus sometime this evening.

*****
10 hours later
Ye Vish!! Ms. McCormack does Pelia's voice in writing every bit as well as Carol Kane does it on the screen!

 

[hbquikcomjamesl]

So what's this whole "beer with twigs" business?

Parts of this opus felt more like TNG than SNW. So much so that I was expecting Picard and Riker to show up, and had to remind myself that this was about Pike and Chin-Riley.

And page 89 struck me as one big non-sequitur. How could Chin-Riley have not known that she was dealing with two nations of a single species?

I enjoyed learning that Pelia and Pike originated the Kobyashi Maru Test.

I gave it an "Above Average." Because I don't give out "Outstandings" unless a book leaves me awestruck. How wonderful it is to have Ms. McCormack's formidable writing chops once again applied to a subject that isn't, in and of itself, a Kobyashi Maru.

And it is truly amazing how completely I can hear Carol Kane's voice, entirely in character, coming straight out of the page, whenever Pelia says anything.

But I still don't understand the business of "beer with twigs."