Unicron wrote: ↑Mon Nov 18, 2019 1:39 pm
The only problem I have with the book is Rebels and the Sequel Trilogy. Thanks to the show writing Thrawn out of things and Thrawn not having reappeared in the movies, I doubt we're going to get satisfactory follow-ups (if any at all) to the Chiss and Grysk. I know there's the time gap between ROTJ and TFA they could slot stuff into but meh.
Shrug? I don't care enough about canon to worry about that, so I'm just going to pretend that this trilogy was a prequel to Heir to the Empire and disregard all the various contradictions.
Denyer wrote: ↑Mon Nov 18, 2019 4:24 pmAbout the same. Never really got through the Typhon Pact stuff properly, and got a bit pissy about an author being allowed to reset characters and "rest" Scotty with Indistinguishable From Magic (haven't read it yet -- there are claims much of this was editorial interference). Bacco subsequently apparently getting similar treatment very much stilted interest in the main universe stuff, although as I say will probably work backwards.
Indistinguishable From Magic was actually the book I had in mind when I muttered about "bizarre fanboy wish-fulfillment". I mean, what was the pitch? "What if...we put ALL the engineers on one ship, even though they're all busy in their own ongoing series? And what if it was the ship that Geordi was captain of in that one alternate-future Voyager episode? And what if Geordi scored with that hot chick he creeped on in the holodeck twenty years ago? And what if he found out what happened to his mom, who disappeared in one episode of the old TV show? Oh, and what if we included Matt Frewer? He used to be cool! And we'll make sure to promote Geordi at the end of the book so it feels like he's progressed as a character, but don't worry, that can be handwaved away in the next instalment."
I was actually really excited for the book, because socially-awkward, underappreciated Geordi is someone I can definitely identify with. And NO ONE ever wants to write about him. So a novel with him as the hero should have a lot of appeal for me, but the tone of the thing was so off-kilter that I found it hard to enjoy. I've long assumed that editorial meddling played a big role in how it turned out.
Denyer wrote: ↑Mon Nov 18, 2019 4:24 pmDipped into new Voyager a bit, do mean to catch up with Titan at some point, and can't remember if I read the third part of the last New Frontier ebook because the rest was so generic/bad. Thoroughly enjoyed the DTI stuff and have just discovered there's a third ebook-only release of that I haven't read.
Even though I really didn't like Voyager on TV, I gave the books a try and I was enjoying them quite a bit right up until they brought Janeway back from the dead. After that I gave up pretty much on principle.
Titan's only ever worked for me when Christopher L. Bennett was writing the series. No one else ever seemed to grasp the distinction between telling us that the ship's diverse crew was an asset and showing us how. He's the one who wrote the DTI stuff, right? So maybe I should give that a try.