“Ring of Fire” by David Mack.
Finished “Ring of Fire” by David Mack.
Set during the kindof meh Season 3, between “The Sehlat Who Ate Its Tail” and “What Is Starfleet?”, Enterprise is ordered to assist a top secret research station in orbit around a black hole that has fallen victim to sabotage and murder, as they approach the culmination of their mission.
Pike has a history with this black hole. 16 years prior, when he was second officer of the Chatelet, he pursued an unidentified craft into the accretion disk. He attempted to pull them out with the tractor beam, but the rogue ship tried to escape, and was destroyed. He was cleared of any wrongdoing, but it still weighed heavily on his conscience, causing him to be apprehensive in going back there.
Una, Spock, Chapel, La'an, and a couple of redshirts try to assist the station with pursuing the murder/saboteur, while the station director tries to keep the true purpose of the station's mission under wraps.
Pike makes Ortigas his acting first officer while Una is away, giving her a chance to do something other than fly the ship. She gets a few character beats out of it at least. Meanwhile Pelia bullies Scotty with a pepper eating challenge at completely inappropriate times. And, like, seriously, how is this appropriate workplace behaviour? We're on a mission, here people!
The more interesting plot occurs on the station, as the away team pursues the saboteurs. It starts out feeling like it wants to be a whodoneit, but it only gives us character descriptions for like 4 station personnel, one of which is dead. Which narrows the list of suspects down quite a bit. In fact, for a time it seemed unclear how many people were actually on the station. As the investigation proceeds, I thought for a moment “Ooh! is this “Among Us” inspired? 'Cause that would be neat!” But it drops that angle pretty quick.
Enough about what it's not. What it becomes is a wild ride around a black hole that seldom lets up tension for at least 6 or 8 chapters, as the station pursues its primary mission precariously at the edge of a black hole, the Away team and station security pursue the saboteurs, and the Enterprise tries to uncover the deep secret, while standing by in case they are inevitably needed to aid the station. The mystery surrounding the top secret nature of the station seems obvious to the reader early on, but is carefully revealed to the characters to maintain interest. The technical details of the station and its purpose are carefully thought out, and it's generally fun to watch it all unfold. And the omnipresent accretion disk of superheated plasma adds a sense of tension while the whole thing circles the drain.
This is the trap I let myself into with these things. I don't want to do a “review” per-ce. I don't want to get into the whole thing of “I liked this book,” “I didn't like that book” “I recommend this but not that” kind of thing. I just want to read the books and then talk a bit about my impressions. Just a casual little “book report” for lack of a better term. More analysis than criticism, without going into a full essay. But that's turning out to be a tough needle to thread. Getting into the details that I want to touch on, while trying to be a little glib, but also brief only to come off nitpicky, or overall negative. Proof reading this next bit a couple of times, it sounds like I hated it. I didn't. And I've tried to smooth it out a bit. I just want to get this out of the way right now; I mostly liked the novel overall, but had a few little quibbles here and there, especially around where it fit in with the romance subplots it was saddled with by the show. I just felt I wanted to comment on it. In fact I go on about it here way more than it features in the book. So to be clear, it's not a deal killer.
In Jessie Gender's review, she mentioned the continued focus on heteronormative relationships to the exclusion of queer relationships, which was ubiquitous throughout Season 3. She's not wrong. But I'm not going to comment on that. First of all, because it's not entirely the book's fault. The novel is beholden to what's going on in the show during this time, and this is what's going on. And secondly, because I haven't anything to add. To be honest, I'm not really here for the romance subplot, whether it's queer or straight. If it's there, it's there. It's fine. It doesn't bother me. But it's not what I'm here for, and I could do just as well without it.
But beyond that, the sense that I got from the Spock/La'An/Chapel triangle is that it hardly seams much like a triangle at all. La'An and Chapel aren't romantic rivals. Chapel is the ex, now with someone else, and La'An is the FWB who just wants to keep it casual. They're behaving like adults. Toward each other, and toward Spock. While Spock is behaving like a lovesick teenage boy. Having been a lovesick teenage boy, the …er …earmarks… are there. I see it more clearly in the novel than I did in the show. He's setting himself up for a world of hurt. Which I suppose could be inevitable, given where we know he and Christine end up in canon. If that's the plan, then I kindof like how the novel and the show are intertwining to pull it off.
And then there's the socks. In one episode, La'An is talking to Una about finding socks in one of her drawers. And like many viewers at the time, it didn't register with me; I thought well, they've been casually hooking up, he probably figures it would be convenient to have a change of clothes nearby. Having a drawer at one's partner's place is not unheard of, though typically one's partner would provide the drawer for that purpose. And to her, it signified a relationship threshold or milestone of types that she didn't want to pass. Her FWB left socks in her drawer, “holy shit, we're a couple now! When did we become a couple?” That's basically the meaning she infers from it in the episode.
But the novel sheds a whole new light on the meaning of the socks. Spock left the socks deliberately. He'd picked up from his academy classmates that people sometimes leave small personal items behind at their partner's place to signal that they wanted a closer relationship. So he left a pair of socks in her drawer. For her to find. Specifically a drawer he'd never seen her use. And he thinks somehow this will endear him to her.
I'm married, so I haven't casually dated in years, and I might be a little old for hookup culture, but; is this a thing? Because it seems a bit odd to me. Leaving the movie you brought over on the coffee table, I could imagine. A toothbrush, on the bathroom counter, sure. Reading material on the night stand, maybe. But socks? In her drawer?
And specifically choosing a drawer he's seen her avoid in his presence seems felt like a violation of privacy. If the intention is to imply that he's behaving juvenile, then they nailed it. Because it strikes me as something someone might do if they didn't know any better. Like a lovesick teenager taking bad advise from a schoolmate. And Spock might get away with it only because he's an alien who's maybe misinterpreting a human custom, but I feel like this should set off at least a few alarms.
It does, like Jessie Gender pointed out, seem like a CW teen drama. Made much more striking by the fact that these characters, while maybe a few years younger than the actors who portray them, aren't teenagers, or particularly young adults. They tend to range from late 20s to early 40s; old enough to know better.
Anyway, enough of that.
On a side note, Star Trek authors, I have a humble request; Is it really necessary to always refer to Una and La'An by their surnames? I know, it's a Star Trek thing, since most of them all have Starfleet ranks or alien mononyms, we just get into the habit of calling most of them by their surnames. And for most characters, that's fine. But when it comes to hyphenated names, I find it makes the sentence structure cumbersome. Whether it's real people's names or fictional characters. And you get the two of them in a passage together, and it really messes up the flow. I don't mean to pick on David Mack. All the SNW novels do this. His is just the most recent example. But there's a super easy work-around sitting right there; They have first names! Arguably more familiar to the audience than their last names. We can call them by their first names. You don't have to do it every time, but it should be an option when it's necessary to make the prose work better. Is there some style guide preventing this or something? I'm sure it's not unheard of. If someone were to go though the publication history of Star Trek novels, they'd find Geordi is called Geordi in prose way more often than he's called LaForge. And Scotty is a nickname, but he's always called Scotty. He seldom gets called “Scott” Can't we do this for Una and La'An too? Number One's name has been a bit of a moving target over the years, but Una has been Una before in novels published before SNW came along and gave her a surname. Including at least one written by David Mack. Just throwing it out there; please give it your due consideration.
Anyway, those are my less spoilery thoughts. There's more I could go into, but I've gone on long enough, and would need to get into spoilers.