“What Judgements Come” by Dayton Ward and Kevin Dilmore.
Finished Star Trek: Vanguard “What Judgements Come” by Dayton Ward and Kevin Dilmore.
Phew! I gotta tell ya, it's a novel alright.
Honestly, I don't know if I'm giving the Vanguard novels a fair shake. For those who don't know, most of the Vanguard novels occur in parallel with TOS, and span several months to a year in-universe. And since I'm watching and reading Star Trek in chronological order, I read the Vanguard novels in parallel, and try to pace them more or less in line with how Memory-Beta has them laid out. Which means a few TOS novels and episodes occur during a single Vanguard novel.
And I notice I've been slowing down a bit lately. I don't know if I've just been busy, or not taking as much time to read as I used to. But I was burning through a novel in 1-2 weeks, and now they seem to take a month or more. I'd actually thought about shuffling “Ghost-Walker” further down the timeline to fit Vanguard in better. But I'm glad I didn't because I ended up liking “Ghost-Walker”.
But as it stands, looking back on my notes, “What Judgements Come” took about 4 months in parallel with the main series. And while I can say that I've read it cover to cover, I've forgotten some stuff in that time. Some day in the future, maybe I'll re-read these in isolation. But not today.
Diego Reyes is in exile aboard the Omari Ekon, having requested asylum with the Orions. T'Prynn contacts him surreptitiously through Pennington and Fisher, and enlists him to access the Omari Ekon's navigational logs to try and find out where the Orions got the Mirdonyae Artifact.
Defiant responds to a distress signal resulting them getting tied up in escalating tensions between the Tholians and the Klingons. The Tholians wipe out a Klingon colony. Defiant investigates the aftermath. This does give us a chance to spend time with the Defiant crew before they meet their fate.
While I'm sure that this subplot is intended to flesh out the events leading up to the Defiant's looming fate, and to give us a chance to meet the crew, I found it difficult getting invested knowing where it was going.
Xiong tries to communicate with the Shedai Wanderer trapped inside the T'Kon crystal. The Wanderer is pretty pissed off, though pissed off seems to be her baseline. She ignores the attempts to communicate, but is able to communicate with the Shedai Progenitor who is trapped in the Mirdonyae Artifact. And I don't know; I'd imagine the Progenitor is gonna be pretty pissed off too after being imprisoned for 200,000 years.
Jetanian presides over the collapse of Nimbus III.
And Quinn presides over the collapse of his liver.
Like many of the Vanguard novels, the unfolding intrigue is interesting, and the action sequences are fun. They often feel lite on character development, as multiple character arcs tend to spread out across multiple novels.