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Loading... Cold Equations: Silent Weaponsby David Mack
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Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book. No current Talk conversations about this book. I'm a big fan of Mack's recent Star Trek work. That being said, I've not enjoyed Cold Equations as much as the Destiny series, thus far. Silent Weapons was good in that there were several exciting sub-stories going on at the same time, but I didn't think it brought the overall story together enough. The ending, particularly, seemed to be rushed. I would've liked to see more about the big thing at the end (trying not to give anything away). Still, there are tons of wonderful character moments throughout the story and even some big leaps in terms of character development and growth that make this book a worthwhile read. no reviews | add a review
Belongs to SeriesStar Trek (2012.12) Star Trek (novels) (2012.11) Star Trek Relaunch (Book 69) (Chronological Order)
When Captain Jean-Luc Picard and the Enterprise crew answer a distress call from an old friend, they are forced to play a deadly game with a faceless enemy who is hiding in their midst and using them as pawns in an attempt to destroy the Federation from within. No library descriptions found. |
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Google Books — Loading... GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)813.54Literature English (North America) American fiction 20th Century 1945-1999LC ClassificationRatingAverage:
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Instead, we get a political thriller that feels only very tenuously linked to the first book. Sure, the villains are using Soong-type android, but it verges on maguffin; this book doesn't really explore any ideas of artificial life. Sure, Data is back... but he spends half the book locked up in jail, and we get, I think, just two scenes written from his perspective. Why bring him back and then do almost nothing with him?
If you're going to defy expectations, the defiance has to be worth it. It has to in some way be better than what your reader expected. Unfortunately, Silent Weapons is pretty boring. Yes, technically, the political future of the Typhon Pact and the Khitomer Accords is at stake... but that was true two books ago, and three books ago, and four books ago. The Enterprise crew spends a lot of time investigating, but the questions are so murky, it's hard to care about the answers. It just feels like they go around in circles getting nowhere for a long time before things even vaguely begin to clear. Add to that that Mack's Breen characters feel like they run straight into Russell Davies's planet Zog problem, where you have a bunch of people with weird names and no personalities. (The contrast to how Brinkmanship gave personalities to a bunch of Tzenkethi with equally weird names is sharp.)
The big event, such as it is, is the death of Esperanza PiƱiero, President Bacco's chief of staff introduced back in A Time for War, A Time for Peace. I always liked her, especially when written by Keith DeCandido, and was bummed to see her turned into cannon fodder to prove the situation was serious. So far this trilogy is two for two on bumping off significant women characters. Who will buy it in book III?
I guess it's just weird, because in the Acknowledgments, Mack thanks Jeffrey Lang for writing Immortal Coil because "[m]any of this trilogy's coolest ideas either originated in that book, or else would not have been possible without it to build upon," but there aren't really any cool ideas here, Mack's or Lang's. Maybe this book is setting up some interesting stuff to come in The Body Electric, but as it is, it feels like a pointless political sidestep away from the core idea of the trilogy.
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