Dead Endless

if i were involved in the production of star trek: discovery supplementary content i’m not sure it would have occurred to me to do a novel about hugh culber’s time in the mycelial network, and it definitely wouldn’t have occurred to me to set it largely aboard an alternate discovery with a captain michael burnham who assumed command when one gabriel lorca did in the prime universe. a captain michael burnham who formed a chosen family that’s explicitly called a family towards the end of the book with her first officer saru and their mutual surrogate mother, fleet captain phillipa georgiou.

i mean, literally all of those last few would’ve occurred to me as things to include in a fanfic au, but i wasn’t expecting to see them in show more commercially-released fiction. i know it didn’t seem to have much utility beyond this one story, but i want a whole series of books (or at least fanfics) set in this universe. pretty please?

anyway, in this novel alternate discovery finds itself trapped in the mycelial network and faced with a ticking clock, tons of technical problems, and eventually a first contact. also there’s an extremely sweet gay romance that bends the laws of physics to its will. that do anything for you? it certainly did something for me. show less

This is the first Discovery book to substantively take place on Discovery, though not all is as it seems at first. I enjoyed the puzzle of trying to figure out where this book takes place, but the real delight of the book is Galanter's keen grasp of the characters, particularly Stamets and Culber, for whom this is an important turning point in their relationship. We get real insight into what brings them together. It's also a neat adventure of the Star Trekkian ship's-crew-prevents-a-crisis-through-diplomacy-and-openness type, with a convincing streak of optimism. I really enjoyed it-- probably my favorite Discovery novel thus far aside from The Way to the Stars and maybe The Enterprise War.

Very strong book with some of my favourite Discovery crew members, Stamets and Culber. It's set a little before S02.E05 and focuses a lot on Hugh's experience in the mycelial network. There are times, my heart broke knowing how the two characters care for one another. As far as I can tell, there were no disruptions from established canon despite the fact I originally thought there were then realized what was going on.

I had some sense at what was going to happen at a few key points, but that is because I knew how it would play out having seen Discovery.

A clever direction - philosophical and mysterious and more!

Galanter gives us the USS Discovery ... but one with CAPTAIN Burnham. A Paul Stamets meeting Hugh Culber ... but not his Hugh. And there's a talking (sort-of) tardigrade. It's a very trippy story - but one that leverages off of ideas and events within the Discovery series in an interesting and engaging way.

This is the story of Culber when he is lost in the mycelial jungle. Honestly, the spore drive and the mycelial jungle were never anything I could accept in Discovery so this book is making an uphill climb with me. The characters are portrayed well and the relationship between Culber and Stamets is developed in an interesting way. The parts in the jungle are plodding and repetitious.
read 1/9/2023

Enjoyed this. Without spoiling, my few niggles are that it went over something already established in the tv series, and they need to treat Tilly a bit more maturely, as I don't think she's THAT insecure. But that's my opinion ymmv. That said I enjoyed having Ephraim show up and the fleshing out of that character, and the storyline is interesting.

ETA: The narrator does an excellent job with this.

Who needs slash when you get lovely romance like this in canon? (Me. I also need slash. But still.)