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Dec. 8th, 2009 11:36 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
skygiantsI kind of want to play a drinking game with Diane Duane's Star Trek novels. Every time she mentions entropy: sip! Every time she references Hortas just because she thinks they're loltastic: sip! Every time she does a hilariously blatant crossover over with the Young Wizards books: drain the glass!
Which is to say, I finally read the two other Star Trek novels that![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
genarti lent me this summer, The Wounded Sky and Spock's World.
The Wounded Sky . . . okay, it really is hilarious just HOW MUCH of a Young Wizards crossover it is. The crew teams up with an alien glass spiderwizard physicist who explains that their physics work by defining something, and then changing that definition! Then they have a jaunt through Timeheart, end up in an alternate universe, and offer a brand-new alien consciousness The Choice. I'M NOT EVEN KIDDING. I honestly kept expecting Kit and Nita to show up with their manuals.
Also, I kind of shipped Scotty/Alien Glass Spider Physicist, and I don't think I'm wrong to do so.
Spock's World is less of a blatant crossover, but the word entropy still shows up often enough that you could get relatively tipsy if you chose to play my drinking game with the book. Premise: Vulcan is debating whether or not to secede from the Federation. Sarek gets called back to argue for secession, Kirk and McCoy and Spock to argue against, and Diane Duane basically takes the whole premise as an excuse to point out "HEY YOU KNOW PLANETS ARE COMPLEX PLACES AND NOT ALL VULCANS ARE THE SAME," which is a thing very much worth pointing out, and it's kind of adorable. She also intersperses the narrative with short-story snippets from along the course of Vulcan's development, most of which are full of TRAGEDY, except for the Sarek/Amanda one which is basically the book wavig its ship flag high. It's all a lot of fun, except for one thing . . . Not only was T'Pring the Evil Villainous Scheming Woman, she was an Evil Villainous Scheming Woman whose motivations made NO SENSE. NATURALLY she would be angry at Spock for spurning her, right? Except . . . she is the one who dumped him and happily married someone else, so . . . what? And OF COURSE the best way to ruin his life is by BREAKING UP SPOCK AND KIRK OH NOES with a massively successful one-woman campaign for Vulcan to secede from the Federation! And then she monologues about it. I really kept waiting for her to say, "My plan is sheer elegance in its simplicity."
But Becca, you may say, just last week you were gushing all over Gelis in the Niccolo books, whose life is essentially a one-woman campaign to make Niccolo miserable! Where is the difference here? To you, I answer: first of all, Gelis has a legitimate reason to hate on Nicholas, namely, the fact that he is in large part responsible for ruining her sister's life and then getting her killed. Second of all, Gelis quite sensibly confines her revenge to Nicholas, and not to an entire planet (although I am aware that this probably changes in the later books when their feud escalates to involving the economies of entire nations, but . . . um, if I remember right he started it! LOOK OVER THERE IT'S PRINCESS TUTU) Third of all, GELIS IS AWESOME, and the text acknowledges it, which does not happen with T'Pring - all her scheming, everything she does, is reduced to "a woman scorned." There certainly were several awesome lady characters that popped up over the course of the story, so it's not like it ruined the book for me, but . . . it did make me sort of depressed. Problematic portrayals of ladies: like Kate Beaton's pony, in a way.
Also, something that made me the opposite of depressed: receiving all those lovely snow cookies! Every time I look at my profile now I make a :DDDDDDDDD-face. Thank you guys so much! <3
Which is to say, I finally read the two other Star Trek novels that
genarti lent me this summer, The Wounded Sky and Spock's World.The Wounded Sky . . . okay, it really is hilarious just HOW MUCH of a Young Wizards crossover it is. The crew teams up with an alien glass spider
Also, I kind of shipped Scotty/Alien Glass Spider Physicist, and I don't think I'm wrong to do so.
Spock's World is less of a blatant crossover, but the word entropy still shows up often enough that you could get relatively tipsy if you chose to play my drinking game with the book. Premise: Vulcan is debating whether or not to secede from the Federation. Sarek gets called back to argue for secession, Kirk and McCoy and Spock to argue against, and Diane Duane basically takes the whole premise as an excuse to point out "HEY YOU KNOW PLANETS ARE COMPLEX PLACES AND NOT ALL VULCANS ARE THE SAME," which is a thing very much worth pointing out, and it's kind of adorable. She also intersperses the narrative with short-story snippets from along the course of Vulcan's development, most of which are full of TRAGEDY, except for the Sarek/Amanda one which is basically the book wavig its ship flag high. It's all a lot of fun, except for one thing . . . Not only was T'Pring the Evil Villainous Scheming Woman, she was an Evil Villainous Scheming Woman whose motivations made NO SENSE. NATURALLY she would be angry at Spock for spurning her, right? Except . . . she is the one who dumped him and happily married someone else, so . . . what? And OF COURSE the best way to ruin his life is by BREAKING UP SPOCK AND KIRK OH NOES with a massively successful one-woman campaign for Vulcan to secede from the Federation! And then she monologues about it. I really kept waiting for her to say, "My plan is sheer elegance in its simplicity."
But Becca, you may say, just last week you were gushing all over Gelis in the Niccolo books, whose life is essentially a one-woman campaign to make Niccolo miserable! Where is the difference here? To you, I answer: first of all, Gelis has a legitimate reason to hate on Nicholas, namely, the fact that he is in large part responsible for ruining her sister's life and then getting her killed. Second of all, Gelis quite sensibly confines her revenge to Nicholas, and not to an entire planet (although I am aware that this probably changes in the later books when their feud escalates to involving the economies of entire nations, but . . . um, if I remember right he started it! LOOK OVER THERE IT'S PRINCESS TUTU) Third of all, GELIS IS AWESOME, and the text acknowledges it, which does not happen with T'Pring - all her scheming, everything she does, is reduced to "a woman scorned." There certainly were several awesome lady characters that popped up over the course of the story, so it's not like it ruined the book for me, but . . . it did make me sort of depressed. Problematic portrayals of ladies: like Kate Beaton's pony, in a way.
Also, something that made me the opposite of depressed: receiving all those lovely snow cookies! Every time I look at my profile now I make a :DDDDDDDDD-face. Thank you guys so much! <3
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2009-12-08 05:08 pm (UTC)Also, I was never so into the Niccolo books as I was into the Lymond books, but I must say I barely remember Gelis and I loved Niccolo because I totally could tell he was like me: ADHD. WOOO.
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Date: 2009-12-08 05:15 pm (UTC)The T'Pring thing annoyed me especially, I think, read in the context of the discussions I've been reading since the new movie came out about the roles of women in both the film and the old series, and the existence of
I wasn't into the Niccolo books as much either when I was younger, but I have to say I am really enjoying them on the reread! It helps that I have to eyeroll a lot more at Lymond now than I did when I was fourteen, and Nicholas is not nearly so ~glamorous~.
no subject
Date: 2009-12-08 06:22 pm (UTC)I never liked Lymond to start with, even when I was younger. He always seemed like a bit of a Mary Sue character (ie he's so talented in all these different ways, and sexy) and then seemed so content to remain misunderstood, almost to the point that he never even tried to explain himself even when he did have the chance. So when we were supposed to feel sorry for him because everyone hated/mistrusted him, I would be like, "Well, it's his own fault." I love Dunnett, but I think these parts are overly constructed. It's funny, what I consider flaws almost make me love the books more; I certainly care more than I cared about other authors. (I got to meet her, too! *squee* back in 2000). I posted about this in more detail once on marzipan yahoo and got yelled at for daring to think the author wasn't perfect. :) c'est la vie! I should give the Niccolo books another chance. especially since I am now so close to Bruges!
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Date: 2009-12-08 06:30 pm (UTC)I fell hook, line and sinker for the Lymond glamour at fourteen, though he was never actually my favorite character. These days, my attitude towards him is mostly 'tolerant affection, and sympathy for those who have to deal with him,' which in no way lessens my love for the books overall - I love Dunnett's prose so much that I have a fondness even for the flaws.
(:O LUCKY.)
Niccolo does pretty much the same thing as Lymond, what with the wilfully allowing people to go on misunderstanding him, but I think Dunnett gives him much less of a free pass for it, which is nice!
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Date: 2009-12-08 08:19 pm (UTC)And so I do, normally. Check the Rihannsu books. :)
Meanwhile, the dolphin was a present for Rich Sternbach. He tried to sneak dolphin navigators into Starfleet, but they caught him and made him stop. So I gave him a Space Dolphin as a present.
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Date: 2009-12-08 08:28 pm (UTC)I actually did read the Rihannsu books, and I really enjoyed them. :D I love the variety of Romulan women that you wrote in there, and what you did with the Romulan commander from that one episode, which is honestly one of the reasons that the portrayal of T'Pring surprised me a bit in Spock's World.
(I have to say that I cannot think of a better present to receive than a space dolphin.)
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Date: 2009-12-08 06:20 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-12-08 06:24 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-12-08 06:50 pm (UTC)Overtly, because of the discussion about translation and how what they should be saying is "control of emotions," and then subtly with T'Pring--because she was angry at Spock, for being successful and a legend despite her rejecting him, and for being such a model of awesome that Stonn ended up killing himself out of jealousy. There's a reason she gets locked up so that she can reestablish her logic--she'd done the Vulcan equivalent of "lost it."
But I think T'Pring's plot is the least important part of the book--it's about Vulcan's history, explaining how it is they Got That Way, and then about Jim, Bones, and Spock (and I like that this is how they get called by the narrator) dealing with Vulcans.
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Date: 2009-12-08 07:01 pm (UTC)In a way, though, the fact that T'Pring's plot is so unimportant to the book is one of the reasons that it annoys me - because you didn't need to have her as the bad guy for the plot to make sense, and there really are plenty of things going on with the emotionality of Vulcans without her (not to mention the fact that it pretty explicitly states that T'Pring did not care about Stonn, which means the only emotion we get from her is inexplicable rage over losing people she didn't care about rather than anything three-dimensional.) So it comes off a bit like gratuitous T'Pring bashing.
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Date: 2009-12-08 07:36 pm (UTC)... whut. The thing I liked about the craziness that was "Amok Time" was that even though T'Pring basically made him kill Kirk, Spock was all, "that's some impressive logic" about it and left it at that. She was allowed to not be interested in Spock and even manipulate him to a point that it results in Kirk's death, and still not really be cast as at the bad guy. That kind of retelling comes off as... really weak, and I mean, if you're outdoing TOS in terms of problematic gender tropes? Really?
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Date: 2009-12-08 07:55 pm (UTC)(And Spock is all, "That is truly an impressively logical plan," and I am like, "NO. NO IT'S NOT. Aside from everything else, that plan is the ANTI-LOGIC.")
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Date: 2009-12-08 08:13 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-12-08 08:21 pm (UTC)(And then Spock and Kirk and Bones get to go be magnanimous at her when she goes to Vulcan prison, because they are Good, Heroic People, and. SIGH.)
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Date: 2009-12-08 08:02 pm (UTC)As an adult, I'm right there with you with the "WTF? Don't be hatin' and retconning that impressive piece of logic and agency, which are T'Pring's only tools against a system that decided her reproductive and romantic fate at the age of seven."
Is it Spock's World that has Kirk lurking in a bar in old Ireland, and getting the call and having to step outside into the rain to beam up? I have no idea why I loved that scene so, but I did (and do), and would like more of Kirk going, "dammit! but this beer is chilled...oh, fuck it" and rolling out with Spock to save the galaxy once again.
And LOL, spider-crystal! I remember her, and was always like, "I think this spider-crystal is cool but I am very concerned someone will speak loudly and she will go *poof* and shatter all over the engineering bay. That would suck.'
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Date: 2009-12-08 08:13 pm (UTC)(Yeah, I caused a planet to secede from the Federation once when I was 12. I felt pretty awkward about it later . . .)
That is the one! I totally cracked up at that, too. Sometimes a hero would just like to have a drink in a bar! IS THAT TOO MUCH TO ASK. (A: yes, yes it is.)
Fortunately she
was a wizardhad the whole magical force-field thing protecting her . . . I think? But this was a concern of mine also. :Ono subject
Date: 2009-12-08 08:03 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-12-08 08:17 pm (UTC)They really are a ton of fun, mostly because Diane Duane is quite clearly having epic tons of fun herself! "Am I getting paid to make this character a Doctor Who fan just because it amuses me? WHY YES, YES I AM >:D"
. . . . . . *_* I WOULD LOBBY FOR THE ANSWER TO THIS QUESTION TO BE SOON
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Date: 2009-12-09 12:51 am (UTC)Except, I never did get around to reading her ST books, and now I think I should.
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Date: 2009-12-09 02:01 am (UTC)You should!
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Date: 2009-12-09 05:52 am (UTC)So it's probably been sitting there for a week or so by now because I am really bad at checking my mail, but HEY I GOT YOUR LETTER ♥♥♥
I actually did a ridiculous dance at my mailbox. :D
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Date: 2009-12-09 02:59 pm (UTC)