8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Much More Than a "Mass Consumption Paperback", January 30, 2003
It's quite strange, to say the least, to see The Wounded Sky described as a "mass consumption paperback". Even if some other Star Trek novels are, this is certainly not the sort of watered-down, commercialized novel that name would indicate. This is a novel of many, many levels, that draws the reader back over and over--there is always something new to be found lurking underneath what you saw the first time around. I honestly believe that had it not been put out as a specifically "Star Trek" novel, it would be gaining *far* more widespread public acclaim.
What I most love about this work is its ability to weave together plot, physics, music, philosophy, humour, and more into a single cohesive story that truly has a lifelike sweep to it. Although some may object to this metaphor, I found a similar experience with the movie The Matrix...in that movie, there are subtle clues, references that you might not catch on the first viewing, but one by one become obvious as you watch it again. So too does The Wounded Sky. I'm certain that each time I reread the book, I will arrive at some new understanding.
Diane Duane is more than an author, in my opinion. She is very much a modern philosopher, and in this work it shows more clearly than any other. There is an entire worldview contained within this book that perhaps speaks to the recent efforts to reconcile the warring factions of science and religion, and more.
However, don't let the description of this book's philosophical angle scare you off. The book has excellent character development, and nowhere else but in Diane Duane's works does the crew of the Enterprise seems so *alive*, so *diverse*, and such a family. It is a beautiful sort of patchwork rather than the streamlined unit that other books--even the Series--portray. Infinite Diversity in Infinite Combinations, you could say.
This is easily the best Star Trek novel ever written. Even those who Scorn the series in favour of less commercial science fiction should try this book. Since it will forever be stuck with this "mass consumption" label, be sure to tell your friends the *real* story about The Wounded Sky. That will be the only way to get the word out.
Well done, Ms. Duane!
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5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A wonderful story, September 5, 2005
A Kid's Review
I have read a lot of Star Trek books, ranging from absolutely horrible to great. This is one of the great ones. (I have read these Star Trek books by Diane Duane: Doctor's Orders; The Wounded Sky;My Enemy, My Ally; The Romulan Way; Spock's World; Swordhunt; Honor Blade; and Dark Mirror. I loathed Dark Mirror [The Dark Universe concept is horrible- honestly, if there's an infinite number of alternate universes, why do we only get into the evil one?] and loved the rest. I have all of them except Dark Mirror and Doctor's Orders. The Rihannsu books I got on the same day, without having heard of them before or recognizing the author. I never do that. Thank goodness I did.)
There are a lot of minor characters, such as Amekentra, Mayri, Ensign Niliet, Mr Athende, Lia Burke, and others, who just have one or two mentions in the book. They give you the feeling htat there are people here who don't have roles in the series but nonetheless EXIST. And details like where Lia Burke lives (on a gas-giant moon inhabited by non-physical beings who live on a different level of reality, so they can be seen, but not toached)and the relationship between Mayri and ensign d'Hennish, a Sadrao who has no sense of "duration", or time in the usual sense.
The main people- Kirk, Spock, McCoy, Scotty, Uhura, Sulu, and Checkov- all have their parts. In particular, Sulu, Chekov, and Scotty have a far bigger role than usual. Scotty's friendship with K't'lk is fun. So is the way he and Chekov defend the ship. Sulu has a great scene where he destroys a Klingon fleet with his flying of the ship and NO weapons. Uhura has, I think, scenes in the anentropic univerce where she explains that for hte Others to invent communication they msut invent inventing... and to all appearances they haven't. Kirk, Spock, and McCoy have big roles, but they are not the only people in the story.
K't'lk is really a wonderful character. The idea of sentient spider beings is neat- espessially with some of the truly weird, alien concepts of their society. The way that they link love, death, birth, rebirth, and building is resonant, even when we meet only K't'lk. The Hamalki, her species, are not the least bit like humans. Their physics is flexible, their customs and religion aren't. K't'lk speaks lightly of holy wars, and the fact that when Hamalki mate, the male dies, gives the darker aspects of their society without making them seem evil. And as Spock says (and K't'lk demonstrates in the last pages) "even in this universe- death has its exceptions." To the Hamalki, not only is rebirth a physical rather than strictly religious part of life- K't'lk (in later books, K's't'lk) is reincarnated during tfe story and has been dead and born again several times before. She dies in 'giving birth'to a univerce- in giving it entropy, death, and time, all of which are necesery to life. In many ways K't'lk is a voice for a civilization- but she's also a fun character. One of her quirks is sometimes getting English idioms wrong, usually to be corrected by one of the others.
Creative physics, the idea that you create a law of physics by finding it, is also interesting, if over my head. So is the idea of breaking laws of physics- that is supposedly impossible. But I wonder... is Einstein's equation valid in the Trek univerce as Duane sees it? Is warp drive itself creative physics? Questions are the root of science and science ficiton. Add Duane has great questions.
K't'lk is the center of the story. She is an inventor of a transwarp (not as in the Voyager eppisode, if you leapt to that conclusion)device called inversion drive, whcih involves infinite mass, de Sitter space, and other terms which are much more beleivable in the story. A starship must test the device, and Enterprise is, of course, chosen. Then, they use it to evade some Klingons, causing at least two stars to go (super?)nova. But all of the crew except for K't'lk and d'Hennish have weird, emotional experiances. Spock finds himself "on" a planet where each time a certain comet blazes in the skies, they have a war. (earlier in the story, the Enterprise breaks the comet by accident, but it continues on its course. It is never stated that this is the comet in question, or the ship, but I think that it is). But this time, it comes as a rain of shooting stars, the sign for peace. So the war ends. Kirk finds himself inside the "mindset" of his ship.
Each time they use the inversion drive, they have deeper experiances. They get each others memories, and finaly are "together" in these situations. But something has gone wrong. They have torn a hole in their univerce, and it is mixing with an anentropic univerce, where there is no time or entropy. No death- but no real life, either.
This is having hellish consequences, because the absense of time and, yes, of death, is upsetting the natural balance of their own univerce. So they must heal the breach.
But nothing is that simple. They have woken the Others, what they describe as a proto-God. They want to close the gap and restore each univerce to its origional state. But the Others don't want to loose their new understanding of life. Ultimately K't'lk introduces entropy and deaht into their space, because they must have death to have life.
At one point the Others almost destroy the Enterprise. McCoy talks them out of doing it, asking them if they want their first two acts to be the attempt of murder, and success at it. It's a great scene, but I'm describing it badly. The one thing he never mentions is that if the Others destory the Enterprise, they will destroy themselves, too. As he tells Kirk, "I wanted to see if They really had that much divinity- or what the humanities take for divinity- in Them." And if he had failed, the Enterprise would have been destroyed, and the Others with it. "And a good thing, too. What could we unleash on any univerce that would be worse than a God that wasn't godly?" THe idea that death is not a negative thing, that it is necessery to life, is facinating. In Diane Duane's non-trek books she treats entropy as a negative hting. Here, it's positive. K't'lk's introduction of death and time to the Other's univerce gives them life. It's an origional idea. I like the philosphical aspect of this book a lot, and the way it blends with the science and the people so well.
The philosophy of htis book was one of the best parts. The good of the many is not necesserially any more important than the good of the one. That's a valid idea, and a really hard question. Would you sacrifice one person for the good of a univerce? If that person was anyone but yourself, would it be moral? K't'lk dies (she is reborn, but she does die, and her self-sacrifice is important) to save two univerces. She makes the decision herself. McCoy is willing to let Enterprise be destroyed, again for the sake of that nascent univerce. He's risking all of them. Long before, Kirk had let Edith Keeler die for the sake of the Fedaration's existance. When does the ends justify the means? Does it ever? What is the lesser evil?
I like the deepness of this story- the moral depth, and the world it takes place in. The alien species are very alien, completely different than us- but no less "human". (Terran is used in referance to our species; the "humanities" are all the sentient species in existance. A good way of solving the dual meaning of "human". It also fixes a common flaw in sci-fi- all alien races are capitalized,[Vulcans, Tellerites, Hamalk]but humans is not. It becomes desperately annoying. "Terrans" fixes the problem.) They are nothing like us; their values and mindsets are different. But they are as good and evil, as human, as we are. The story is like the surface of a deep pool. You see the surface, but the water is there.
Harb Tanzer, the cheif of Recreation, is the one who suggests that they give the Others "the game of life" to play now that they have time to do it with. He is an interesting, fun character, and I can see both why he and his department are necessery, vital even, and why they wouldn't have appeared on the show.
Last, I liked Duane's concept of Starfleet itself. It explains why there are so few nonhominid aliens on Enterprise- they are on other ships, such as Inaiu, which appears in other books. Since their physical requirements- atmosphere, gravity, and so on- are not like human requirments, they have their own ships. These are registered on other Fedaration planets than Earth, and they have alien names rather than those like Enterprise, Constitution, Excalibur.
And at the end, almost all of the Fleet comes to Sol system to welcome Enterprise home. There are the ships of Enterprise's class (Surak, Isshasshte, Intrepid, Tao Feng, Kennedy) battleships like Inaiu, Arizona, Divine Wind(translation of kamikaze?) Dataphda. "Light cruisers" wiht names like Malacandra and Constellation, Constitution and Sadat and Bohamme Richard. "Even alien-crewed 'visitor' ships of Fleet were there, to his amazement- Sorithias and Mor'anh Merin'hen, Na'i'in and Sulam and Kame." Commadore Katha'sat (yes, it is an alien, and it is the pronoun used) says that "Jim, we are Starfleet. A fact that sometimes gets lost at the brass...but did not get lost today." Maybe not quite the precice quotation, but a fine note toward the end of the story. This time at least, the people who save the univerce are thanked properly. All too often it's ignored. I like "knowing" that sometimes the people whose lives are saved appriciate it.
And just after that, Jim (I've called him Kirk until now, but Jim is appropriate at the moment) drops a brickabrak piece K't'lk gave him. It breaks, then comes togetehr in the form of a tiny K't'lk who asks after "Mt'gm'ry". It may confuse those who don't read the sequels first- but it's a lovely note to end a story on...
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