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A review by edcorcoran
Die Standing by John Jackson Miller
3.0
When I realized the Dromax were the Worms from the video game Worms, I couldn’t decide if I was pissed or impressed.
Die Standing isn't nearly as good as JJM's The Enterprise War, but it's still a fun read. Like The Enterprise War, it's at its best when it's exploring some distinctive science fiction ideas. Once the book gets to the Troika, it really gets cooking and stays highly enjoyable until the last few chapters.
But unlike The Enterprise War (and like it's predecessor Dead Endless), Die Standing is stuck with some of Discovery's worst ideas. In this case, it's Emperor Georgiou not only surviving the destruction of the Charon but coming to the Prime universe and then becoming a hero. There's a very reasonable meta-textual reason for that decision: Michelle Yeoh is a movie star beloved worldwide and she's also apparently a great co-worker as all the Discovery cast and crew seem to adore her. But none of her story post-Charon has ever made any sense in the text of the series. It didn't make sense she survived; it didn't make sense that Starfleet used her as an asset; it didn't make sense that she actually helped out Michael Burnham and the Discovery and it certainly didn't make sense that she went from a bloodthirsty tyrant to a gently grizzled anti-hero.
When Georgiou is acting on her worst impulses, the book is pretty fun. But when she is called to be selfless, her reasoning never makes any sense. I still don't know why she did what she did at the finale.
The other primary characters in the book are all fun. But it suffers from the "small universe" problem that the recent Star Wars movies have. Everyone has some tie-in to a previous Star Trek story. Build a story around Kirk's first experience on the Farragut with the dikironium cloud creature from "Obsession"? Sure. But making Finnegan from "Shore Leave" and another Trill named Dax the supporting characters? C'mon. The coincidences around the Mirror Universe are built into the concept, so I can't complain about those. But just make the supporting cast actually new: some other guy who isn't Finnegan and a Trill that isn't Dax.
Die Standing isn't nearly as good as JJM's The Enterprise War, but it's still a fun read. Like The Enterprise War, it's at its best when it's exploring some distinctive science fiction ideas. Once the book gets to the Troika, it really gets cooking and stays highly enjoyable until the last few chapters.
But unlike The Enterprise War (and like it's predecessor Dead Endless), Die Standing is stuck with some of Discovery's worst ideas. In this case, it's Emperor Georgiou not only surviving the destruction of the Charon but coming to the Prime universe and then becoming a hero. There's a very reasonable meta-textual reason for that decision: Michelle Yeoh is a movie star beloved worldwide and she's also apparently a great co-worker as all the Discovery cast and crew seem to adore her. But none of her story post-Charon has ever made any sense in the text of the series. It didn't make sense she survived; it didn't make sense that Starfleet used her as an asset; it didn't make sense that she actually helped out Michael Burnham and the Discovery and it certainly didn't make sense that she went from a bloodthirsty tyrant to a gently grizzled anti-hero.
When Georgiou is acting on her worst impulses, the book is pretty fun. But when she is called to be selfless, her reasoning never makes any sense. I still don't know why she did what she did at the finale.
The other primary characters in the book are all fun. But it suffers from the "small universe" problem that the recent Star Wars movies have. Everyone has some tie-in to a previous Star Trek story. Build a story around Kirk's first experience on the Farragut with the dikironium cloud creature from "Obsession"? Sure. But making Finnegan from "Shore Leave" and another Trill named Dax the supporting characters? C'mon. The coincidences around the Mirror Universe are built into the concept, so I can't complain about those. But just make the supporting cast actually new: some other guy who isn't Finnegan and a Trill that isn't Dax.