Product Description

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #153731 in Books
• Published on: 2005-03-29
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Mass Market Paperback
• 384 pages

About the Author
Michael A. Martin's solo short fiction has appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction. He has also coauthored (with Andy Mangels) several Star Trek comics for Marvel and Wildstorm and numerous Star Trek novels and eBooks, including the USA Today bestseller Titan: Book One: Taking Wing; Titan: Book Two: The Red King; the Sy Fy Genre Award-winning Star Trek: Worlds of Deep Space 9 Book Two: Trill -- Unjoined; Star Trek: The Lost Era 2298 -- The Sundered; Star Trek: Deep Space 9 Mission: Gamma: Vol. Three: Cathedral; Star Trek: The Next Generation: Section 31 -- Rogue; Star Trek: Starfleet Corps of Engineers #30 and #31 ("Ishtar Rising" Books 1 and 2); stories in the Prophecy and Change, Tales of the Dominion War, and Tales from the Captain's Table anthologies; and three novels based on the Roswell television series. His work has also been published by Atlas Editions (in their Star Trek Universe subscription card series), Star Trek Monthly, Dreamwatch, Grolier Books, Visible Ink Press, The Oregonian, and Gareth Stevens, Inc., for whom he has penned several World Almanac Library of the States nonfiction books for young readers. He lives with his wife, Jenny, and their two sons in Portland, Oregon.

Andy Mangels is the USA Today bestselling author and coauthor of over a dozen novels -- including Star Trek and Roswell books -- all cowritten with Michael A. Martin. Flying solo, he is the bestselling author of several nonfiction books, including Star Wars: The Essential Guide to Characters and Animation on DVD: The Ultimate Guide, as well as a significant number of entries for The Superhero Book: The Ultimate Encyclopedia of Comic-Book Icons and Hollywood Heroes as well as for its companion volume, The Supervillain Book.

In addition to cowriting several more upcoming novels and contributing to anthologies, Andy has produced, directed, and scripted a series of sixteen half-hour DVD documentaries for BCI Eclipse, for inclusion in the He-Man and the Masters of the Universe DVD box sets.

Andy has written hundreds of articles for entertainment and lifestyle magazines and newspapers in the United States, England, and Italy. He has also written licensed material based on properties from numerous film studios and Microsoft, and his two decades of comic book work has been published by DC Comics, Marvel Comics, Dark Horse, Image, Innovation, and many others. He was the editor of the award-winning Gay Comics anthology for eight years.

Andy is a national award-winning activist in the Gay community, and has raised thousands of dollars for charities over the years. He lives in Portland, Oregon, with his long-term partner, Don Hood, their dog, Bela, and their chosen son, Paul Smalley. Visit his website at www.andymangels.com.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

"This must be your first visit to Ki Baratan," said the woman who stood behind the operative.

So much for hiding in plain sight, the operative thought, quietly abandoning his hope that she would pay him as little heed as had the throngs of civilians and military officers he'd already passed along the city's central eyhon. He turned and regarded her, averting his gaze momentarily from the graceful, blood-green dome of the Romulan Senate building. The ancient structure gleamed behind him in the morning sun, reflecting an aquamarine glint from the placid Apnex Sea that lay just beyond it.

"As a matter of fact, this is my first visit," the operative said. He smiled broadly, confident that the woman wouldn't sense how awkward this particular mannerism felt to him. "Before today, I had seen the greatness of Dartha only in my grandfather's holos."

As she studied him, he noted that she was old and gray. Her clothing was drab and shapeless, her lined countenance stern, evidently forged by upwards of two centuries of hard life circumstances. He watched impassively as she ran her narrowed, suspicious gaze over his somewhat threadbare traveling cassock.

"Dartha?" the woman said, still scrutinizing him. "Nobody has referred to the Empire's capital by that name since Neral came to power."

The operative silently cursed himself even as he concealed his frustration beneath a carefully cultivated mask of impassivity. Though his lapse was an understandable one -- roughly akin, he thought, to confusing Earth's nineteenth-century Constantinople with twentieth-century Istanbul -- he upbraided himself for it nonetheless.

"Forgive me, 'lai," he said, using the traditional rustic form of address intended to show respect to an elder female. "I arrived just today, from Leinarrh. In the Rarathik District."

An indulgent, understanding smile tugged at her lips. "Just what I thought. I took you for a hveinn right away. A farmer who's never left the waith before."

The operative forced his own smile to broaden, reassured that she found his rural Rarathik dialect convincing. He maintained his caution, however; like him, this apparently harmless old woman might not be at all what she appeared to be. "At your service, 'lai. You may call me Rukath."

She nodded significantly yet discreetly toward the dome -- and the disruptor-carrying guards that walked among the green, ruatinite-inlaid minarets that surrounded it. "Then allow me to give you some friendly advice, Rukath of Leinarrh. Continue gawking so about the Hall of State, and I might have to call you 'dead.' Or perhaps worse."

The operative allowed his smile to collapse, which actually came as a relief. He feigned innocent fear, per his extensive intelligence and tactical training. "Do you really think those uhlans over there would actually shoot me? Just for looking?"

"Just pray that the cold fingers of Erebus find you too unimportant to snatch away into the underworld," she said with a pitying shake of the head. "Daold klhu."

Tourists, the operative silently translated the unfamiliar Romulan term as the old woman turned and walked away. "Jolan'tru, 'lai," he said to her retreating back.

He turned back toward the Senate Dome and watched as the guards made their rounds. He counted six at the moment, marching in pairs, their arrogant, disciplined gazes focused straight ahead. The old woman's warning notwithstanding, he might as well have been invisible to them.

But it's best not to become complacent, he thought, checking the chrono built into the disguised subspace pulse transmitter he wore on his wrist. Time was growing short. Since his surreptitious arrival on Romulus the previous day, he had taken in sights very few of his people had ever seen.

He'd just paid what might well turn out to be a once-in-a-lifetime visit to the Romulan capital of Ki Baratan. Now the time had come to venture beneath it.

The operative deliberately set aside unpleasant thoughts of the underworld of ancient Romulan mythology. Those old stories hadn't sufficiently described the noisome smells that were wafting up around him from the figurative -- and literal -- bowels of Ki Baratan. Erebus, indeed.

Guided through the stygian gloom by his wrist light, the operative was relieved to note that the venerable maze of aekhhwi'rhoi -- the stone-lined sewer tunnels that ran below Ki Baratan -- corresponded precisely to the maps the defector M'ret had provided to Starfleet Intelligence. Carefully stepping over and past countless scuttling, multilegged, sewer-dwelling nhaidh, he made his way to the appointed place. Once there, he pulled hard at a rust-covered, meter-wide wheel, laboriously opening up a narrow access hatchway that looked to be older than Surak and T'Karik combined. The corroded steel aperture groaned in protest, moving only fractionally as the muscles in his back strained. After perhaps a minute of hard coaxing, the wheel gave way and the hatch opened with a clang that reverberated loudly throughout the catacombs.

Releasing the wheel, he pulled a small disruptor pistol from beneath his cassock, then squeezed through the narrow opening without making any further pretense of stealth; by now whoever else might be down here, whether friend or foe, was surely aware of his presence.

He passed into the darkened chamber beyond the hatch, where air that reeked of stagnation, moldy old bones, and damp earth assailed his nostrils. Stepping forward, he heard a quiet yet stern male voice.

"Halt! Drop your weapon." Something cool and unyielding pressed forcefully into the small of his back.

The operative released his grip on the weapon, allowing it to clatter to the rough stone floor. A bright light suddenly shone before him, momentarily triggering his nictitating inner eyelids. He caught a glimpse of several humanoid silhouettes standing before him, several meters farther inside the cavern's depths.

"State your name," said the voice behind him. It sounded young, almost adolescent. Or perhaps merely frightened? "And state your business here."

The operative knew that this was the moment of truth, and very possibly the last moment of his life. He faced that prospect with a Vulcan's ingrained equanimity.

"While on Romulus, I am known as Rukath."

"Of Leinarrh, in far-off Rarathik," someone else said, in a stern female voice. "By way of Starfleet Intelligence. Yes, we knew you were coming."

The operative nodded. "Then you already know my business here. I expected no less."

He felt the weapon at his back quiver slightly, and he calculated his odds of disarming the man behind him. They weren't at all good. Nevertheless, the time had come to end the standoff, regardless of the outcome.

"I also bring greetings from Federation starship Alliance. Captain Saavik sends her best regards to the movement. And to the ambassador, of course."

As the operative had hoped, the mention of the ambassador's wife prompted one of the silhouettes before him to detach itself from the others and step forward. The tall, lean form spoke in a graveled yet resonant voice that he recognized instantly, even though more than eight decades had passed since he had last heard it.

"Lower your weapon, D'Tan. Rukath is among friends."

"But how can we be certain this Rukath is a friend? If that's even his name."

The figure stepped forward another several paces, and waved an arm in what was obviously a prearranged signal. In response, the light levels diminished, allowing the operative to see the approaching man's face clearly, as well as the coterie of a half-dozen armed Romulan civilians, an even mix of men and women, who stood vigilantly all around him.

Ambassador Spock.

The tall, conspicuously unarmed figure came to a stop only a meter away, his hands folded in front of his simple hooded pilgrim's robe as he studied the operative's face. The operative recalled his only previous meeting with the ambassador, whose saturnine visage was umistakable despite the addition of a great many new lines and wrinkles. He wondered if Spock remembered him as well, after the passage of so many years. Perhaps the minor surgical alterations that had been wrought on his facial structure obscured his identity.

"Your vigilance is an asset to us, D'Tan," Spock said to the young man with the weapon. "But as Surak teaches us, there can be no progress without risk."

That evidently got through to the armed man, who withdrew his weapon and backed away. The operative spared a quick glance over his shoulder, nodding toward Spock's youthful bodyguard in a manner that he hoped would be taken as nonthreatening and reassuring. He noted the other man's response: a hard scowl and a still-unholstered disruptor.

The operative fixed his gaze once again upon Spock, a man who had achieved great notoriety back on Vulcan -- as well as throughout the Federation and beyond -- more than a century earlier. How strange, he thought, that one who never even achieved Kolinahr now represents all of Vulcan here in this forbidding place -- and attempts to bring such radical change to both Vulcan and Romulus. He wondered if Spock would have taken on such a task had he attained the pinnacle of logic that the Kolinahr disciplines represented.

Would I have been so foolish to have followed him here had Kolinahr not eluded me also?

"Walk with me, please, Rukath," Spock said, then abruptly turned to stride more deeply into the rough-hewn cavern that stretched beyond the sewer hatch. The operative immediately fell into step beside the ambassador. He heard the crunch of gravel behind him, as Spock's followers tailed the pair at a respectful distance. If I really were the Tal Shiar or military intelligence infiltrator these people fear that I am, this mission would surely be a suicide run.

"You must forgive D'Tan," Spock said.

"There is nothing to forgive, Mr. Ambassador. His caution is understandable. The Tal Shiar's eyes and ears are ev...

Customer Reviews

'Taking Wing" A Good Start
I'd say this is one of the few books that should be added to the "must read" list of Star Trek novels. This is, in a way, a follow-up to the movie "Star Trek Nemesis." This is the first full-length novel to feature the Titan and its crew. Captain Riker and Troi and the ship have both appeared in other post-Nemesis novels, including Shatner's "Captain's Blood." So, how does it do? It's a fun novel. We don't have Picard involved at all, we don't have Troi and Riker looking back or relying on the Enterprise-E, they're out on their own and there's a freshness to the entire premise.

Titan is a vessel whose mission is compared in text to the old Constitution-class vessels; long-term, deep space assignments. The premise of this first novel plays with this mission. The crew is bothered that Starfleet Command has chosen their vessel for an assignment into the Neutral Zone when the ship is meant for exploration and discovery. Part of the novel takes place days after Nemesis and the coming novel "Death in Winter," involves Riker's last visit to the Enterprise-E as seen in the movie, and him visiting Chrstine Vale (appeared throughout "A Time to..." series) to get her to join the crew.

I'd personally say this novel is more about the characters than the actual action. The plot of Riker and crew having to sort out the mess that's fallen upon the Romulan Star Empire is onlya backdrop to the characters. Each seems have something to work on; Riker on adjusting to his own command and finding his own style, Troi on proving she's more than Riker's wife and is a capable diplomatic officer, Vale being comfortable with leaving the Enterprise for an executive officer position, Ra-Harveii on ghosts from his past, Keru still hasn't gotten over the death of Sean Hawk in the novel "Rogue," Ree on being somewhat of an outsider among everyone. What's best about this novel is that the authors bring life into a lot of these characters. There are people from each series of Trek (except Enterprise) being involved. Tuvok, Spock and Admiral Akaar also play big roles in this novel.

What worked or didn't work? I felt as if the Romulan situation was so big that perhaps it was simplified for this novel. Tal'Aura (NEM) and Tamalok (TNG) have claimed power over the entire Empire while Donotra (NEM) and Suran (NEM) have claimed power over the military. Then you have the Tal Shiar, the Remans, and the Unificationers all working in the same picture, at the same time. Yet, the reader is only shown parts of this situation. We never really get a look at Tal'Aura beyond her wanting to stay in power. Who is she? Why did she feel she should support Shinzon in Nemesis? Who does she think she is to suddenly takeover the entire Romulan Star Empire? The end features her the typical angry, upset, fearful villain who realizes things won't go their way. Also, what's happening on Romulus beyond the capital? What's happening on other Romulan worlds?

The plot suffers also from a lot going on. I don't think there were too many characters introduced. It helped flesh out the Titan and set it apart from all the other ships out there. I liked that it is home to one of the first Cardassians in Starfleet and that there's a very different Ferengi doctor on the crew. Also, there was a death of a major crewmember while a couple had its first child by the end of the book, a rather amusing pregnancy indeed. Also, we got to see a rather uncertain Troi who doesn't do much counseling at all but plays up her diplomatic role. Even Spock has a moment when he learns his Unification movement may be in jeopardy. Tuvok, who's often ignored in Christie Golden's Voyager Relaunch novels, seems to have found a place here.

There are a few things that held this novel back from being a five-star novel. Perhaps too much focus on characters like Keru. A lack of development of the Romulan characters. Even though Sela will be a part of the "Death in Winter" novel, I'd have liked to have seen her in this situation a little since I'm sure she could have taken advantage of a Romulan Star Empire without any true leaders. I felt the ending mirroed a previous novel by these authors too much, and that it was too much like Star Trek Voyager redux. Admiral Janeway played a rather large role in the "A Time to..." series in Riker being assigned the Titan. Why wasn't she even mentioned here? Instead of Akaar being involved in the same capacity he is in the DS9-Relanch and TNG novels, the use of Janeway could have really been a creative point of the novel. The Romulan situation, by the end, seems to be wrapped up a little too well, though I was glad to read that the Remans played a major role in all of this.

So, perhaps it covers too much ground. Yet, it remains interesting throughout and introduces some great new charactes. This is a good series to get into, going back to the roots of Star Trek and putting a focus on the characters more so than big action and war. Definately worth your attention and money.

Riker finally gets his due!
This has been a long time coming. A great book, a great lead character that the author captures beautifully. A great read. Twice already, first time in two sittings. Fantastic story, okay lead in to the next book. Riker has another alost conflict with an Admiral, and no it's not Jellico - although that would have been cool. Note to the author for future story lines. Could be a whole new Star Trek TV series.

Ho Hum! New Frontier Does It Much Better
Taking Wing by Michael A. Martin and Andy Mangels suffers from a clear lack of focus, too many new characters, and too little focus. Entirely too much time was spent on the political aspects of Romulan society-- the writers obviously learned nothing from Episode 1 of Star Wars, The Phantom Menace. I found the political stuff just plain boring.

Then the two major criteria that Martin and Mangels seem to have for making someone a crewmember of Titan is that we must never have heard of them before and that the person be from a freaky alien society. Oh yes, they do pull in Nurse Ogawa, Tuvok and Lt. Melora Pazlar (from a DS-9 episode) as well as making the ambassador be the adult son of the baby Dr. McCoy delivered in a notable Classic Trek episode but at least twenty (I lost count after that) new characters are whizzed past us with little more than their name, occupation, planet of origin and whatever alien characteristic makes them stand out from everybody else. They make a big deal of Titan being unique because of the diversity of its crew, but Peter David's excellent New Frontier series with the Excalibur has a much more diverse crew and doesn't pat itself on the back for it every five pages. I don't care if Excalibur isn't canon; the writers certainly have to be aware of it and don't need to act as if it doesn't exist.

Finally let's get down to the reasons why we want to read the Titan series in the first place-- the continuation of the story of Troi and Riker. Riker spends too much time dealing with insecurity and angst over his new command-- come on, this is the guy who thought nothing of spitting in the eye of Captain Jellico and being relieved of duty rather than accepting commands from a royal idiot. Now he's second, third and fourth guessing himself. The Riker of Next Generation was always superbly self confident and self-assured. He knew what he was, who he was and was comfortable with it. The Riker in this book seems to have lost all of that.

However, his character is not as poorly dealt with as Commander Troi. Granted, I always felt that her purpose on Star Trek started out as being for more of the babe in a catsuit factor than anything else, but her character developed into being a valuable and necessary member of the crew. In this book, her role is more as Riker's wife than anything. She's supposed to be the diplomatic officer, but Riker handles all the diplomacy stuff- while she suffers a fit of pique at his doing so without including her. She's still the ship's counselor as well, which means we get treated to the, "I sense you are feeling troubled" type of dialogue from her that she was able to get away from after a couple of seasons of Next Gen. With this book, she seems to be back where she started, as more of a sex object than anything else. Very few references to her are allowed to slip by without including the qualifier that she is Riker's wife. Okay. We get it. They're married. Big whoop. Move on.

The book is redeemed by about 50 pages of action that happen near the end when crewmembers stage a stealth raid on Romulus to rescue a Federation operative. It's a great scene, with terrific action and suspense. But then, unfortunately, we are returned to the ship where we once again need a scorecard to keep track of all the characters. We probably don't need to bother, however, as a lot of them seem to be getting killed off before we have a chance to learn if we even care about them or not.

In short, this is a disappointing start to what I hoped would be a good new Star Trek series. Forget Titan, grab a New Frontier book and read the kind of series that Titan apparently aspires to be but falls short of.