Teaser

When an expedition to a Borg cube goes tragically wrong, Seven of Nine and Jean-Luc Picard must join forces to prevent an attack on Earth, even if it means going against the orders of Starfleet Headquarters . . . .

Review

Two weeks after reading Before Dishonor, I’m still torn on how I feel about it. On the one hand, it’s colossally stupid. On the other hand, it’s one of the most compulsively readable books to come out of the TNG relaunch.

This review is going to be full of spoilers, so read on with caution if you’ve not read the book. Or rush in headlong, I guess. I’m, not the boss of you.

This is a book I’ve been hunting down for a long time. Among readers of the Litverse, it’s pretty famous. Though maybe infamous is a better word. You see, this is the book that killed of Captain Janeway. A proper death, too. Yes, Kirsten Beyer would bring Janeway back in The Eternal Tide ( a move that was, in my humble opinion, a mistake), but at the time it was final as any death is in Star Trek. That fact alone is enough to explain the divisive nature of Before Dishonor, though peter David’s unique style of writing probably played a role too.

Janeway is offed at the every start of the book, with no fanfare. From there, we follow Seven of Nine as the lone voice of reason against the Borg. Picard arrives on the scene a little later, but this book is so much about Seven and her relationship with Janeway that it would have made more sense as part of the Voyager relaunch, had that particular novel line not been on hiatus at the time. It also folds in Ambassador Spock and characters from David’s New Frontier series. No wonder that the books is so long, and the TNG crew are crowded out a little, but somehow it all works.

Sitting between Resistance and Greater Than the Sum, and coming before the Destiny trilogy, Before Dishonor falls smack-bang in the middle of the Litverse’s Borg phase. These books all tried, with varying degrees of success, to do something original with the Borg. Before Dishonor makes them hungry Rather than simply assimilating technology and people, David’s Borg cannibalise everything. In one particularly memorable scene, a Borg Cube eats Pluto. yes, you read that right. The Borg eat Pluto. It’s as ludicrous as it is audacious, and were it not for the long-term ramifications of the book, you could almost be forgiven for reading it as a comedy.

But then, David’s work is inherently funny. His dialogue is filled with jokes. Like in a sitcom, people are consistently delivering one-liners. The narrative itself is equally stuffed, this time with meta references to both the situation at and, and Treks of the past, including some wry comments regarding David’s earlier novel Vendetta, controversial at the time for daring to introduce the first female Borg.

Before Dishonor is worth reading for the continuity alone, but even beyond that it is a singularly bizarre novel. if you’re a fan of David’s style, then you’ll love. And even if, like me, you’re less of a fan, this is one where it still comes together. Stupid yet brilliant, moronic yet compelling, it’s hard to know exactly what to make of it. All I can say for certain, is that it gave me a rollicking good time.

Book Stats

• Part of the Next Generation Relaunch
• Published in 2007 by Pocket Books
• 407 Pages