In addition to my manga binge, I’ve also dipped back into the Star Trek book realm. This time it was for a collection of short stories edited by Margaret Clark called Star Trek Seven Deadly Sins. I really enjoyed the collection although some stories stand out better then others as is the case with most short story collections.
I liked this book a lot. It’s one of those books I’ve had some mixed feelings initially. I was drawn to it but there were times I wasn’t sure I wanted to read it compared to other books in my To Read pile since the first story was a TOS era based story (I’ve just never been a huge The Original Series fan when given the option of a newer series). But I knew it would be more then just The Original Series era since the cover shows images of Sisko, a ferengi and one of the TNG (The Next Generation) species. So there something in me that wanted to read the book. It was a matter of sitting down and reading it.
Today I finally had that chance. Read the entire 484 page collection in one day. But I also had the happy chance to really get a chance to sit and read for several hours.
As with any story collection, some stories will stand out better then others. For me I can’t say enough good stuff about Reverant. Although the Trekkie in me is still going- I can’t believe that actually happen. I truthfully took 10 minutes to process the story afterwards and just thought how absolutely crazy the whole scenario was just crazy. But it was so well written and the plot was good (just different kinds of action).
Plus I really liked “The Unhappy Ones” which was the story about wrath. Klingons being wrathful is well stereotypical. But at the same time, this story was so original. I loved how it took place in the period of Star Trek when Klingons didn’t necessarily have ridges (which was totally explained by an Enterprise story arch which explained while Klingons from TOS and all the newer series look so drastically different). IT makes sense that the Klingons who had the normal ridges would be racist to those who were affected by the deformity. Then how the racism on top of poor work situations can drive a mass of workers to revolt makes sense. Plus it had some of my favorite Klingons that appeared on DS9-Kor, Koloth, and Kang (technically they first were in TOS episodes but I know them from DS9). The dynamic of those three warriors is great. They are friends and they act like it in and out of battle/work situations. So I just smiled and loved the fact it was a Kang, Kor and Koloth were together. It just took the story up a notch even so.
Plus I really liked the “Work is Hard” story which was about sloth. It was just a really well done story that wove together elements from several seasons of TNG and showcased the characters/events in a good way. The title kind of tells it all. But I will say I love how it used a lesser known species from TNG (the Pakled) and showed Geordi being awesome. I’m a Geordi fan. Then again there isn’t an Chief engineer on Star Trek that I’m not a fan of.
I will have to say, this story collection doesn’t really highlight any of the deadly sins in a new radical way. When you think of trek and many of the species, you have the stereotypes: Romulans are prideful, the Ferengi are greedy, Klingons are full of wrath, Mirror Universe is more lustful, and etc. So no story really break the stereotypes. But that wasn’t necessarily a bad thing. As a Trekkie, I could go that makes total sense based on the broad strokes of cultural norms and especially for the situation I’m reading. You don’t have to break any cultural norms or stereotypes. I’m not sure it would have worked to say have a Pakled who was prideful. But it did work to have a Pakled who was slothful (especially since that is a species with an underdeveloped speech patterns and technology).
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