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Product Description At last, the United Federation of Planets and the Romulan Star Empire have agreed to meet on neutral ground in order to resolve the tangle of intrigue and conspiracy that began many years ago with the hijacking of the USS Intrepid. As a show of good faith, the crew of the legendary starship USS Enterprise has been ordered to attend the talks. In their informal charge is the Romulan renegade Ael, the wanted fugitive who, along with Captain James T. Kirk, served as the catalyst of the present troubles. On the other side, the visiting Romulan party is as fractious and disunited as their own divided world. As Kirk and his crew attempt to negotiate a delicate peace and the Romulans attempt to restore their tarnished honour, it becomes increasingly apparent that their only course of action is to prepare for the war that both sides hoped to avoid...
Excellent story fragment, but I think I missed something.June 16, 2008 James Yanni(Bellefontaine Neighbors, Mo. USA) I read at least the first book of this series many years ago. Apparently, I missed something in the interim, but not only did this book start in the middle of the story and fail to constitute an entire story in and of itself (which guarantees that I will not rate it five stars) but there was nothing on the cover, or the inside title pages, to indicate where in the series it fell. (It says "the culmination of a saga twenty-two years in the making", but not how many books preceded it.) It was not part of the numbered series, and while the cover says "A Rihannsu Novel" it doesn't SAY that it's book 5 in the series (which the Amazon entry does) so I was unaware going in that I was reading it out of order. Once I realized this, I decided to continue in order to see if it was written well enough to make sense to a reader who did so. It wasn't completely incomprehensible, but I would definitely recommend NOT reading it out of sequence.
There are only two other complaints that I have against this book, and both are minor enough that by themselves they would not have kept me from rating the book five stars: one, the method by which the Enterprise saves the day was criminally reckless, and should have been refused by Kirk even at the expense of failing to save all life on Earth; the risk was too great. But of course, it worked, so everything's golden. The other is that Diane Duane, when she started this series over 20 years ago, was creating a Romulan culture that was not in conflict with anything that was canonical in the Star Trek universe as established on screen. By now, that has long since changed, as other writers writing for Next Generation and later series delved into Romulan culture more deeply than the original series did, and defined it in ways inconsistent with her work. Unfortunate, especially since I like her handling of the situation better than what's been done onscreen, but she should have simply accepted this fact and gone her own way; we could all have simply accepted that this happened in a parallel universe and not the one we've seen onscreen. Instead, at the very end of this book, she tries to rationalize the differences away. This fails miserably, and should not have been attempted. On the plus side, the writing itself, the plotting, the pacing, the characterizations, are all exceptional, and make the book well worth reading. Just make sure you've read all of its predecessors first.
Worth waiting forMay 14, 2007 RevDorothyL(Nashville, TN USA) I'd almost given up hope that Diane Duane would finish the story left hanging at the end of SWORDHUNT and HONOR BLADE so many years ago, but this final chapter did not disappoint. As with the earliest books in this series, MY ENEMY, MY ALLY and THE ROMULAN WAY, this final, fifth book has an actual ending, and a very satisfying one at that.
I couldn't remember much about either SWORDHUNT or HONOR BLADE, but that didn't seem to get in the way of enjoying the final volume. The main characters and plot threads were all introduced in the first two volumes, which I've frequently re-read, and anything I'd forgotten about the later books was easily caught up by the ongoing plot and character revelations in THE EMPTY CHAIR.
I highly recommend this novel for any fan of Diane Duane's original series Trek novels.
Grim reading and unpleasant endingFebruary 16, 2007 R. Spottiswood(Western Australia) 3 out of 4 found this review helpful
The fourth book in what became the Rihannsu series left on us on a really high note. Whenever I read it, I was left to wonder what the author would choose to do. I had great hopes, because it seemed that the author had the permission and the willingness to go way beyond what the canon and the continuity allowed.
It is rarely good to have such high hopes for something. For one thing, meeting them can become unrealistic. For another, there is always a let down with having one of the many possibilities chosen. Anyway, to get going on the content of this review, the writing is excellent, but the style of the story was presented with such skill it actually reduced the enjoyment of the book. That style is one of personal darkness and suspicion, if not paranoia. The Triad that rule the Romulan Empire assume that eveyone is as deceitful and ruthless as they are themselves. One would expect that in the villains of the piece. But trust is lacking in many unexpected places as well. None of the rebel leaders fully trust Ael, or of course Jim Kirk, and they never will, no matter how those two behave. Ael does not completely trust her own crew, and there is even a space between Kirk and the crew of the Enterprise. The last one is probably where the author went too far. There needed to be a time when the characters could escape from loneliness and fear and isolation in the midst of others. Lacking it makes the book to grim.
The events of the book also make for grim reading. This is the story of war. The focus is not on the surface elements, the maneuvering and the fighting, that most Trek stories ending in space battles involve. Instead it is about the underlying factors behind the battles. That is, that wars essentially escalating rounds of violence and death and destruction, and that between those rounds, the leaders have to calculate how many lives on both sides they are willing to spend to get the result they want. Also, the espionage factor here is not the game of spies stealing secrets. We are told what happens to the spies, usually violent death, long before we are told the results of their work, if we are told. That brings up another flaw in the book: the leading characters are all keeping secrets from one another. In her previous books, the author generally seemed to do this for dramatic purposes. In this, it is stated over and over that the characters simply never trust each other enough to reveal much, and people die because their leaders keep those secrets from each other. Quickly I stopped looking forward to finding out more about what was going on, and dreading the body counts resulting from the revelations. Also, it got to the point where I just felt that so many secrets were hinted at that I did not really know what was going on. This is fiction, it should be different from reality.
Anyway, these issues are why I took away one star from the rating. The other star was lost due to the ending. I must warn readers that the next paragraph may contain spoilers and political commentary that may not be of any use in judging how good a read this book is. Anyway, after this book was announced, one of the Pocket Book editors said that, while this series had been declared outside the established Romulan continuity, he was not sure that it had to be. Reading through the first four books with all their statements about how Rihannsu want to be free, that speaking their minds is an essential trait of being Rihannsu, I wondered how the author could possibly tell the story of an idealistic revolt that still fit with the ruthless police state of the 24 th Century Romulan Star Empire. Horribly, she managed it. Actually, all she did was, once again, to just do the real world thing. After all the commentary about the people overthrowing the oppressive government, what really happens is that one ostracised faction of the elite throws out the elite faction in power. The concept of removing all of the elite from power and blocking their return is passed over. It is the only way to prevent another revolt, and seemingly the whole point of the last three books of the series, but it does not happen. For me, it makes all the preceding events, in this book and all the others, a waste. After opening up all those grand possibilities, it throws them away.
I usually refrain from recommending for or against books I give three stars. If this was a piece of historical fiction, I would recommend it very highly, as informative about the period and with writing of enjoyable quality. But non-fiction can be grim and depressing and make one afraid for the future, because being enjoyable isn't their purpose. I assumed that this author, at least, would go against the recent trend in Star Trek, and provide me with a little hope for the future. She didn't. This book is, quality wise, definitely worth reading, but not worth owning.
Rihannsu finally concludedFebruary 12, 2007 Cassandra(Berea, KY USA) 3 out of 3 found this review helpful
Oh, God (Elements), how I love this series. Diane Duane is a marvelous yarnspinner when it comes to her characters.
I read "My Enemy, My Ally" probably about 12 years ago, but I never tire of reading it. When I discovered that "The Romulan Way" was a continuance of that story, I devoured the storyline (Arrhae is intriguing) that opened up the history of ch'Rihan and ch'Havran like no book had dared to before. The detailed yarn of The Declared as they left Vulcan those millennia ago and the setbacks they encountered... it explains a LOT about why the Romulans (Rihannsu) are "the way they are."
Discovery of "Swordhunt" and "Honor Blade" when they came out made life interesting until the cliffhanger, and now that I've read "The Empty Chair," I can safely say that I am going back to re-read the entire series again. When you do re-read it, you take great notice of all the intricacies of the characterisations of the original characters (Harb Tanzer, Freeman, Narhaht (a Horta), Arrhae, Ael, Aidoann, the list continues).
And I agree with the previous reviewer--that line by Ael to Kirk at the end successfully ties in this series to canon in such a way that I truly believe it is part of Trek History. The Romulans (Rihannsu) certainly did emerge in TNG quite different than we remembered from TOS... and this series explains how and why they appeared to change so drastically. *applause for Diane Duane*
Finishes a sagaJanuary 27, 2007 George Wood(Sweden) 4 out of 4 found this review helpful
The Star Trek universe has been enriched by another book from Diane Duane.
The author of many books based on her own fantasy worlds (like Young Wizards, which my kids love), screenplays, etc. in 1988 Diane Duane also wrote my favorite Star Trek book, "Spock's World". In it, she expanded our knowledge of Spock's home planet of Vulcan, bringing together elements from several episodes of the original Star Trek series, including "Amok Time" and "Journey to Babel". She also gave us more about the Enterprise itself, giving it a recreational deck and a computer bulletin board reflecting those early PC/pre-Web days.
In 1984 Diane Duane had already taken on the task of adding more to our knowledge of the Vulcans' long-ago sundered brethren, the Romulans (or Rihannsu as they have come to be called in their own language) with "My Enemy My Ally". She followed this up with a sequel called "The Romulan Way" in 1987 (both co-authored with her husband Peter Morwood).
Now comes a new Romulan book, finishing up this particular saga, "The Empty Chair". Unfortunately when I started reading it I soon realized I'd missed something, which turned out to be the books "Swordhunt" and "Honorblade", both published in 2000. I had to go back and read what happened there to really make sense of "The Empty Chair" and discovered that Stockholm's excellent Science Fiction Bookstore no longer had the two books in stock, presumably because all of the prequels to "The Empty Chair" have just been published together in a single volume called "Rihannsu The Bloodwing Voyages".
(All this is part of the 40th anniversary of Star Trek celebrations, apparently.)
So having read the two books I missed, I resumed reading "The Empty Chair" and it made a lot more sense, although rereading the first two books probably would have helped a bit too. When I got to the end of "The Empty Chair" and Kirk receives something he has obviously been looking for, I had no idea what the thing was. It is possible the reader is not meant to know, but the answer might be in one of those earlier volumes. And I really had no idea what was happening in the last scene. I guess it is based on one of the first two books, which after twenty years, I've forgotten.
So there is a problem having a series with respectively three, thirteen, and six years between its components, although this will not be a problem for a new reader who picks up the books now.
Before I bought the anthology volume I read a negative review of "Swordhunt" on Amazon. The reviewer didn't think enough happened, and was somewhat upset because it apparently doesn't really have an ending and just flows into "Honorblade". In the new anthology the two are combined as "Swordhunt" and I have no idea where the earlier break could have been.
Briefly these books are the story of a Romulan commander named Ael, her ship Bloodwing, and how through a series of encounters and interactions with James Kirk, she leads a Romulan civil war. As I said, it expands our knowledge of the Romulans considerably. I've also been confused about this empire without an emperor, whether there was one or more Praetors, who the Senate are, etc. These questions are answered, at least for this period in Romulan history.
There's more talking than action, but I liked that. There are also bonuses, like briefly meeting the character Sam Coglan again, and encountering the only two Yankees fans on Romulus.
There's also a place towards the end., with major changes among the Romulans, and Spock in the midst of it, when you wonder why he doesn't just start the Re-unification process that he takes up decades later during "Star Trek The Next Generation"? Duane answers that, and shows us that perhaps this is where Spock originally gets the idea. (Now I really wish the film "Nemesis", all of which takes place on Romulus or in Romulan space, had told us where Spock was at this time. Presumably there was no way to get Leonard Nimoy into the film, but it was a large hole.)
One also wonders why, if everything is changed, when we get back to the Romulans in the TNG episodes "Unification" the empire seems as closed in and totalitarian as before? This too Duane provides an answer for, and perhaps it puts the later TNG/DS9 Romulans into a more understandable context. Ael's remarks to Kirk towards the end reflect this:
"But bear in mind that things will change here, and may do so unexpectedly. When they do, I must react as I must. It has even occurred to me that, if matters do not go as I plan, you should not be surprised if for some while, I and all my people might close our borders, and vanish to put our house in order...It will not last forever. Nothing does. But after such a withdrawal, or absence, when we appear again, possibly you should not be surprised if we do not look, or act, as we do now..."
