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Finished the 11th S.C.E. collection, Wounds, and I loved it! This volume includes numbers 50 through 56 in a series that follows the adventures of an S.C.E. team. The stories take place in 2376 and I’ve included my thoughts on each story below. 1/ #StarTrek
Before I talk about each story, I’ll say that I loved how these stories have elements in one that would be picked up and explored in greater detail in a later story. I thought that was a very clever device to break things up and tell stories in a bit more of a nonlinear way. 2/
Malefictorum (S.C.E. #50) by Terri Osborne: I loved this novella! The story centers around an investigation of two murders on the da Vinci. Security Chief Corsi is a favorite character and she really shines when heading up this investigation. 3/
The novellas in Corps of Engineers often amaze me at how much they fit in while not feeling rushed and this is a perfect example of that. There’s several different settings outside the ship (including on DS9, which I loved!) and the story had a great natural progression. 4/
Sonya Gomez also gets a great role here in her dual responsibilities as first officer and head of the S.C.E. contingent. There’s a good balance between the murder investigation, solving engineering problems, and pursuing leads and suspects. 5/
And I love that there’s time at the end to reflect on the lives lost and to not lose sight of the tragedy that’s happened. 6/
Lost Time (S.C.E. #51) by @ilsajbick:
I absolutely loved this story! It focuses on a threat affecting two universes that appears as the da Vinci is on its way back home. 7/
I absolutely loved this story! It focuses on a threat affecting two universes that appears as the da Vinci is on its way back home. 7/
First, this has so many of the things I love about the very best Corps of Engineers stories. There’s some great solving of engineering problems, amazing character moments and insights, and a story with so much more scope than should be possible in a novella. 8/
I also loved that the crew of the da Vinci works together with the DS9 crew. I love DS9 and this is like a great bonus to the DS9 post-series novels while still having a great focus on the da Vinci crew. 9/
We also get to spend a lot of time with an alternate universe that has characters from the da Vinci & DS9. What we see there is fascinating & surprisingly moving. That all of those things are done so incredibly well in a story that’s less than 100 pages is extraordinary. 10/
I’ll also say that there’s some wild things that happen in this story and they really work. This is easily in the top 5 of the 56 Corps of Engineers stories I’ve read so far and I’ve loved most of those stories. 11/
Identity Crisis (S.C.E. #52) by John Ordover: I love this novella! The story focuses on Sonya Gomez and a shore leave gone wrong (of course it does!). This is the shortest Corps of Engineers story I’ve read so far, but there’s a lot of great stuff going on. 12/
There’s a great mystery, some wonderful engineering and investigation going on, and great character focus on Gomez. 13/
Gomez is one of my favorite characters in this series and I love that these stories acknowledge and integrate what the characters have been through while allowing them to also move forward. And the solution to the mystery is brilliant. 14/
Fables of the Prime Directive (S.C.E. #53) by Cory Rushton: I enjoyed this story, but did have a few issues. The novella centers on a mission to contain cultural contamination from the Dominion previously occupying a pre-warp planet. 15/
I’ll start with what I loved. It’s great to have an important role for cultural specialist Carol Abramowitz. She doesn’t get too many stories where she’s the focus and this one is very appropriate for her character. 16/
The Prime Directive has a complicated history and I have some complicated feelings about it. I did like, though, that some of this story was a meditation on what the Prime Directive is and how it has been a good thing and a bad thing at different times. 17/
One of the issues I had, though, is that the thoughts on the Prime Directive from Abramowitz stop at a certain point. I would have liked to see that through more of the story. 18/
Another issue I had is that it seemed rushed toward the end and I didn’t connect with the action there. There wasn’t much explanation about how what we got happened and that was disappointing. This is a good story overall, but I felt it could have been better. 19/
Security (S.C.E. #54) by @KRADeC:
I absolutely loved this story! The novella focuses on challenges that Security Chief Corsi and Second Officer Tev are going through. That short description really doesn’t do justice to this story. 20/
I absolutely loved this story! The novella focuses on challenges that Security Chief Corsi and Second Officer Tev are going through. That short description really doesn’t do justice to this story. 20/
It’s really an amazing cross-section of life aboard the da Vinci while en route to several missions. Keith DeCandido always does such a great job in writing a variety of different characters and this novella is no exception. 21/
The focus, though, is on Corsi and Tev. I love Corsi as a character and she’s gotten some great dimension across the previous S.C.E. stories. That dimension only deepens here as we get a great window into her life experiences and how she thinks. 22/
And that’s particularly highlighted in a story that’s told of an investigation from ten years before. That investigation took place on Izar with Christine Vale (who was a peace officer then). I love Vale as security chief on the Enterprise & as first officer on the Titan. 23/
It was amazing to see Vale and Corsi working together and even though it’s brief, it’s a powerful story within the story. Tev is a character introduced about midway through the series. As a Tellarite, he often has trouble integrating with the crew. 24/
I’ve come to really appreciate the character as we’ve learned more about him and his perspective. And that continues here as Tev gets some great growth. I’m very interested to see where he goes from here. 25/
The backdrop of all of this is a search for the da Vinci’s CMO, Elizabeth Lense, and Dr. Bashir. They were going to a conference when their shuttle disappeared. 26/
There’s tantalizing clues as to what they’ve been through that will be followed up in the next story. What we see in this story is brilliant and among the very best of the first 56 S.C.E. stories! 27/
Wounds (S.C.E. #55-56) by @ilsajbick: I enjoyed this 2-parter overall, but I did have a few issues. The story centers on a shuttle with Dr. Lense and Dr. Bashir getting lost in an alternate universe. 28/
There were references in previous stories to Dr. Lense being missing and we saw what happened immediately afterward in the previous novella. But it was great to see this story filled in, which has been a wonderful technique throughout this collection. 29/
I’ll start with what I loved. Dr. Lense is a character I really like, but she hasn’t had too many stories centering around her. So, it was wonderful to see that focus. Plus, I love Dr. Bashir in the post-DS9 novels. 30/
The situation they’re thrown into on the planet where their shuttle crashes is truly harrowing. The author does an amazing job illustrating the incredible difficulties the inhabitants (who have the equivalent of early 21st century technology) face. 31/
We get to see a lot through the inhabitants’ eyes by following several different groups. You really get to feel for the circumstances they’re in. For me, though, there was quite a bit of gore from surgeries and experiments that was very hard for me to read. 32/
I had to skim through significant chunks because I’ve always had a hard time reading that. There’s also a lot of technical medical language that gave the story more realism, but could bog it down a bit at times. 33/
There’s also a love story here that felt very implausible and took me out of the story. Overall, this is a very well-written and unusual story for the Corps of Engineers series and I applaud it for that. 34/
Lense & Bashir are also great here, but the issues I had took the story down a bit. That said, there’s one thing that happens in the story that I’m very intrigued to see where that goes. And this collection is wonderful & confirms S.C.E. as my favorite novel series. /end
