If you could meet your younger self do you think you would enjoy their company? I think back on my 16 year old self and I think I would find him to have been frustratingly cocky so certain about the things he should have held loosely and so careless about things that are long term vital. Star Trek explores this kind of scenario well from time to time, in episodes like TNGs Tapestry and even SNWs recent A Quality of Mercy.
And Star Trek Picard Second Self the latest Trek novel from Una McCormack gives one popular legacy character the chance to revisit their past self in an intriguing way and to find redemption of a sort as well as a closure that the character likely will never get in canon Trek. Second Self is billed as a Raffi Musiker novel and her journey is the narrative engine of the story but the questions at its heart belong to this popular legacy character who occupies about 50% of the story but will be a surprise to readers who only know what they see on the book jacket or in promotional material.
This book takes place in three different time periods, starting shortly after the events of season one of Star Trek Picard then like peeling back the layers of a chroniton onion, takes us back to the end of the Dominion War then back again to the Cardassian Occupation of Bajor and its colonies. Arriving at the dark heart of the mystery the story then journeys back out through the layers in reverse concluding in the Star Trek present day. The structure is both intriguing and complicated enough to be a little confusing. Each time period follows a different cast of characters most of whom we are meeting for the first time. Structuring the book this way was a risk for McCormack that mostly pays off even though it requires the reader to pay careful attention.
The second self that Raffi has to reckon with is her life as an addict. When we meet her in Picard season one she is strung out on snakeweed and fans have frequently asked how someone living in the post scarcity economy of the Federation could possibly become a drug addict. This book explores that through comparison with the oft forgotten addiction storyline of a key Trek character other than Raffi . This is a book layered in sadness and regret things that even people living in a material utopia would have to deal with.
0 Comments