Well of Souls (Spoiler)

S P O I L E R

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Warning: This text also contains spoilers for "Alice, on the Edge of
Night", Ilsa J. Bick`s NF short story in "No Limits"



I left this book of the Lost Era mini series for last because I didn`t
like Ilsa J. Bick`s NF short story in "No Limits" at all. From what I
heard her first novel is written in the same style and therefore I was
in no hurry to start reading it.

I only bought "Well of Souls" because I wanted to have the Lost Era
series complete. What I found very interesting when reading the comments
is how much opinions vary in this case. It seems to be a "love it or
hate it" book. I must admit, in spite of my extreme dislike of her
Morgan Lefler story, I finally decided to read the book after one person
assured me that it is really not all doom and gloom, that also some
positive things happen in this book at the end. I thought, it is
probably indeed unfair to base my opinion of Ms Bick`s style just on one
short story. I should read "Well of Souls", even if it is only so that I
will be able to say, I know what I am talking about because I have read
this novel. I just waited for the right time. I wasn`t in the mood to
fight my way through a depressing, dark story while I was still waiting
for good news concerning the medical problems my daughter has.
Fortunately I received the good news I was hoping for last week and I
remembered the promise I made to myself to read this book now.

I have written a lot about Ms. Bick`s story in "No Limits". I also had
quite a few discussions about it, including with Keith R.A. DeCandido
(KRAD). I don`t want to go into details again and keep it short: Ms.
Bicks showed me that she is a skilled writer. The problem is, I simply
don`t like her style. By now I know that she is a psychologist (or
psychiatrist, I am not sure, I am not even sure what the difference is)
and it shows. She turned a character I liked, a story (NF #6) I found
bittersweet and touching, into something ugly. The whole story is filled
with people who have faults, make bad choices and some of them are
extremely bad. I very much dislike the messages behind it as well as the
overly dark tone of this story. It looked to me as if the author was
looking out for ways to make these people as screwed up as possible,
just to be more sensationalist and get under the skin of the readers.

The first half of "Well of Souls" was very much what I expected. It was
the same frustrating experience: Ms Bicks is an excellent author. I like
her very descriptive style. She is also excellent at characterizations.
But, again, what I meet are people who have a lot of problems and
faults. When I find someone likeable, much too often something happened
that made me wonder, that dampened my enjoyment to read about these
people. I often sighed and wondered, why do all these insights and
analyses have to be so negative? Why can`t a psychologist/psychiatrist
like Ms Bicks not also include something positive and uplifting for a
change? Already at the start of the book when I read that Captain
Garrett didn`t even "find the time" to send her son a Birthday message
and her ex-husband threatened to punish her by forbidding any future
contact with her son so that she would never be able to hurt him again,
I already thought sarcastically, great people! This time Ms Bicks didn`t
turn a character into a woman who at least tried to murder her daughter
twice. It wasn`t anything that extreme but nevertheless, she turned a
character I respected a lot into someone I, at times, couldn`t.

This Captain Garrett was presented as a woman who acted terribly
immature and annoying at times. In the first half of "Well of Souls" I
also felt very annoyed at how she treated her new first officer, Samir
al-Halak. I understand that Garrett misses Nigel Holmes, who was
obviously more to her than "just" a first officer, but all the
explanations and analyses Ms Bicks included didn`t help to allow me to
change my mind. The contrary, as in her short story, it usually only had
the effect to look as an excuse to me, something that only reinforced my
attitude.

Later Garrett strongly admonished her counsellor, Tyvan, in public,
something that is very bad form. It is definitely not something a good
leader should do and it considerably added to my annoyance. But the
worst happened towards the middle of the book, when there was another
twist in the Halak story. I liked Halak from the very beginning,
although I kept wondering how positive this character really is. Ms
Bicks certainly succeeded to keep me guessing and in this case, it
helped to make this story interesting and at least somewhat appealing -
until that point. When it was revealed that Halak was supposedly
responsible for the deaths of the two other surviving team mates who
floated with him in space, I had enough. I was THIS close to finish
reading at this point because I got fed up with the negative contents of
this book. Not only did Garrett avoid Halak, she didn`t even visit him
in sickbay and never asked him about his point of view straight away. I
am sure, if that would have been her old friend Nigel Holmes, Garrett
would not only have been disgusted, she would have contacted Commander
Batanides and demanded answers.

After a few days, I picked up the book again, determined to get this
over with. Fortunately Ms Bicks didn`t go that far: Her revelations what
is actually behind this accusation and that he had been abducted was a
surprise - and a relief at the same time. Should these accusations have
been true, I would probably really have stopped reading. Nevertheless,
it doesn`t really change what I said about Garrett. If she would have
trusted her first officer more and be more suspicious about the dubious
accusations, this would not have happened.

What is also fortunate is that now Garrett finally started to change her
attitude. Now she was determined to help Halak, about time but
nevertheless something I welcomed a lot. Finally she was learning from
certain mistakes and I actually smiled when he returned at the end to a
surprise party.

After having finished the book, Halak is indeed one of the only two
positive aspects of the book and I like the parts dealing with that
character a lot. What I also like is that Ms. Bicks gave Halak an Arab
name and background. Especially nowadays, meaning the problems Muslims
often have in a post 09/11 world, this was a good choice. I also liked
it that Halak doesn`t have the clean family background Starfleet would
like to see and felt the need to lie in his application. This is an
obvious hint towards "The Drumhead". I very much agree with that choice
as well because I always thought that Starfleet tends to be too paranoid
for its own good sometimes. Hm, also that is something that very much
fits into what is going on in today`s politics.

The other positive aspect is the story dealing with Darya Bat-Levi.
Speaking very much from personal experience, Ms Bicks analysis of her
problems was very accurate. I could feel with her very well and that was
certainly not always a pleasant experience. But it was nice to see that
Bat-Levi finally blossomed into a more confident woman, someone who
starts to accept what she is and who is able to move on. It certainly
helped a lot that Starfleet and Garrett gave her that chance, something
that contrary to what Halak experienced is very much what Star Trek`s
ideals are about.

Other aspects of the last quarter of the book were not to my liking. I
am sure that Ms Bicks planned everything very carefully but I got lost
after a while when somehow all parties in the book met at this
mysterious planet and a lot of them started fighting each other. I just
accepted it, I didn`t have the motivation to analyze this part of the
book so that it makes more sense. I guessed pretty early in the book
that Garrett`s ex-husband will die at the end. And he did. It was even
another version of the pattern "Person sacrifices his/her life to save
another". I have read and seen this kind of story too often and don`t
find it appealing. To be fair, it was well written and touching but by
now, I tend to get tired of it. I prefer to read a different solution,
not to mention that "Well of Souls" would even be dark without his
death.

What was interesting is the analysis about families in Starfleet and
that there are plans to give officers the choice to take families with
them on ships one day. The book certainly shows how important that
decision is, that it helps many families in future.

Before I finish, something else: Maybe the Tholians are indeed an
exception so that they explode in the vacuum of space ("The
Sundered") but this certainly doesn`t apply to humans. Ms Bick mentioned
the effect of "explosive decompression" three times, for example page
215 and 325. As Stern said: "You don`t tend to miss that, air filled
spaces like heads and guts and lungs popping tending to be fairly
splashy". No, as I keep saying, each time I encounter this myth again,
it reminds me of what Peter David wrote in "Once Burned".

Now that I have read "Well of Souls", I am hoping even more that Ms
Bicks won`t write NF again in future. What happened to Morgan Lefler is
bad enough. I don`t even want to think about it what she could do to
Calhoun, who is my favourite Trek character and who has a lot of shades
of grey, or to other NF characters.

Baerbel Haddrell