I got the new Stargate novel The Power Behind the Throne, and I was so excited. It's been so long since we got a new Stargate tie-in and the last one was Hydra. Remember Hydra? Man, I loved that book. Actually, maybe the last book was Valhalla... I didn't like that one anywhere near as much. Hm. That's the main problem with these books. They have so many different authors of varying degrees of goodness that it's pretty much a crapshoot which one you'll get.

So, is Steven Savile one of the good ones? Allow me to explain. There will be spoilers. I reveal the ending of the novel, in fact. But trust me, if it saves you $8 and the time and effort it takes to read this garbage, you'll thank me for the spoiling.

By the second page, I knew I was in trouble. A Jaffa is threatening a Tok'ra he has cornered, and it says that the "malfeasance dripped from his tongue." A tongue -- or a voice for that matter -- can't have malfeasance. Malfeasance is, and I quote from the dictionary: "The performance by a public official of an act that is legally unjustified, harmful, or contrary to law." I believe the word he was looking for and the editors failed to find was malevolence. That was enough to make me put the book down for a few minutes. But I needed my guys! So I picked it up again and kept reading.

The book seemed to be trying so very hard to get better. Plot is introduced, a creature that... okay, the creature is kind of ridiculous, but at least the author was making an effort. There’s an interestingly different Goa'uld that is actually kind of scary in his insanity. About halfway in, the novel skews to this bizarre alternate-Earth sort of fantasy world. There was no effort to make it seem alien. The people on the planet had human mannerisms and used familiar expressions. At least SG-1 made the off-worlders seem a little old-fashioned or quaint. I got the distinct feeling the author had an idea for a steampunk/Victorian fantasy novel and just shoehorned SG-1 into the mixture.

Each and every good thing about the plot seemed like it would be so much better without it being about SG-1. And sometimes an okay plot in a bad book just makes you angrier than if it just sucked clear through. Aside from the forced feeling of the story, there are so many canon-shattering problems with this book, I don't even know where to start. Here, in no particular order, are some of the basic errors that I cannot overlook:

1. Incoming wormholes do not require Walter to engage chevrons. When there is an unauthorized offworld activation, the Stargate spins (it looks so much cooler when it spins!) and the wormhole comes to life. The only time Walter has to bark out the "chevron ___ locked" is when they are dialing out because of Sam's jerry-rigged dialing computer. So the fact the team is standing there while Walter is listing the locked chevrons of an incoming wormhole? It rankled a bit. But not as much as the idea that one of the SF's in the Gate Room "fired off a shot before he could stop himself." Oh, good, I'm glad the inept soldiers are given a chance at the front lines, too. Equal opportunity military.

2. It’s Harry MAYBOURNE. Not Mayberry. Mayberry is where Opie lives with Aunt Bee. Maybourne is the person you wouldn't want to see with the creature.

3. Why is the team so concerned with keeping the creature away from Apophis, specifically when Teal'c later (page 176) declares that Apophis is dead? It's not a lie. Teal'c wouldn't lie about a victory he had yet to achieve; he's too honorable for that. And yes, Apophis had a bad habit of coming back to life. But worrying about what Apophis would do with the creature isn't a worst-case scenario, it's an impossible-case scenario. No one on the team would entertain it. There are plenty of other bad Goa'ulds out there who could have been name dropped.

4. Point of Origin. There are 39 symbols on the Stargate. The Point of Origin is unique to every Stargate in the galaxy. Which means there are 38 symbols on the DHD, plus a unique one that serves as that particular planet's point of origin. Which means that our DHD would have the pyramid with the circle, but no other Stargates in creation have it. The problem the team faces is they gate to an unknown planet and can't dial out because they don't know the Point of Origin. They have to go through an entire rigamarole to discover what the symbol looks like so they can go punch it in. Seems like you could just look at the DHD and say, "Hm, I've never seen that one before."

5. Let's say you're a member of SG-1. (It doesn't matter which one, any of them should have been smart enough to think of this.) You have a Tok'ra who tried to come through the Stargate from an alien world and ended up pretty much disintegrated. You then hear a report about this world, that the Ancients used it as a prison for a very dangerous creature. So you go to this world without a back-up plan to come home. You find the creature. Then you stroll back to the Stargate (which is nearby the creature being imprisoned and not protected at all), dial the DHD, and step through the Gate expecting to go home.

Why?

The Tok'ra SAID this was a prison. The entire team saw someone trying to Gate away from the planet and get killed, leaving only a hand behind (by the way: a man's hand does not look anything like a woman's hand; that “mystery” shouldn’t have even occupied us for a moment). And yet, for some reason, it didn't occur to ANY OF THEM that the Gate or DHD may be in some way booby trapped. It never once crossed anyone's mind. None of them checked out the Stargate to see why the person coming through had been killed. This is logic you expect from the redshirt team that dies before the theme song. This is SG-1. I expected at least a cursory explanation (not that I can think of one that's satisfactory). As it is, they just walked into a prison to break someone out without considering that they would then have to get out of said prison themselves.

6. Afterward, they're lucky enough to emerge from a second, unknown Stargate. Sam theorizes that the wormhole must have jumped to a different Stargate than the one they dialed.

DUMB: Jack asks if that is even possible.
DUMBER: Sam says ten minutes ago she would have said no.

Not only have both of them experienced this exact phenomenon, at this point SAM HAS DONE IT ON PURPOSE. In "A Matter of Time" (02.16) they used a shaped charge to shift a wormhole to a different destination. In "Solitudes" (01.19), Sam and Jack were sent to the Antarctic gate. It should not even be a question to either of them.

Book meet wall.

In addition… if you're going to pretend “Solitudes” didn't happen, don't reference it 11 pages later. Srsly, dude, wth.

This book also has huge problems with torture and violence. The SG-1 team is malnourished and assaulted and beaten and left in the dark (for over a month, according to Teal'c's estimates) and the men manage to sally forth and continue with the fight as if they maybe have a head cold. But not Sam. Nooo, Sam is shaking and weeping and has to be rescued more than a couple of times. Then at the end, one of the rebels says she could stay, and she all but bats her eyelashes at him and fans herself. After a particularly large explosion, Sam is lying on the ground, dazed and bloody, and just lays there looking at the stars until Colonel O'Neill comes along to get her to safety. In enemy territory. Not only did this author make Sam an idiot, he made her a five-year-old girl. Unforgivable. Case in point...

"What the hell just happened?" Jack demanded.
"I don't know," Sam said.
"What I mean is, is it going to hold?"
"I don't know!"
"Fine."

This happened at the end of the book, so it could be written off to exhaustion, frustration, any number of things. The author could have delved a bit into Sam's "Why do I have to know every answer and solve every problem?" conundrum. But as written, she might as well have stomped her foot, crossed her arms and stuck out her bottom lip. She was a child, and that is not the Sam we knew at any point in the series.

My biggest problem with this book, however, is with the ending, which may be its most unpardonable error. All of this has happened without the SGC's knowledge. As far as Hammond knows, SG-1 was lost in transit a month ago. There was a single chapter of Hammond "leaving the light on for them" right after the wormhole died, but after that Hammond never makes another appearance. So after their month-plus in hell, being tortured and beaten etc, SG-1 dials home, puts in their IDC... and strolls through the Stargate.

There is no way those IDCs were still good. There's no radio conversation, no attempt to make sure the iris is down before they go on through. And that's where it ends... no recuperation on Earth, no bonding in the infirmary, just a final shot of Jack going through the Stargate. So I'm going to assume this is an AU and this idiotic team splattered against the iris. Maybe they were replaced by Harlan's robot clones for the rest of their adventures.

And finally -- hard to believe this novel isn't even 300 pages, huh? -- the author introduces a dangerous creature that could lead entire worlds to revolution. It could give the Goa'uld their hearts’ desire and subjugate the universe, or it could give the Jaffa their freedom. It could free every enslaved person, or it could cement the shackles on them for eternity. This creature is an intelligent being, so Daniel does the entire "we can't kill or imprison it for eternity, but we also can't have it running around loose" song and dance. Jack does the "we'll cross that bridge when we get to it" dance. Typical SG-1, totally understandable. So, after 100 or so pages of seeing what kind of carnage this creature can do in the wrong hands, how does the book end?

The creature blends with a Goa'uld and takes over a planet. And SG-1 leaves it there.

Right.

As hard as it may be to believe, things then actually get worse for us: this is Book 1 in a trilogy. There are two more novels planned by this guy. We get so few Stargate SG-1 novels, and now I'll have to ignore two of them when they come out. Way to go, Fandemonium. Keep throwing away that revenue. Because when you publish a book this shitty, of course you want to publish two sequels.

When finally I was done with this, I was desperate for good SG-1. I didn't care what episode, so I just opened my complete series box, took out a disc, and picked at random without looking at season or episode title information. I ended up with "Beast of Burden" (05.07). Yes, my friends, I watched the episode where Jack and Daniel deal with Unas slaves, while Teal'c and Sam run around in the woods for an hour. And it was so good. Oh, my God, it felt like the best episode ever in the history of the series. That is what this book did to me. If I'd seen “The Fifth Race” (02.15) or “One False Step” (02.19) or, God help me, “Lost City” (07.21 & 22) I might have gone catatonic. As it was, I was ONE EPISODE SHY of randomly picking "Rite of Passage" (05.06). And I would probably have been happy watching even that -- by comparison, the damned thing should have won an Emmy.

The Stargate novels -- as with all media tie-ins -- succeed or fail based on their authors. That's it. If you're a good author, if you're a fan of the show, you'll write a great book. If you're not... well, you have no business writing for it. It's why I don't write Legend of the Seeker or True Blood fic; I don’t know them well enough, and I'd feel like a prostitute writing novels based on either for money.

Yes, I just called Steven Savile a whore. I'm fine with it, and you should be too.

  -- Geonn Cannon
            www.geonncannon.com