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mia-cooper · 4 years ago

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okay but just HOW bad was the Janeway 'autobiography'? glad I didn't buy it then lmao

**** HERE BE SPOILERS so do not read further if you plan to buy this book ****

(but also... DON’T BUY THIS BOOK)

So I’m not one to describe ‘Mosaic’ as fine literature, but it did one thing: it fleshed out Janeway’s background and personality to the point where you got some insight into who she was and why she did stuff the way she did. In my opinion it didn’t go far enough, but it doled out just enough interesting info to spark lots of fanfic.

The autobiography, on the other hand, reads like it was ghostwritten by a church lady who’s never been outside her nice white gentrified neighbourhood.

And while I know Kirsten Beyer’s books have flaws, they tell a great story (and a great love story - let’s not ignore that). The autobio reads like “I did this, and then I did that, and then this happened. The end.”

It’s boringzzzzzz.

Also, it contradicts both canon and beta canon like what the fuck! Like...

* Owen Paris and the Al-Batani and the capture by Cardassians that was one of the formative experiences that led Janeway to command? In this shitty AU, there’s no encounter with Cardassians, and KJ stays on the Al-Batani as chief science officer for EIGHT YEARS. (one wonders how she then managed to make captain by age 34...)

* speaking of ages... I know her birth year is never fully established in canon, but it’s generally accepted she was born in 2335. But her autobio says she was born in 2336. What’s more, she entered the academy a year early. (Funny how that never came up in the show)

* Dead Daddy Janeway does get dead test-flying an experimental ship on Tau Ceti Prime and there’s pages of boring exposition about why he’s flying under the polar ice caps, or smth, I skimmed that part. But KJ isn’t with him when it happens. She’s slobbing around on the Al-B and only hears about it. So there’s another formative Mosaic experience that gets whitewashed. As for the other part of that tragedy...

* Justin Tighe? Who’s that? Nobody we know, apparently. Nor Cheb Packer. She does have a number of “affairs” as she describes them, including one with some stiff at the academy who’s never named, but Mark Johnson is the biggest and the best. So good, it seems, that as soon as she gets his magic D she never wants to leave the house again.

* But you wanna know about Chakotay, don’t you? You want to hear how they fell in love on New Earth but she couldn’t give into her feelings until they got back home and now they’re living happily ever after, right? RIGHT? Well fuck you, because this book doesn’t so much as HINT at J/C romance, not even when she’s recounting the Resolutions Experience, and when they get back to Earth Chakotay leaves Starfleet to go travelling and occasionally teaching and when he’s in the solar system he and KJ catch up weekly to reminisce about... nothing much really. Because even the most riveting and traumatic episodes of Voyager (Scorpion, Equinox, Repression) are lame-ass children’s book versions of themselves. There is no excitement here. No insight whatsoever. No intrigue... EXCEPT...

* The twist at the end. Which is that Phoebe and Gretchen decided to use KJ’s frozen eggs to make a baby. Called Amelia (after Earhart, I assume, since she gets more air time in this book than Chakotay does). Yep. there’s a SURPRISE DAUGHTER.

* I have read some bad fanfic but none of it is as bad as this.

* If you still buy this book I don’t know you.

PS: my final word. LIZARD BABY ERASURE.

This book is TRASH

#do not buy this book #autobiography of kathryn janeway

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