In today’s episode, when Starfleet sends Picard in search of an AWOL captain, he picks Worf for his plus-one. But the search-and-rescue doubles as a treasure hunt, and the first one to find it will be singing glor’ya, glor’ya, hallelujah. Can MJF get away with putting his prose in characters’ mouths? How well does naming characters after things near you on your desk work out? And did Picard’s quarry go through some changes after leaving Starfleet? All this and more in Dujonian’s Hoard, the book that spares the Bolian (sort of).

Dujonian’s Hoard
Author: Michael Jan Friedman
Published: June 1998
Pages: 272
Timeline: Between “All Good Things…”1 and Generations
Prerequisites: None
Borrowable on Archive.org? Yes

Admiral Gorton takes a break from hawking fish sticks to give Picard a mission: locate Richard Brant, former XO of the LaSalle, now “[chartering] trips to exotic destinations” according to their latest intel. Starfleet thinks Brant has been captured by mercenaries who have reason to believe he knows the location of the Hoard of Dujonian, a collection of artifacts from the Hebitians, a sort of peace- and justice-loving cultural antecedent to the Cardassians. The artifacts are encrusted with a kind of super-dilithium called glor’ya and were taken off-world by the Cardassian Dujonian after he excavated them. Picard decides to bring Worf along for backup, and with the help of a middleman, they sign on with an unaffiliated captain who goes by the alias Red Abby, on account of having both a gorgeous shock of red hair and the name Abby. Along the way, they outwit Cardassians, Romulans, and a few new faces and races, and also survive passage through a turbulent nebula called Hel’s Gate, where they find some things they were expecting and some they weren’t.

And really, that’s about it. Dujonian’s Hoard is probably the gamiest Star Trek novel since Requiem, which was also a Friedman joint. The main issue with the book is one Friedman cops to in his Voyages of Imagination comments about it: he took the pub-tale prompt at face value and ended up pumping out a pretty straightforward swashbuckler that cast Picard in a rare but not unprecedented romantic-hero role. I think the closest analog to Dujonian’s Hoard is “Captain’s Holiday”, with Red Abby stepping into Vash’s shoes, except this one’s a mission and that scenario arose from a forced vacation. If you liked that episode, I think it’s pretty safe to say you’ll dig this.

One notable consequence of the action emphasis is that the story has a pretty substantial body count, which is always a bit unnerving for a Star Trek story, especially when it’s not set in the middle of something where you’d expect that, like, say, the Dominion War. Although he’s mowing down Cardassians, Romulans, and mutineers left and right, I don’t think Picard behaves in any way that could be considered out of character. In fact, in one very in-character moment, he refuses, like a perfect gentleman, to disclose to the table whether he had sex with Abby or not. But overall, it’s still not what I think many people are going to want from the character.

That said, I didn’t hate it. I’m usually not thrilled with Michael Jan Friedman’s workmanlike prose, but in this particular case, it proved well-suited to capturing the vibe of someone actually regaling a group of strangers with an anecdote. Otherwise, it’s a little tough to compare it to its immediate predecessor War Dragons because they’re so drastically different from each other. I think I had an easier time with this one overall because I found the split-storytelling hurdle in War Dragons somewhat difficult to overcome, but on the other hand, Friedman’s shorter chapters and more frequent returns to the bar setting can (and do) regularly yank you out of the immersion. So they both come out even by my reckoning.

I wish I had more to say about this book, especially after having been too busy with REAL LIFE™ to post a review for over a month, but I don’t think it’s wise to force it. All I’ll say in the end is that although neither it nor the one that came before it is especially amazing, I am impressed by how wildly different the two stories are. Together, they give you a good idea of the huge variety of directions an author can go with a setup lie this. And with so many possibilities, I imagine at least one of these is practically guaranteed to be a home run.

MVP & LVP

  • My MVP for this book is Red Abby. She was really fun as a character that Picard is able to understand and commiserate with on a captain-to-captain level. Going back to the Vash comparison from earlier, I think that rank equality is an upgrade to that general dynamic. I was also pleased to find that Picard and Friedman both treated the character very tastefully. I especially think it showed a lot of restraint to never compare her to Beverly, a piece of low-hanging fruit I admit I might well have plucked if I’d come up with such a character.
  • The LVP of this Captain’s Table tale is a particularly pointless character named Dacrophus. Dacrophus first appears late in the book tailing our heroes before they enter Hel’s Gate, and it’s clear Red Abby has had some kind of entanglements with him in the past; then he follows them in, and I guess dies (?), his ship and crew presumably torn apart by the raging turbulence of the phenomenon. Why is this character in this book, other than to show that safe passage through Hel’s Gate isn’t guaranteed? 

Stray Bits

  • It’s kind of funny for a story to have Picard narrating in first person while also putting all of Friedman’s trademark verbal tics (“grunted”, “licked his lips”, “what’s more”) through their usual paces. Wow, Picard talks just like a middle-of-the-pack media tie-in author!
  • Torlith, the middleman who gets Picard and Worf in with Red Abby, is an “Ethnasian” (p. 27). Am I wrong in thinking this is a terrible name for an alien race? that it sounds like your great-grandfather somehow managing to come up with something more racist than “Oriental”? Surely we can all agree on this?
  • One of the captains who listens to Picard’s story is a Klingon named Hompaq. Friedman definitely got that by looking at his PC and changing one letter, right? I was surprised we never found out she was the captain of the Fresario. My phone even autocorrected it to “Compaq” the first time I typed it into my notes.
  • Picard talks about going to a bar while telling a story in a bar. Bar-ception! BWOMMMM
  • Gul Ecor rattles Red Abby during an interrogation by calling her “Captain Brant”, and for a second I thought it was a twist where Brant was actually a woman, and I was legitimately shocked. It turns out Red Abby is Brant’s sister Abigail, but wouldn’t that have been a wild turn of events? Imagine Richard Brant leaves Starfleet and promptly transitions—maybe Starfleet wasn’t the only institution he felt uncomfortable in? Of course, it would never have happened in 1998, and it likely wouldn’t have been handled well even if it had. But can you imagine?
  • For once, the Bolian OC doesn’t die! Okay, he’s half Bolian, half Romulan, but I’m still counting it!
  • “Unlike the prior combat, this one never devolved into a hand-to-hand struggle. We simply fired and fired some more, and kept firing until none of the Cardassians were left standing.” — A passage that, to me, had big “Keep firing, assholes!” energy. (pp. 75, 76)

Final Assessment

Average. There’s nothing overtly terrible about Dujonian’s Hoard, but it doesn’t give the reader very many nutrients, and the straightforward action angle produces some decidedly un-Star Trek-like effects. It’s superior to War Dragons in some ways, worse in others, and in the end, they both sit at about the same level. It’s rare for me to recommend books algorithmically, but I think if you’re a fan of the season-three TNG episode “Captain’s Holiday”, you’ll be pleased to find much the same vibe here. Anyway, Captain Sisko’s turn comes next; hopefully he’s able to pull the Captain’s Table above the Mendoza line.

NEXT TIME: Will The Mist be a hit?