The Attitude of Silence

I'd have to say that this book is a must for fans of Gene Roddenberry's Andromeda. The plot is pretty solid, although by the end of the book I was left with some nagging complaints about how things wrapped up so quickly. The characters are very "in" and each is given a chance to speak. If you're a Rev Bem fan, this might not be the book for you, though. He's used quickly and not often. The main point that really bothered me about this novel was the use of Andromeda and Rommie. There wasn't much separating the android from her holo-image and her screen image. I felt that they were all the same entity, which isn't what Andromeda's about. I thought Rommie was acting a little strange throughout the novel, but her oddness is explained by the end, so don't be too put off. Another great thing about this book was the way Dylan Hunt was written. I found him to be charismatic, enjoyable, and the perfect man to bring back the High Guard. He seemed a bit different on the show portrayed by Sorbo--but I really enjoyed the way he was written in the book. This was my first Andromeda book, so I might be a little bias, but it's worth a read if you love the show.

"The Attitude of Silence" was a decent Andromeda tie-in novel, and certainly much better than the travesty that was the previous one ("Through The Looking Glass"). "The Attitude of Silence" was better researched, had a story that fit well into the timeline (it seems to take place between the late Season One episodes "It Makes A Lovely Light" and "Its Hour Has Come `Round At Last"), and the characterisation for the most part was pretty solid. This isn't to say that there weren't a few problems-Trance's looking at probabilities was a little too mathematical, Rev Bem did little besides pray a lot, and Mariotte didn't differentiate enough between the personalities of Rommie and the Andromeda AI and hologram. While the research was there for the most part, Mariotte seems to have overlooked the fact that Vedrans are blue and have four legs, and are decidedly not human, and that Sani Nax Rifati was a Vedran who lived some 5800 years previous (yes, this is a fairly important plot point). There are a few other nitpicks that distracted (which the editor should have caught), but none of them were glaring beyond the Vedran one. Overall, "The Attitude of Silence" was a pretty solid read that captured the spirit of the show, even though it may not be quite the love-letter to the show and its fans that "Waystation" was.