Freelance Traveller

The Romulan Way

reviewed by Jeff Zeitlin

The Romulan Way. Diane Duane.
Original Publication: 1987
Current Availability: Print and eBook

Among other things, like good writing, one thing that keeps me coming back and re-reading a book is good world-building. Diane Duane seems to be one author who has developed good world-building skills, and applied them to her writing, most notably (in my opinion) in this book, and in her later work, Spock’s World.

I should note that when you’re playing in someone else’s sandbox, as Ms Duane does here by playing in Paramount’s Star Trek sandbox, it speaks well of one’s writing and world-building abilities if it involves the successful creation of something both original and memorable while still staying within the constraints of the sandbox owner.

The Romulan Way is largely told from the viewpoint of Arrhae ir-Mnaeha t’Khellian, a servant (ranking roughly equivalent to major-domo) in the household of a minor Romulan Praetor, H’daen tr’Khellian. Arrhae, however, is really a Starfleet Intelligence ‘deep cover’ operative named Terise Haleakala-LoBrutto. The ‘core’ of the story here is that Terise has ‘gone quiet’, and Starfleet wants to know whether she’s still on the job or has ‘gone native’; they choose (with Dr McCoy’s connivance) to arrange for Dr McCoy to be captured and placed as a prisoner with Praetor tr’Khellian to find out. Arrhae has to keep running the household, deal with keeping custody of the prisoner Mak’khoi until he is brought to his ‘show trial’ and execution, keep her identity as Terise concealed from the Romulans, and deal with some of the intrigue that arises from McCoy’s placement with tr’Khellian. At the same time, McCoy has to ‘break through’ Arrhae to Terise, find out whether she’s still ‘on the job’ and/or wants exfiltration, and avoid execution and return to the Federation with any information about the Romulans that he can. In the process of all this, we get a good view of day-to-day life on the Romulan homeworld. The various episodes of Arrhae’s life during this period are interspersed with “essays”, ostensibly written by Ms Haleakala, that provide the reader with some of the historical background of Romulan origins and development, thus giving a picture of the Romulans far more in-depth than we were ever able to see in the Star Trek series.

Ms Duane is lauded as a great writer among those who have read her works; certainly, The Romulan Way would do nothing to discourage such an opinion, even given that she was writing within some of the constraints that Paramount places on even non-canonical Star Trek. She keeps her stories moving, while still giving the reader a good picture of her characters’ world; she avoids the most egregious problems when including background and/or expository material that is needed to promote understanding of her world-building and story-telling. Her characters are definitely three-dimensional, and her settings are equally ‘real’, rather than being ‘flats’ for the characters to stand in front of while saying their lines. At least with her Star Trek writing, the reader is left with a strong impression of what the world and its people are like, strong enough that in reading (or re-reading) works by other authors, one ends up testing the other writer’s story-telling and world-building against Ms Duane’s, and more often than not treating Ms Duane’s work as though it is (or should be) canonical.

In spite of Star Trek often being derided as ‘bad SF’, there are some stories that are told in that universe that are worth reading. This is one such, and deserves a place on your bookshelf.