Archer and Trip get themselves taken prisoner.
A collection of cliches – mistakenly taken prisoner, swept up in the prisoner revolt, etc – that somehow rises above its components to deliver an entertaining story. I think a big part of it is the sheer menace of Kuroda, who I was a bit disappointed to see knocked off at the end. He had a lot of potential. I can’t say that anything along the way was a huge surprise, but everyone involved seemed intelligent enough (except the Nauciscan falling for the old ‘come help me with this’ routine, but that was in character).
The small subplot with Trip’s annoying fellow prisoner was also good, in that it went somewhere a little unexpected. The traditional plot for such is that the ‘nice but annoying’ guy is killed, and we all feel sad about it. Instead Trip pays a real price for not getting on his good side, and I think that was quite good writing.
681 down, 56 to go.