Plot
Particular aspects of Klingon society depicted include:
- A strong Klingon emphasis on battle-related games. The title refers to a move in klin zha, a Klingon game with similarities to chess; in this particular variation, the "reflective" game, both players take turns playing one set of pieces.
- Games played with living players.
- Military strategy is the particular province of a military class known as "thought admirals," who hone their skills in "the game with living pieces." They also seek to learn how other societies think militarily by studying the games of those people.
- The distinction between empire-building races—such as the Klingons, the Humans and Vulcans with their Federation, and the Romulans—and less driven races, whom the Klingons use as servants (kuve).
The novel concerns an intergenerational conflict within the Klingon government, between a faction wanting war with the Federation and a faction desiring accommodation for fear of Klingon defeat. The Klingon ambassador and his associates play a surprising role in this conflict, one which remains secret until the publication of a "tell-all" book forty years later, one which is read by Captain James T. Kirk in the "framing" story.
Read more about this topic: The Final Reflection
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“James’s great gift, of course, was his ability to tell a plot in shimmering detail with such delicacy of treatment and such fine aloofness—that is, reluctance to engage in any direct grappling with what, in the play or story, had actually “taken place”Mthat his listeners often did not, in the end, know what had, to put it in another way, “gone on.””
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