TNG: Indistinguishable From Magic by McIntee Review Thread (Spoilers)

[aelius]

Capt. La Forge of the Galaxy class U.S.S. Challenger. Where have I seen that before?
Oh yeah, Voyager's "Timeless".
Oops!
I guess not.
Unless they build another one.
Seriously though, I really enjoyed the book.
And my condolences on your loss.

[JWD75]

One of the best books that I have read in a while.

[Ronald Held]

I just finished it. Not a highly satisfying ending, even if Geordi retained new rank and gets the girl.

[Man of Steel]

If IFM takes place 3 months after PoD, does this mean you need to read that before you read this?

[Thrawn]

^ Oddly enough, no, not really. There's one tiny spoiler about Geordi's love life, but aside from that I can't think of anything about PoD that this spoils or even really mentions. It's a total standalone.

[Man of Steel]

^ Weird no?

[the_wildcard]

I just finished the book and have to say it was one of the harder Star Trek books to read through. I'll admit that I am not the smartest person but I had some difficulty grasping the various spacial anamolies.

I thought the development of Geordi's relationship could have been written better. After all these years, I think Geordi deserves something. There wasn't really any level of romance atleast compared to past star trek novels with other characters such as Troi/Riker, Worf/Choundary and Picard/Crusher.

Finally I thought much of the dialogue frequently strayed from the story or was not consistently written in the same tone. For example, there was just too many uses of "great job!", "great idea!" or "genius!".

I especially thought the dialogue between Romulans about Sela's heritage and her feelings about her mother were unnecessary. They completely detracted from the story.

But what I am most or dissapointed in is the development of a DS9 character. I fully understand that this has nothing to do with the author and more with the way the franchise is being steered to. It just seems there won't be a unified DS9 storyline anymore.

[bok2384]

Well this is more like it, after the rather lacking Typhon Pact, David A. McIntee has rescued the Star Trek fiction line for me, as it was on a knife edge.

Looking through the thread I note that people have criticized the amount of faces from the past being brought back, but to a large extent I had no problem with this whatsoever, in fact I really enjoyed that this novel brought to an end so many threads dangling from The Next Generation with Berlinghoff Rasmussen, Bok and the disappearance of the Hera.

I'm crap at writing detailed and, even coherent reviews, but McIntee has written a novel which, may not be up there with the pantheon of greats, was a bloody good read which I tore through in a couple of days and thoroughly enjoyed the intriguing tale he built around the Intrepid, the Hera and the Dutchmen.

If I had to level any criticism for this novel, it was the "second episode", as I like to refer to it. I'm aware that this was originally pitched as a duology and I really wish as it remained that way, as I believe that this episode really suffered and gave the appearance of being a little rushed. This also had the negative affect of not feeling the full effect of

Scotty's "death" and the destruction of the Challenger.

These gripes don't prevent me from declaring the book outstanding, very rarely have the novels managed to emulate the episodic structure of TNG, but this has done it marvellously. It was great to see a few old faces returning, and some great new characters thrown into the mix. I just love Qat'qa.

[BrotherBenny]

David, I have a question. When Geordi and Guinan were discussing time travel methods, Guinan mentioned the giant donut and I was pretty sure I remembered reading a TNG book with that in. IIRC, it was Requiem where the donut sent Picard back to his Stargazer days. Is that the donut you were referring to?

[Christopher]

^These are not the donuts you're looking for. He was referring to a somewhat more familiar giant donut.

[JoeZhang]

bok2384 wrote:

---

Looking through the thread I note that people have criticized the amount of faces from the past being brought back, but to a large extent I had no problem with this whatsoever, in fact I really enjoyed that this novel brought to an end so many threads dangling from The Next Generation with Berlinghoff Rasmussen, Bok and the disappearance of the Hera.

To be fair to the author, that's a subject they can't win on - half the audience love seeing old characters, while the other half will say it makes the TNG universe look like North Wales (lots of inbreeding).

[bok2384]

JoeZhang wrote:

---

To be fair to the author, that's a subject they can't win on - half the audience love seeing old characters, while the other half will say it makes the TNG universe look like North Wales (lots of inbreeding).

Too true, and having family from North Wales I can certainly vouch for that. I'm just glad that I fall into the former category and enjoy a bit of an old school reunion.

[label]

So I finally finished the book last night. I quite enjoyed it for the most part though there were a few things that I thought were problematic for the book overall, however, when it was all said and done I had a nice time reading it, even if it didn’t feel like single novel, per say. I’d rate it a 4/5 stars overall.

I liked seeing some of the old faces and getting resolution on a couple, but I will say it was overkill in a few places and what at times helped the book with the familiar faces sometimes hurt it.

Scotty, Leah and Barclay were great, Bok And Rasumussen were fine, Sonya was "ok", Ogawa was too much and hurt the story for me.

The novel itself read more like 3-4 short novellas that were tied together which was fine and the book ended very well, though sometimes the technical jargon was a bit much to follow.

All things considered though, I enjoyed the book and would recommend to any TNG fan.

[Truth]

I want Him to get his own ship, he is being wasted under the tng banner, what a few appears here and there. Give him a new ship ( not galaxy class everybody has a freakin galaxy class now a days). Bring back some of the cast and do like avertine and make cameos in other books, hell do a split book and combined the avertine , da vinci , and challenger under one banner each one could be explore the post borg war federation from a diffrent angle, avertine from a frontier ship view point, challenger and da vinci from the COE and trying to repair the tech of a damaged federation. We have forgotten that the federation has some pretty amazing tech out there within there own borders, super computer,s , space time tech etc. star trek :federation( yes i know it already a book) but im talkng about a on going one as seen from the diffrent crews of the federation

[Steve Roby]

Well, that was fun. Could have used more shippery moments with Geordi and Leah, though; that felt a little underdeveloped. Still, an enjoyable read overall.