VOY: No Man's Land by Christie Golden is the 5th novel in the Gateways crossover miniseries, which also included TOS: One Small Step by Susan Wright, Challenger: Chainmail by Diane Carey, TNG: Doors Into Chaos by Robert Greenberger, DS9: Demons of Air and Darkness by Keith R.A. DeCandido (@KRAD), NF: Cold Wars by Peter David, and What Lay Beyond, which included concluding stories by each of the above authors. Into the Queue is the concluding story for No Man's Land in What Lay Beyond.
Cover:
Description:
Throughout the Galaxy, an ancient network of interstellar portals has been reactivated, instantly linking distant planets and civilizations. Back home in the Alpha Quadrant, Starfleet can devote all its considerable resources to coping with the Gateways crisis, but in the Delta Quadrant, there is only the Starship Voyager...
Just as Voyager enters an unusually hazardous region of space, the ship and its crew are confronted with a flood of lost and disorientated starships from all over the galaxy. Accidentally transported incredible distances by the unpredictable Gateways, the diverse alien castaways regard each other and Voyager with hostility and suspicion. Captain Janeway suddenly finds herself struggling to hold together an extremely fractious fleet of dislocated alien vessels even as the newly awakened Gateways hold open the prospect of finally bringing her own ship home!
My thoughts:
I've had this book sitting on my bookshelf unread since it came out, and a couple months ago I finally decided to crack it open and give it a try. I have to admit, since I'd heard a lot of negative stuff about Christie Golden's Voyager Relaunch books, I was kind of hesitant to read this, but I'm glad I did, it was actually pretty good. She seemed to have a really good handle on the characters, there really weren't any moments that stood out to as being out of character for anyone in the cast.
I'm a dog person, so I loved the fact that so much of the story revolved around a dog like alien creature they call both Fluffy and Barkley.
The new aliens that were introduced as the members of the caravan of lost ships that they put together were all pretty interesting, with the froglike Todanians, and their slaves the V'enah as the standouts. The fact that the Todanians are described as looking like frogs is a little bit cheesy, but it wasn't to bad. The story line with Todanians gave the story a nice little bit of conflict, and had some nice character work for Seven of Nine.
My rating: Above Average
Cover:
Description:
Throughout the Galaxy, an ancient network of interstellar portals has been reactivated, instantly linking distant planets and civilizations. Back home in the Alpha Quadrant, Starfleet can devote all its considerable resources to coping with the Gateways crisis, but in the Delta Quadrant, there is only the Starship Voyager...
Just as Voyager enters an unusually hazardous region of space, the ship and its crew are confronted with a flood of lost and disorientated starships from all over the galaxy. Accidentally transported incredible distances by the unpredictable Gateways, the diverse alien castaways regard each other and Voyager with hostility and suspicion. Captain Janeway suddenly finds herself struggling to hold together an extremely fractious fleet of dislocated alien vessels even as the newly awakened Gateways hold open the prospect of finally bringing her own ship home!
My thoughts:
I've had this book sitting on my bookshelf unread since it came out, and a couple months ago I finally decided to crack it open and give it a try. I have to admit, since I'd heard a lot of negative stuff about Christie Golden's Voyager Relaunch books, I was kind of hesitant to read this, but I'm glad I did, it was actually pretty good. She seemed to have a really good handle on the characters, there really weren't any moments that stood out to as being out of character for anyone in the cast.
I'm a dog person, so I loved the fact that so much of the story revolved around a dog like alien creature they call both Fluffy and Barkley.
The new aliens that were introduced as the members of the caravan of lost ships that they put together were all pretty interesting, with the froglike Todanians, and their slaves the V'enah as the standouts. The fact that the Todanians are described as looking like frogs is a little bit cheesy, but it wasn't to bad. The story line with Todanians gave the story a nice little bit of conflict, and had some nice character work for Seven of Nine.
The whole thing with the deaths of the Kuluuk had some nice twists and turns, and I was actually genuinely surprised when it turned out it was Arkathi, the Todanian leader, rather than a group of Hirogen in caravan that he tried to frame.
The arrival of Q, and the reveal that Fluffy/Barkely belonged to q, were nice surprises in Into the Queue. I guess you could also say that the ending was a bit of a deus ex machina, or in this case deus ex q, but I thought it worked in this case.
