Peter David
- Thread starter Garm Bel Iblis
- Start date
Oh, absolutely! Peter David's Hulk, for all that it kind of fell apart towards the end, with company-mandated crossovers and so forth, is still the best storytelling anybody's ever done with that character, and it really saddens me to see what's become of the Hulk since he left.
I've not read a whole lot of Peter David. No New Frontier, no Before Dishonor, no Vendetta.
But Q-Squared and Imzadi are, for me, the very best Star Trek novels outside of the Destiny trilogy (and maybe Mission Gamma/Unity). If not for those two, I might never have really gotten into TrekLit.
Picard dueling Trelane (who's a teenage Q) with a sword while the universe falls apart around them? Sounds cheesy as anything, but it works and I love it.
But Q-Squared and Imzadi are, for me, the very best Star Trek novels outside of the Destiny trilogy (and maybe Mission Gamma/Unity). If not for those two, I might never have really gotten into TrekLit.
Picard dueling Trelane (who's a teenage Q) with a sword while the universe falls apart around them? Sounds cheesy as anything, but it works and I love it.
Nardpuncher
Rear Admiral
^^ I haven't read since it came out in 1991 ( I read it twice that year too!) but try to get ahold of Vendetta.
Though the borg are old and they've worn out their welcome, that book is a ton of fun.
Though the borg are old and they've worn out their welcome, that book is a ton of fun.
While I do believe there are times when David can go more than a little overboard (my euphemism for "fanboyish"), I generally think his biggest strength is with characters and injecting humor in his stories, IMO.
Even if you go back as far as A Rock And A Hard Place, he had an amazing sense of the characters, and wrote better dialogue for them than the show did. That book's story was really lame, but there was one conversation between Worf and Troi that I had to go back and read again just because it was so interesting, funny and intelligent, while staying completely true to each character. Really fantastic.
I enjoyed A Rock and A Hard Place was a great deal and thought it was a nice little book, all the more enjoyable (IMO) when you realize that the guest character is a "first draft" of NF's Mackenzie Calhoun , and IIRC some of his backstory connects to Calhoun's as presented in Once Burned
Just finished "Before Dishonor", and all in all I found it to be a very good novel. Peter David's protrayal of the core characters are excellent and in line with how I feel they should be protrayed - even down to the almost eye wateringly corny scenes with Captain Calhoun. I quite liked the Grim Vargo character.
My only gripe was the obviously hurried ending. I won't give anything away for anyone who hasn't read, but I was left thinking "What the hell?".
As a novel it was waaaaay better than "Resistence" IMHO - which was boring as hell and did not accurately portray core characters or even flashbacks to scenes from BOBW or First Contact.
With respect to what this thread is discussing about Peter David's recent work and really any books post-nemesis ...
The problem isn't really the authors fault, in my opinion the events of Nemesis left the Star Trek Universe in a very sorry state from a literative point of view. Picard is just crap without Riker and Troi plus I hate that he is more and more being portrayed as a bit of a loose cannon or even a bit unhinged - which is too out of character for me. The Enterprise starts to feel a bit empty, with each author trying to introduce new characters to replace Riker, Troi and Data, and they never really work. But I totally understand why they do this, and it is logical. but I always felt that one of the core values at the heart of Star Trek was the stability of the crew in terms of always knowing their positions, roles, relationships etc. Every single Star Trek series represented the crew like a family. This is what the post-nemesis "USS Enterprise" has lost and needs to get back.
Sorry for being so long winded, this was kinda a brain-dump.
My only gripe was the obviously hurried ending. I won't give anything away for anyone who hasn't read, but I was left thinking "What the hell?".
As a novel it was waaaaay better than "Resistence" IMHO - which was boring as hell and did not accurately portray core characters or even flashbacks to scenes from BOBW or First Contact.
With respect to what this thread is discussing about Peter David's recent work and really any books post-nemesis ...
The problem isn't really the authors fault, in my opinion the events of Nemesis left the Star Trek Universe in a very sorry state from a literative point of view. Picard is just crap without Riker and Troi plus I hate that he is more and more being portrayed as a bit of a loose cannon or even a bit unhinged - which is too out of character for me. The Enterprise starts to feel a bit empty, with each author trying to introduce new characters to replace Riker, Troi and Data, and they never really work. But I totally understand why they do this, and it is logical. but I always felt that one of the core values at the heart of Star Trek was the stability of the crew in terms of always knowing their positions, roles, relationships etc. Every single Star Trek series represented the crew like a family. This is what the post-nemesis "USS Enterprise" has lost and needs to get back.
Sorry for being so long winded, this was kinda a brain-dump.
For what it's worth, it starts to get this way with Losing the Peace. In fact, if I'm remembering correctly, Picard even mentions to Beverley that the Enterprise is starting to finally feel "whole" after such turnover of the crew, which I believe was intentional on the writers part -- to have Picard experience a bit of empty nest syndrome.
^I'd like to think that it started that way in Greater Than the Sum and continued in Losing the Peace. In GTTS my intent was definitely to get past the crew instability of the previous few books and establish a crew that would finally begin to mesh as a new "family" -- right down to making T'Ryssa Chen a surrogate daughter figure for Picard.
Well, I described what my intent was at the time. The subsequent editorial direction of the books was out of my hands.
I'm about 90 pages in and have yet to figure out what was so abominable about the book. I love how Lady Q calls Janeway out on her hypocrisy. Janeway has always been hypocritical and it just tickles me to see someone she can't court martial call her out on it.
I didn't like how Q&A introduced some characters with certain names and then Before Dishonor introduced characters by the same names who obviously were different people. I didn't like how Worf essentially regressed to his TNG season one persona. I didn't like how it really didn't seem to fit into the same universe as the rest of the post-Nem TNG lit.
That all said, I didn't think the book was as bad as some folks around here do. It is certainly far from PAD's best work, but I don't think it's his worst either.
RobertScorpio
Pariah
^^ count me as one in Peter David's corner as well. He is the Bill Shatner of Star Trek literature..and that is a compliment!
Rob
I thought Bill Shatner was the Bill Shatner of Star Trek literature.
RobertScorpio
Pariah
I thought Bill Shatner was the Bill Shatner of Star Trek literature.
...well, and there's that too. LOL..
Rob
That's pretty much my opinion as well. I don't think it's an instant classic, but it's not like I was tearing my hair out with 'how'd this get published' or something.
Though I am still displeased with, despite her being a major character, Seven of Nine being the ONLY character on the cover of a TNG novel - at least throw in some element of the crew into that mix. Even just an Enterprise flyby, SOMETHING. Of course, that's not a complaint with the author, but it's an issue with the book as a whole I have...
