Double Helix: Double or Nothing

[Centaur2000]

Hi,

as it happens Double or Nothing is the last remaining novel involving th NF crew I haven't read yet. My question is, do I have to read the other Double Helix novels in order to understand what's going on? Besides, is the NF part of Double or Nothing big and interesting enough to buy the book if I'm just interested in a NF novel and not in the Double Helix series in general?

Thanks in advance,
centaur2000

 

[Thrawn]

Hi,

as it happens Double or Nothing is the last remaining novel involving th NF crew I haven't read yet. My question is, do I have to read the other Double Helix novels in order to understand what's going on? Besides, is the NF part of Double or Nothing big and interesting enough to buy the book if I'm just interested in a NF novel and not in the Double Helix series in general?

Thanks in advance,
centaur2000

I read the whole Double Helix at some point, and now I can't remember anything about it, except recently I re-read NF including Double Helix 5 and it seemed to fit just fine. So, short answer: No, you don't have to read the others.

And the novel is Calhoun & Picard on one mission, as Riker steps in to command the Excalibur on another. No other TNG characters are in it, so it's almost entirely NF. It's not the best NF novel, not even really close, but it has its moments. I'd go for it.

 

[Therin of Andor]

My question is, do I have to read the other Double Helix novels in order to understand what's going on? Besides, is the NF part of Double or Nothing big and interesting enough to buy the book if I'm just interested in a NF novel and not in the Double Helix series in general?

I reckon you'd be fine reading just "NF: Double or Nothing" because the story arc actually concludes with this one, and then perhaps you might read the final book, "First Virtue", too, because it actually flashes back to how it all started. "First Virtue" also features a NF alien race in an important role.

 

[Wowbagger]

Good question.

I found, when reading Double or Nothing, that the big problem was that I hadn't read any NF novels before. I was completely out of the loop for the entire novel. I'm betting you could read it without having read the DH stuff prior to it, though. I believe the main thrust of The Story So Far is: there's a disease, it sucks, it kills you, and it's artificial.

 

[Centaur2000]

Thanks everybody for replying so fast. So there's yet another book for me to buy.

Cheers,
centaur2000

 

[captcalhoun]

i've read it without reading other DH books and got on fine. there's a brief expositionary scene which tells you what happened before along the lines of "A buncha Betazoids got sick, a buncha Cardies got sick, the Romulan royal family got sick, some Maquis got sick and Tom defected."

as for how good it is, it's freaking awesome. it's a James Bond story in Trek. Double-oh Calhoun is badass.

 

[Steve Roby]

as for how good it is, it's freaking awesome. it's a James Bond story in Trek. Double-oh Calhoun is badass.

It was the first New Frontier story I really didn't like. It struck me as a sloppily written mess.

 

[Thrawn]

as for how good it is, it's freaking awesome. it's a James Bond story in Trek. Double-oh Calhoun is badass.

It was the first New Frontier story I really didn't like. It struck me as a sloppily written mess.

My opinion is about exactly halfway between yours

Double-oh Calhoun is great; the book can also be sloppy and isn't as good as a lot of the others.

 

[tenmei]

I really liked it. But then again, I'm a big James Bond fan, so I was bound to like it given that the novel is essentially a Bond movie in the NF universe with Calhoun as Bond, some fun locations - a brilliant base harkening back to the days of You Only Live Twice and a couple of fun 'Bond girls'.

 

[Deano2099]

Yeah it completely stands alone. I actually recommend it to people to hook them on New Frontier as it's basically Calhoun-as-Bond (complete with 'Q') and it's a great action-spy-thriller romp.
All the Double Helix series basically stand-alone as "medical mysteries" - the same disease keeps cropping up in new and different forms. There's very little crossover. They're all decent enough but get somewhat repetitive.

 

[nickyboy]

its the only book of the double helix series I read, I had no problem reading it

 

[ronny]

I thought the series was an interesting concept, doing a "crossover" series but instead of writing a Voyager or DS9 they put characters from those other series into a TNG book. It's just the execution didn't live up to my expectations. I just thought most of the books were average with 2 exceptions. I'm in the camp that like the NF book, it was a very fun read. And Red Sector is one of my least favorite ST books of all time. I've got serious problems with it.