I know. I overreacted and probably should have donated it to a library or something, but I just couldn't stand the thought of any Trek fan coming across it. I'm on a business trip to Florida and have been saving this book for my trip, and I'm sorry to report that it's quite the disappointment. Poor characterization and every other paragraph appears to be required to reference ENT for some reason (nothing against ENT, but coming across two buildings/halls named for Archer and Mayweather seemed a bit much and a little self-indulgent, since R-S were on the ENT staff). In the book's defense, I only got to page 80 or so before deciding to give it the heave, and much of that decision was based on the portrayal of George Kirk Sr. and Sam Kirk. Now, I LOVED the imagery of George and Sam (and young Jim) in Last Full Measure. That was exactly how I pictured the Kirk family in my mind's eye, so their portrayal in Collision Course REALLY bugged me. Particularly because I know that at least George will be appearing in Trek XI, and I really don't want my impression of him in the movie to be influenced by his relatively unfavorable portrayal in this book. I'm not too broken up that the two follow-up books in this series appear to be on the back-burner, and I'll be glad when the Reeves-Stevens' start doing Trek books of their own again and aren't locked into Shatner's overdramatic plotlines. I will add, though, that while this is the only Trek book I've ever thrown away, it's also the first Trek book where I've pictured the new actors (Quinto and Pine) as Spock and Kirk and... it seemed it to work pretty well!
:thumbsup:Amen. :thumbsup: I don't really have anything against the Shatnerverse (though based on what I've heard, I won't be reading this new book any time soon ), but on their own, the Reeves-Stevenses wrote two of my favorite Trek books of all time, Prime Directive and the brilliance that is Federation. I'd love to see them go back to doing their own stuff.
Prime Directive is one of my favourite books, but I absolutely despise Millennium and never really got into Federation. I gave up on the Shatnerverse after the first trilogy, and it doesn't sound like I'm missing much...
I've been enjoying Collision Course. I guess I'm just not taking it too seriously. But it's been a good read for me so far.
I wasn't interested with Collision Course to begin with, and I'm glad I stayed away. I thought the Reeves-Stevensens did pretty good with Federation and the Millennium Trilogy. I am of two minds with the Shatnerverse novels, though. On the one hand, I do enjoy some of the plots and entries. On the other hand, I don't like the fact that Kirk is brought back and is still being, basically, an spatial attention whore and "savior". Captain's Glory would have been better, and indeed the whole Captain's Trilogy, if there hadn't been so much Kirk in it.
I for one didn't think it was that bad. It sure beat the hell out of Shatner's usual "find a reason to throw Kirk and Picard together one more time" plot, which, let's be honest here, that was tired ten years ago. Collision Course could safely be called a "re-imagining", but hey, what isn't these days?
I dunno... The Shatnerverse is fun to me in the same way some of the better TOS third season episodes are fun. Despite what I've heard, I'm looking forward to reading this one. BTW, why no audio book this time?
I have the first six Shatnerverse novels, and used to love them when they came out in my early teens. Recently I went back and read all six, euurgh, I'll be giving them away to charity very soon. To be fair they weren't *that* bad, but the whole Kirk/ Picard Love/hate thing just gets really boring very quickly. I remember thinking The Return was the greatest Trek book I'd ever read when I first got it, now I could barely even get through it. In the space of 2 chapters they all work out whats going on, declare V'Ger to be Borg, rename a Defiant class ship 'Enterprise', get to the Delta Quadrant, blow up the Borg homeworld by pressing a switch, and Kirk dies yet again (but its ok, because he comes back AGAIN) Spock is considered Borg because he mind melded with V'Ger? Fanwank of the highest order
^^ I did indeed. And then I ripped out half the pages so the hotel staff wouldn't think I'd simply dropped it. I felt like I was defending Trek's honor by throwing this out. Yeah, I'm a bit of a geek sometimes.
I definitely know how you feel. I did the same thing to a DVD once. It was when the Animatrix films were being released for free download. I was watching Second Renaissance and I got to the part at the end where the machines were forcibly ripping human soldiers out of their APCs and experimenting on them, or ripping them to shreds, or both, and I just got so upset that I went and got my DVD of the original film and I cut it to bits with a pair of scissors and then I ripped the packaging to pieces as well. Haven't bought any Matrix DVD since, and don't have any plans to at the moment.
The R-S's really can do fast paced action well,and are excellent at dropping in references to old characters/plot points,but I wish they would concentrate their work on the 5 year mission era.To be honest,the recent books are just awful...geriatric Kirk,Bones&Scotty running around saving the universe does not work for me.It's past time to just let these characters go before things desend into farce.
Sure, but you said "It's past time to just let these characters go before things desend into farce" and Shatner already has let go. His new novel is Young Kirk and Spock.
The thing is,I'm even less interested in Academy-stories than the "captain's whatever" stories.Would you agree that the original tv series left many plots and set-up's dangling? Perhaps the R-S's could be better than most at tackling these stories than the imminent torrent of Cadet Kirk fiction post-STxII.