I think the "It's Green" option was preventing the poll from getting picked up by the Review Threads page, so I have removed it.
Poll TOS #12 Mutiny On The Enterprise by Robert E. Vardeman Review Thread (42nd Anniversary Review)
- Thread starter tomswift2002
- Start date
So I managed to make it to page 90----and I really found the book ran out of gas and I was no longer interested in it. Every conflict seemed to be a reuse of the exact same conflict and really wasn't going anywhere and it was getting very stale.
Also the plot of the engines really needing an overhaul---that wasn't helping and really felt out of character for Kirk unless he was in the middle of a war. And for the Enterprise to be moving at Warp 1 and it's speed constantly getting depleted and Kirk not making a command decision to get to the nearest starbase and defy an admiral's orders---that was really out of character. Even in Where No Man Has Gone Before where the engines were damaged to the point that starbases and planets were decades in the future, and the engines were destroyed because of the galactic barrier, or in The Galileo Seven where Kirk has the impatient Galactic High Commissioner onboard to ensure that vital medical supplies get to their destination, versus Kirk in Mutiny on the Enterprise where he seems to be running the Enterprise with no oil in the engine just because an admiral told him that the Enterprise could not dock to get the Enterprise's oil topped up quickly and now the Enterprise is seizing up from lack of oil because Kirk wants to run it into the ground.
Really this book is green. It's worst than poor.
Also the plot of the engines really needing an overhaul---that wasn't helping and really felt out of character for Kirk unless he was in the middle of a war. And for the Enterprise to be moving at Warp 1 and it's speed constantly getting depleted and Kirk not making a command decision to get to the nearest starbase and defy an admiral's orders---that was really out of character. Even in Where No Man Has Gone Before where the engines were damaged to the point that starbases and planets were decades in the future, and the engines were destroyed because of the galactic barrier, or in The Galileo Seven where Kirk has the impatient Galactic High Commissioner onboard to ensure that vital medical supplies get to their destination, versus Kirk in Mutiny on the Enterprise where he seems to be running the Enterprise with no oil in the engine just because an admiral told him that the Enterprise could not dock to get the Enterprise's oil topped up quickly and now the Enterprise is seizing up from lack of oil because Kirk wants to run it into the ground.
Really this book is green. It's worst than poor.
In fairness to the author, the premise of Lorelei's powers (IIRC) is that there is something in the actual tones, the frequency of her voice that enables her to force others to do her bidding-- not that she uses compelling arguments and airtight logic to persuade people. There really isn't a way to 'show, not tell' that kind of aural effect; the most you can 'show' is a listener thinking and feeling one way and the next minute is thinking and feeling differently, and that's what Vardeman showed, competently (I would say). Perhaps it is a weakness of the book that he chose such a premise (which would probably be more effective in a filmed episode, where the director could use some creepy sound effect to indicate that the words themselves were becoming irrelevant, crowded out by some high-pitched tone or something, then cue the listener's sudden change of expression) but that really isn't a criticism of his execution as an author, but rather a criticism of choosing to write one type of story over another.
Digression: the above reminds me of John Updike's #1 rule for book reviewing: https://www.bookcritics.org/2006/06/08/reviewing-101-john-updikes-rules/ . Say what you want about Updike's fiction, but I always thought these rules were solid (yet regularly broken)
