Trek Books that are just horrible -- new and old

[Christopher]

Also, the fact that

Spoiler: Metamorphosis

it was all a dream

really annoyed me. Surely someone who is creative can come up with a better reason than that!

It's been a long time since I read it last, but I think

Spoiler: ditto

it's not that it was a dream so much that it was a timeline that was reset at the end, an alternative reality that Data was given the opportunity to choose but ultimately decided not to. Still kind of an It's a Wonderful Life scenario, but not just a dream.

 

[Relayer1]

Fallen Gods and Peaceable Kingdoms were the worst 24th century books in recent memory for me.

I rather enjoyed all of the 'The Fall' novels. The first one was the weakest but it was hamstrung by a lot of set up. It's main problem, however, was the interminable Kira b-story. I've never enjoyed those 'stuck in the wormhole' pieces...

 

[phurren]

Also, the fact that

Spoiler: Metamorphosis

it was all a dream

really annoyed me. Surely someone who is creative can come up with a better reason than that!

It's been a long time since I read it last, but I think

Spoiler: ditto

it's not that it was a dream so much that it was a timeline that was reset at the end, an alternative reality that Data was given the opportunity to choose but ultimately decided not to. Still kind of an It's a Wonderful Life scenario, but not just a dream.

You're right, I was just being flippant when I described as a

Spoiler: metamorphosis

dream but it had the same effect - it didn't happen and no-one remembered it

 

[borgboy]

I recently re-read Metamorphosis, and it wasn't one of my favorites either. I've read worse though. The end was poor, but given the premise, it was kind of necessary to make it work.

 

[JonnyQuest037]

The Last Roundup and Vulcan's Forge were both a bit dull in my opinion too.

I haven't read The Last Roundup, largely because it sounded like a totally redundant premise to me. Star Trek VI was the last roundup for the original crew, dammit!

Oddly enough, I didn't really have this problem with The Fearful Summons, maybe because I knew it was by the co-writer of STVI and used some unused sequences from that movie.

 

[DGCatAniSiri]

I recently re-read Metamorphosis, and it wasn't one of my favorites either. I've read worse though. The end was poor, but given the premise, it was kind of necessary to make it work.

Yeah, the novel was pretty much doomed to end like that from the start - since it was written around season two, there was no way that Data becoming human could stick, and there was also no way that there could be any opportunity for him to remember it because of the major effects it could have. The standalone nature of the novels at the time made it impossible.

That said, though it's been a while since I read it, I remember it fondly as a character study, and an example of 'be careful what you wish for.' I don't think the show could ever have explored Data being human in quite the same way. I think it was a story that was better suited for prose, given how it describes the differences for Data. Only so much of that could be conveyed visually.

 

[suarezguy]

I was recently disappointed by the TNG novels Nightshade (it keeps and keeps and keeps delaying advancing the mystery plot until the book is almost completely over) and The Romulan Prize (not terrible but with pretty one-note underwhelming villains and bizarre characterization of Starfleet, with the top command more militaristic/trigger-happy than the Enterprise-D crew).

 

[phurren]

I recently re-read Metamorphosis, and it wasn't one of my favorites either. I've read worse though. The end was poor, but given the premise, it was kind of necessary to make it work.

Yeah, the novel was pretty much doomed to end like that from the start - since it was written around season two, there was no way that Data becoming human could stick, and there was also no way that there could be any opportunity for him to remember it because of the major effects it could have. The standalone nature of the novels at the time made it impossible.

That said, though it's been a while since I read it, I remember it fondly as a character study, and an example of 'be careful what you wish for.' I don't think the show could ever have explored Data being human in quite the same way. I think it was a story that was better suited for prose, given how it describes the differences for Data. Only so much of that could be conveyed visually.

My problem with it though is that it is such a cop-out ending. Surely someone creative could come up with a better way of achieving the same result.

 

[doubleohfive]

I love most of Peter David's work, but Star Trek: The Next Generation - Vendetta: The Giant Novel was one of the books I missed when I was growing up in the '90s.

I finally got around to reading it a few years ago and was entirely nonplussed at the complete ridiculousnes of it. It had its moments, but upon further reflection was a real disappointment to me. Just awful.

As previously discussed:

(... and just to throw it in, if they were making a novel into a movie, I think Peter David's Vendetta would have been a way better Borg movie than First Contact, too!)

Oh Christ, no!

I just finished reading Vendetta for the first time since I was a little kid. I love Peter David's stuff, but this one was just awful. Sure, it's got lots of neat fanwanky interconnectivity to TOS, but it just reads like a bad episode script translated to prose.

Shelby doesn't do anything but roll her eyes and wish she were back on the Enterprise, Korsmo is an ego-maniacal blowhard with no sense of perspective or priorities, Picard spends the first half the book a horny, distracted idiot and the Rhianon subplot doesn't really do much to make the subplot itself worthwhile -- and continues the tiring cliche of Geordi being absoltuely pathetic with women.

Some of the cameos are nice -- seeing Pulaski again, Shelby ... but I wouldn't want to see this adapted as a film.

If you want to adapt a Peter David novel to film (and I'd certainly start with him if you're going to mine the novels) I'd suggest Q-Squared or perhaps the first Imzadi. Both were epic tales and Q-Squared especially seems ripe for the big screen.

 

[tomswift2002]

One book that I thought started off good but then ended terrible was "Power Hungry". For the first 200 pages it seemed like the author was hitting his mark, but then when he reached page 201 he realized his story was not going to be finished in the next 40-50 pages, so he just had, especially Picard, jump out of character very suddenly to where Picard just basically threw everything into the air and "said you go pick it up!" And you the reader are like "Huh?"

 

[BrentMc]

I'm studying writing and working on a Star Trek story here and there. I was reading this thread and it made me think: what makes a good Star trek story?

 

[Reanok]

I can't recall the title of the novel Diane Carey wrote for the Double Helix miniseries right now.But The only scenes I really liked were the ones with Spock and McCoy are working with the TNG crew trying to help find a cure for the disease mentioned in the miniseries.

 

[borgboy]

I hate to say it, but most of Diane Carey's books that I've read have been tedious and difficult reads.
The only one I can think of that I liked was her Invasion! TOS novel, I really liked the alien race and concepts introduced there.

 

[JD]

I'm studying writing and working on a Star Trek story here and there. I was reading this thread and it made me think: what makes a good Star trek story?

The same things that make any story good. Honestly, at this point, Star Trek has been so many different things, I don't think there is really any one answer to that question. I think it all depends on what kind of Star Trek story you are trying to tell.

 

[EnriqueH]

I hate to say it, but most of Diane Carey's books that I've read have been tedious and difficult reads.
The only one I can think of that I liked was her Invasion! TOS novel, I really liked the alien race and concepts introduced there.

I feel the same way about Vonda McIntyre's books, to be honest.

They get a lot of praise, but I remember being kinda annoyed by her writing style.

In 8th grade, I can remember thinking that her TWOK novelization felt like she wrote it in a hurry.

But then, I haven't read any of her stuff since around that time so I may feel differently if I read it now.

On the other hand, I remember really enjoying Diane Carey's Dreadnought novel. Again, I read it back when I was a teenager, so I may feel differently now.

 

[borgboy]

I did read Dreadnought recently, and I really didn't care for it. But different writing styles appeal to different people. Just because it didn't work for me doesn't mean there's not something there for someone else.

 

[The Laughing Vulcan]

With Diane Carey's later books (I recently picked up the first New Earth novel for a re-read), I want to smack all of her characters in the mouth! She writes them all as arrogant assholes, especially her personal god James Kirk, who bears no resemblance to the character from the show or the movies, or indeed other writer's novels. And please, if you want to write about tall sailing ships and the high seas, do so, don't shoehorn in warp drive and star travel and try to make it work with creaking decks and spray in the face! And don't get me started on the politics! Final Frontier is the only one of her novels that has stood up for me after all this time.

 

[Reanok]

With Diane Carey's later books (I recently picked up the first New Earth novel for a re-read), I want to smack all of her characters in the mouth! She writes them all as arrogant assholes, especially her personal god James Kirk, who bears no resemblance to the character from the show or the movies, or indeed other writer's novels. And please, if you want to write about tall sailing ships and the high seas, do so, don't shoehorn in warp drive and star travel and try to make it work with creaking decks and spray in the face! And don't get me started on the politics! Final Frontier is the only one of her novels that has stood up for me after all this time.

Well said laughing Vulcan That's a large problem I noticed in the New Earth books she wrote. I got tired of nautical stuff and her politics in the books was overdone. And the characters acted like jerks.This wasn't the Captain Kirk and Enterprise crew members I liked from the Tv series or movies.

 

[borgboy]

I haven't read any of Carey's newer books and I don't intend to, but out of curiosity, what are the political elements she incorporates? I vaguely remember hearing she was conservative, and that other people have commented on disliking her political agendas being shoehorned in the books.
And God yes, the nautical stuff! The novels I have read are lousy with the nautica. Her works do feel very divergent from what Trek should be. She has her own style, but it doesn't always suit Trek imo. I still have a few of her books in my to read stack in my massive marathon Trek read. I'm tempted just to give up on the ones I have left to get thru. I very nearly didn't finish Dreadnaught and whatever the companion book to that was. I've heard wretched reviews of Ship of the Line, with details like the female officers seen on screen being replaced with an all male crew. Why would any woman do that? I find diversity far more interesting than this erasure of minorities.
I also have Final Frontier and Best Destiny to read for the first time. I for sure will be re-reading her Double Helix and Invasion! novels since they're part of the crossover. Anybody have an opinion on those novels?

 

[Christopher]

Actually I've always felt Carey's nautical romanticism was a good fit for Star Trek. There's a long tradition of naval elements in Trek, from Kirk quoting John Masefield in both "The Ultimate Computer" and ST V to Worf's promotion ceremony in GEN, and a lot of stuff in between.

As for her politics, I think they're more libertarian than conservative, although these days it seems that libertarians have coopted the label "conservative" for themselves. Anyway, they never really stood out for me that much in her books, although I did feel that Dreadnought! had some characters giving philosophical lectures that I didn't quite agree with. But there's kind of a long tradition of libertarian SF writers, including Robert Heinlein (in some parts of his life, anyway) and Poul Anderson. Just because someone's politics are different from one's own, that doesn't mean one can't enjoy their writing. Their points of view may inform their stories, but part of being well-read is exposing oneself to other points of view.