What are you least favorite Star Trek novels?

[mattburgess]

Nobody likes criticism, but criticism can be constructive, and everybody comes across something they don't like. If there are authors on here that take offense, I apologise.

Personally, I really didn't like DS9's "Mission Gamma #1: Twilight." The story was okay but I thought the writing was really hard to read. Everything was explained, nothing was left to the imagination.
The slightest hand movements, for example, are needlessly detailed, slowing the pace of the story right down. My English lecturer used to suggest to us to think of words as pounds (or dollars, whatever), and that we should try to spend as little as possible as we write, because superfluous words are just that. Superfluous.

I don't know if I'm allowed to quote from the book, or if that is an infringement on some copyright laws or something, so I'll just say that the author is also always needlessly repeating the same information in chapters, as if feeling the need to always "catch us up." It gets very tiresome after the first few chapters.

And lastly, I know Star Trek is full of heroes, but people have their dark sides too. The entire DS9 cast comes across in this book as being so... perfect. Like they would never ever make a bad decision, do the wrong thing, think too badly about anyone, or hold a grudge. Again, it's really tiresome.

I found the same thing in the Avatar duology. The crews of DS9 and Enterprise got on so well. Every time two characters met for the first time it was like "They didn't know each other, but they instantly felt like they would get along." Main characters from different series are allowed to not get along. It's only natural, and conflict makes for better stories.

Just wanted to get those things out of my system, and see what the general consensus was

Peace.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

I thought Well of Souls was pretty dull. I don't think I even finished it.

 

[Thrawn]

Well, I don't think it's unrealistic for two of Starfleet's finest crews to get along well, but I suppose that's another argument.

For me, the 5 worst I've read so far have all been parts of Ordover's gimmicky miniseries:

A Time To Love
A Time To Hate
Double Helix: Red Sector
Double Helix: Quarantine
Day Of Honor: Treaty's Law

I just didn't give a crap about a single storyline or character in any of them. Bleh. Love/Hate just seemed scatterbrained and lacking any sort of logical flow, with the emotional conflicts being predictable and trite; Red Sector was a complete novel about a character I didn't care about hero-worshipping TOS people to a bizarre degree; Quarantine simply failed to contain a single interesting idea or character arc; and Treaty's Law I found to be condescending and as simplistic as you could possibly go. Klingons have been a warrior culture for some time now; you'd think at some point it would occur to them that the people they fight are... actually people too, and if not, the events of that book wouldn't have done it.

 

[mattburgess]

Well, I don't think it's unrealistic for two of Starfleet's finest crews to get along well, but I suppose that's another argument.

I can understand that two crews would get on, but the way every character just immediately loved each other... seemed like some fan's wet dream, to be honest. I hate that kind of writing. (personal preference)

 

[Therin of Andor]

Warped
The Laertian Gamble
The Final Nexus
Into the Nebula

I didn't have fun reading any of these. I ploughed through to the end, it was tedious, and I remember very little about them. But everyone's least favourite ends up being someone else's favourite, or the book that got them reading Trek.

I hate seeing "Twilight", "Avatar" and "Red Sector" earlier in the thread, because (for me) they were highly satisfying reads.

 

[DanTheGrey]

Engines of Destiny. I stopped reading TrekLit in the mid-90's and didn't resume until 2006. This was the 3rd novel I read after my return and I almost abandoned TrekLit again because of it. I hated this book with a passion and the day after it was done it was donated to the local library to get it out of my house.

 

[Ktrek]

Star Trek Academy - Collision Course It was the first time I ever wanted to actually destroy a Star Trek book and I own everything Pocket has printed and read most of them.

Kevin

 

[SiorX]

The one that immediately springs to mind for me is A Hard Rain.

I've read some other stuff by DWS and quite enjoyed it, but A Hard Rain is just grim. The plot makes absolutely no sense - I don't mind the cheesy use of Dixon hill, or the traditional hardboiled McGuffin hunt, but there's just no effort made to render it sensible in the context of the Trek universe.

I picked it up originally because there was so little Beverly-centric stuff available. Turns out that no Beverly at all is better than the cringe-inducing squick of "the Luscious Bev". In the end, I had to hide it at the back of my bookshelf until I could trade it in at a second-hand store.

I think where it goes so horribly wrong is that it takes hard-boiled gimmickry and forcibly super-imposes it on the TNG setting, squishing the regular characters to fit the archetypes instead of altering the archetypes to suit the characters.

Now when I see it in shops it feels almost like running into that person you hooked up with while you were both drunk, and it all went horribly wrong, and the worst thing is while you were very drunk, you weren't quite drunk enough for the blissful amnesia to have set in, so you try to avoid eye-contact but you know you're going to be mortified thinking about it for the rest of the day.

 

[Nerys Ghemor]

Olympus Descending--A short story, but I just...did not like the Nietzschean "surprise" at the end. I don't see what's wrong with some real mysticism in the Trekiverse every now and again without always having to do some kind of Wizard-of-Oz-curtains-up type moment. (Needless to say, I am a much bigger fan of the Oralian Way stories! I wasn't that pleased with the one attempt I saw to do this sort of moment to the Oralian Way...forget what book it was...but that one could easily be blown off as coincidence, which I chose to do.)

Also, I have already made my views known on the Min Zife assassination plot. Tacky, tasteless, and another reason I ended up turning away from Treklit for a long time (though "Olympus Descending" was the last straw).

(BTW, MUCH credit given to James Swallow for getting me back into modern Treklit--to an extent, anyway--after the disappointments mentioned above. Go, Terok Nor!!!)

Another I thoroughly despised was The Prometheus Design. What a nihilistic piece of dreck...though I suppose it's the inevitable result of being trapped in such a confining worldview as the characters seemed to be there.

 

[LightningStorm]

My Bottom 5 would have to be

TNG: Invasion: Soldiers of Fear
DS9: Worlds of DS9: Trill: Unjoined
NF: Gateways: Cold War
DS9: Mission Gamma: Twilight
TTN: Over a Torrent Sea (in the interest of full disclosure I haven't finished this one)

with dishonorable mention to:
TNG: Before Dishonor
The rest of the DS9: Mission Gamma books

 

[Nerys Ghemor]

Oh, Torrent Sea--totally forgot that one. But yes, it totally deserves "least favorite" mention. At least Sword of Damocles had the wonderful Zurin Dakal side-plot to save it!

Also, add anything NF.

 

[Nathan]

I not a fan of Torrent Sea as well -- I could barely get through it and have a bunch of friends who commented oon the same thing as well. I think I just had too high expectations as I usually like the author's previous stuff.

My least fav was TNG: Balance of Power, I thought what a cheezy plot device with the weapon auction and to get Doc Crusher in on the action was "Yea, Starfleet Medical gave me some slush $$$ to spend so I can get in on this auction" UGGH!!!!

 

[Red Ranger]

It's been quite some time since I read a ST novel -- I don't keep up with them as I used to when it was just TOS novels. I remember this dreadful novel written by Sondra Marshak and Myrna Culbreath, called The Prometheus Design. They just didn't get the characters, had a clumsy sense of the friendship between Kirk and Spock, and tried shoehorning some of their sensibilties into the ST universe, and it just didn't work. In looking them up on Google, I see they've written other novels, so I guess someone likes their work and take on Kirk and Spock. -- RR

 

[LutherSloan]

-The 'Belle Terre'/Challenger series
-The Lost Era 'Well of Souls'
-Engines of Destiny (clearly there was a reason why it was 'lost')
-The SCE series
-Before Dishonor
-Fearful Symmetry
-Resistance
-Genesis Wave Book 3
-Genesis Force
-Ship of the Line (surprised it hasn't been mentioned in this thread)

 

[Snaploud]

I can't list them because they never happened. Never. Happened. *glances at shredder*

Seriously, I usually don't get all the way through the really bad ones (unless they're part of a series).

 

[Nerys Ghemor]

Awwww, I liked Belle Terre...

 

[Desert Kris]

I made one trip into the world of Voyager fiction years ago, when Cybersong came out. I remember thinking the story developed kind of oddly. I hardly remember anything else about it, except maybe a crew member of Voyager who was an outsider...it was kind of unmemorable, not as exciting as I had hoped.

I had really high hopes and enthusiasm for Ship of the Line, with some apprehension about Kelsey Grammar's character on the front cover. I think that character and his crew deserved a seperate book. The same for the maiden voyage of that Enterprise, it deserved something a bit more dignified. Scotty is great, but with him, Bateman's crew, and the extended recapped sections of "Balance of Terror" by way of a holodeck program; jeez, it's just too many notes! Just cut a few, and it will be perfect. Don't get me started on the Cardassian subplot. Given how well the same author concocted such a surprising and intriguing maiden voyage for the orignal Enterprise in Final Frontier, I thought she could manage it for that newer ship; according the same respect and dignity. The book was shockingly unfocused.

 

[BillJ]

Destiny Book III

What was brilliant for two and two-thirds books just totally lost me at the end. Completely turned me off to The Next Generation re-launch.

 

[Defcon]

All-Time:

Triangle & The Prometheus Design by Marshak & Culbreath
Warped by K.W. Jeter
How much for just the Planet by John M. Ford
The Joy Machine by James Gunn
Ghost Ship by Diane Carey

In this Decade:

Kobayashi Maru by Mangels & Martin
Captain's Blood by Shatner and the Reeves-Stevens
Greater than the Sum by Christopher L. Bennett
Spirit Walk duology by Christie Golden
Sword of Damocles by Geoffrey Thorne

 

[HappyDayRiot]

Captain's Peril by quite some distance. Captain's Blood wasn't much better.