What are you least favorite Star Trek novels?
- Thread starter mattburgess
- Start date
A
Amaris
Guest
"How Much For Just The Planet?" by John M. Ford
Which is crazy, because I absolutely love "The Final Reflection".
I wanted that book to have a hundred extra pages.
J.
Which is crazy, because I absolutely love "The Final Reflection".
I wanted that book to have a hundred extra pages.
J.
Well I hesitated to post about Imzadi because I know it is loved. I was never going to like it because:
1. Really dislike Peter David. I have tried NF and just couldn't hack his writing style. Was forced to read Before Dishonor to follow the relaunch and threw that book across the room at least once.. and no it wasn't just the death, it was the writing style. (Imzadi was the first book of his I read so I did not read it with any predjudice).
2. Not a romance person. The only Trek romance I have enjoyed in Treklit was some of the Klingon liasons etc.. in KRAD's I.K.S. Gorkon trilogy. These were interesting, believable, enjoyable and not burdened with long drawn out chapters and years of angst. I just don't find all that angst appealing and Imzadi was full of it. I find a lot of romance is written as though the characters are in high school when in fact they are Starfleet officers, veterans of wars and mature adults.
So if you combine my least favorite author with my least favorite storyline you have a recipe for book hurling.
1. Really dislike Peter David. I have tried NF and just couldn't hack his writing style. Was forced to read Before Dishonor to follow the relaunch and threw that book across the room at least once.. and no it wasn't just the death, it was the writing style. (Imzadi was the first book of his I read so I did not read it with any predjudice).
2. Not a romance person. The only Trek romance I have enjoyed in Treklit was some of the Klingon liasons etc.. in KRAD's I.K.S. Gorkon trilogy. These were interesting, believable, enjoyable and not burdened with long drawn out chapters and years of angst. I just don't find all that angst appealing and Imzadi was full of it. I find a lot of romance is written as though the characters are in high school when in fact they are Starfleet officers, veterans of wars and mature adults.
So if you combine my least favorite author with my least favorite storyline you have a recipe for book hurling.
I disagree on Diane Carey, but I have to agree on MJF. I try not to judge against all an author's work, but I have noted that most of of the TOS novels that left me quite disappointed were by him. I really had high hopes for Shadows on the Sun and the Gary Mitchell trilogy, and I love continuity porn, but I feel they were just wasted in these...
I'm of a mind to say "Anything by Diane Carey that's not TOS". Final Frontier was great but the rest of her output ranges from OK to making my worst ST books list with the worst of the worst being her TNG novels.
Reunion is a stand out book by Michael Jan Friedman, I don't think anything else matches that, in fact some of his stuff is pretty bland and I just did not get in to Shadows on the Sun, but he's not even close to being on my least favorite authors list.
I happened to have read Dyson Sphere last week and I concur. Even though it's one of those 200 page books with big print and lots of space around the text, etc, meaning a very short book, I still had to struggle to get to the end.
A
Amaris
Guest
I'm currently reading VOY's The Garden by Melissa Scott and she really does not have a handle on the characters at all. It is the eleventh book in the series, and is placed just before the episode Prototype, 2x13, but she seems to have no clue.
The calls the conference room the ready room throughout the whole book, Janeway's replicator in her quarters is apparently from the 23rd century as it has a door that slides back to reveal what she has just ordered, the door to her actual ready room is opened by a button on her desk, and here's the kicker (as if the rest wasn't bad enough), her desk has a "ship's status display" section which tells her that everything is working smoothly.
Please tell me if any of that is based on having actually watched any single episode of the series. Paris and Chakotay don't talk to each unless they have to, the crew ignores Paris and Janeway calls her exec, Mr Chakotay throughout the book.
At least the story is somewhat plausible, except for one glaring fact, Janeway is giving away transporter technology to an alien race that has something similar but more primitive for desperately needed supplies.
The calls the conference room the ready room throughout the whole book, Janeway's replicator in her quarters is apparently from the 23rd century as it has a door that slides back to reveal what she has just ordered, the door to her actual ready room is opened by a button on her desk, and here's the kicker (as if the rest wasn't bad enough), her desk has a "ship's status display" section which tells her that everything is working smoothly.
Please tell me if any of that is based on having actually watched any single episode of the series. Paris and Chakotay don't talk to each unless they have to, the crew ignores Paris and Janeway calls her exec, Mr Chakotay throughout the book.
At least the story is somewhat plausible, except for one glaring fact, Janeway is giving away transporter technology to an alien race that has something similar but more primitive for desperately needed supplies.
Yes, I am. They just didn't do it for me. The plot about Kirk having to break the news to Gary's family worked for me, but the "A" plots, especially the bit about the "super Klingons" just left me cold.
But it was just after I read Janus Gate, which I loved, so my expectations might have been too high.
That's really weird, that there was such a publishing delay that the 13th book in the series was being written before the show aired. How long was it, from when you started writing to when the book came out?
Wow....I liked the My Brother's Keeper series...lol
I haven't read Janus Gate trilogy yet, so I can't make a comparison...
A
Amaris
Guest
Wow. We have opposite tastes in that department. Janus Gate left me completely cold. I swear I fell asleep 9 or 10 times just trying to finish it. No offense, of course.
J.
Seems ridiculous IMO, that so many books got out before the show started, especially since The Garden is actually placed WITHIN THE SECOND SEASON in Voyages of Imagination and Memory Beta.
^^ You should probably bear in mind that VOY's first season was a midseason replacement, so the fact that a book came out in its second season without the writer getting the chance to see it beforehand makes some sense -- if they were writing during the spring of '95 before VOY premired and it came out in the fall, that would be a very short publishing cycle for a novel but still be arriving in bookstores in time for the second season to have started. It's not exactly the same thing as if VOY had started in the fall of '94 like a show with a full first season would have.
Well, no, not really. It was one of the premiere shows when the UPN network launched. But, UPN didn't launch until January, 1995, so the larger point about the limited time the show was on air does stand.
Then again, The Garden released in February, 1997, in the middle of VOY's 3rd season, so who knows what the issues were...
Actually both DS9 and VGR had January premieres, and they both had 20-episode first seasons. However, UPN decided to hold back four of VGR's first-season episodes until the second season so they could begin their fall season early and get a headstart on the big networks, so VGR only aired 16 episodes in its first broadcast season. (The second production season was a full 26, again with four held back, and the third production season was only 22; from the fourth season on, production and broadcast seasons were lined up again.)
TNG: Before Dishonor
Summed up with this:
"Oh, hello Spock! Hi Jellico! Hi Calhoun! Hi "Lady" Q! Hi Janeway! Hi etc..."
Okay, I understand that Janeway was essential to the plot, but I hate that she became a Borg Queen and then dies at the end. BTW, I heard that Peter David disliked Voyager. I don't know if it's true or not, but he seems to not have a thorough knowledge of the show.
The other characters weren't needed. Did Captain Calhoun and his crew from New Frontier need to show up out of nowhere? No. Neither did Spock.
VOY: Ragnarok
The crew totally violates the Prime Directive in a stupid way. I forced myself to finish it.
Summed up with this:
"Oh, hello Spock! Hi Jellico! Hi Calhoun! Hi "Lady" Q! Hi Janeway! Hi etc..."
Okay, I understand that Janeway was essential to the plot, but I hate that she became a Borg Queen and then dies at the end. BTW, I heard that Peter David disliked Voyager. I don't know if it's true or not, but he seems to not have a thorough knowledge of the show.
The other characters weren't needed. Did Captain Calhoun and his crew from New Frontier need to show up out of nowhere? No. Neither did Spock.
VOY: Ragnarok
The crew totally violates the Prime Directive in a stupid way. I forced myself to finish it.
Similar threads
- Poll
