Your LEAST favorite Star Trek Novel?

[Steve Roby]

In fact, I'm pretty sure there were two women glimpsed on Bateson's bridge.

Yep. Saw it again recently, and all you see on Bateson's bridge is him and two women, all of whom look much too relaxed to be fleeing a Klingon attack.

On the broader subject of unfavourite Trek books, I encounter fewer books on average these days that I don't like than I did a few years ago.

 

[JD]

Ship of the Line by a mile.

- The whole thing is basically a sequel to 10 seconds of Bateson on screen and the author gets that wrong. In the book it's an all male crew and on film there's a female crew member. It's like she had a story to tell and damn the facts.
- Kirk is such a god like character that that it only takes a hologram of him to convince Picard maybe he's a good captain after all.

It's just a book where every time someone said something or did something I was telling myself I don't freaking believe it.

You pretty much summed up my feelings on it. It misses the mark on every single count, and is a thoroughly awful book. By far the worst of Diane Carey's novels.

My other candidate for 'worst ever' is the A Time to Be Born/A Time to Die duology. There were so many other ways to start the events leading to Nemesis. There were so many better ways to tell this story. But nothing in this book feels remotely like the Star Trek universe we've come to know. The characterizations and settings are all wrong, and the books themselves are quite boring. Fortunately, the series improved, but this was a simply dreadful start.

While I have issues with the Voyager and TNG relanuches, neither one approaches the sheer crappiness of either of these two stories.

I still find it rather ironic that the A Time To... series started with one of my all time least favorite books (I only read about 70 pages of it, and never even bothered with Die) only to finish with three of my all time favorites. I actually liked the other four too, but just no where near as much as the last three.

 

[BillJ]

Anything by Diane Carey... god does she actually realize she writing sci-fi? I get forty or fifty pages in and am just completely bored by all the boating references.

 

[ronny]

I've been too lazy to pull out the DVD to watch that last minute myself. We've had this subject come up before and I had the same rant. I'm sure it will come up again and I'll have the same rant but I'll mention 2 crew members instead of one. And maybe I'll watch that DVD one of these days.

 

[OmahaStar]

Oh, there's quite a few I can't stand. Among them, anything by Marshak and Culbreath ... I know what they were aiming for, but I wonder if they knew?

The Mirror Universe book by Christopher Bennett. How can one person get everything he writes so wrong? Actually, I should just put everything by that "writer" in the same category. I've pretty much despised everything he's put out. "Bad fanfic" describes it pretty well.

Diane Carey - Everything. Just freaking everything.

Cardassia by Una McCormack ... The story was fine, it was her telling of it that was awful. Her writing style just grated on my nerves.

Spock's World by Diane Duane ... I started this when it first came out. It wasn't bad, exactly, it was just so wrong. What I knew of Vulcans at that point had come from Jean Lorrah and other Trek writers. They had been rather consistent in their descriptions of the planet and its people. Then Spock's World came along and pretended everything before it hadn't happened. I talked with the author years later, and she said she had been told to ignore everything and, since it was the first hardcover, reinvent the world from the ground up. That's nice and all, but it still took me over a year to get through it, in one to two page doses.

The first two A Time To... books were not just boring, they were sleep-inducing. There are so many Trek writers out there, why start off a multi-book series with such a *weak* two-parter?

 

[Reanok]

The reason I disliked Warped was the cruel portrayal of torturing and killing Cats and other animals and people in the book. It was really was disturbing that they had scenes like that in a trek book and bothered me to read it in a DS9 novel.I finished the book and never wanted to read it ever again. I didn't care for Ship of the line either.

 

[Osquevel]

I found Warped completely distateful and really hard to read. I have a massive collection of Trek books, but I actually threw that one away. When I got another copy in an eBay auction, I threw that away as well.

There were many aspects of the first two Mirror Universe anthologies that I really disliked, and likewise many parts of the A Time To series that have made reading it a real ordeal. They are not completely lacking in positives, but I really struggled through them. I'm not really a fan of many Trek books from recent times.

I actually didn't mind Warped. Granted it was one of the first trek audiobooks I'd "read" and I've only listened to the abridged version; but it never struck me as completely awful... perhaps the abridgment did it a service.

I also didn't mind A Time To Be Born (haven't gotten to Die yet) and while it wasn't really all that much of a "Wham! Bang!" introduction to a major series and while there were certain elements that could have been handled better (I was never quite satisfied with the depiction of the Captain of the Juno -- there wasn't enough explained, just "she's by the book") it wasn't abysmal.

 

[BryanSorensen]

I was not fond of the New Earth Series. Well, maybe just the last 3 parts. Part 1 was a great way to introduce the story; the trip to the planet. Perhaps it was a little too drawn out just getting there. 2 and 3 were ok, like i said with the first 1 being a little too drawn out. and the last part i didnt bother with. The Challenger series of books(all 2 of them) really didnt interest me at all and sorta was just thrown in there. I didnt like the Enterprise novel By The Book either. I read the first 4 chapters and got lost in Hoshis insecurities that i didnt think were depicted that bad in the show. The book made her seem like she was 15 again trying to figure out what it all means to be a grown up. i could be reading into that wrong but thats what ive felt like. Every toher book ive read that i have in my collecetion i have enjoyed besides those mentioned above. Anyone that wants a gander at that list can pm me

 

[ProwlAlpha]

Shadow Lord - Out of the pre-95 books, I disliked that one the most. Not even a Trek story.

Most of the pre-1995 books were pretty boring and repeated the same plots.

 

[Nerys Ghemor]

Oh...I enjoyed the New Earth series, as well as Spock's World. (I haven't met a bad Diane Duane novel, even though I think Intellivore could've been improved.)

One of my least favorites was The Prometheus Design. First off..."full Vulcan command mode"? What the hell? And then there was the absolute freaking nihilism of the entire book. I can see where maybe some people would think that was great sci-fi, but it left a really bad taste in my mouth, and I don't know how I got through it.

For TNG, I'd say Planet X. It read like bad fanfic. Do Comets Dream? had an interesting idea but won the BAD EDITING award. I have NO idea how something with that many typos and screwups got released.

I also had huge problems with Worlds of Deep Space Nine: The Dominion. They couldn't have come up with a more blatant Nietzsche lovefest if they'd tried. Beyond the fact that I found it aggravating on grounds of my own beliefs, I also thought it flew against everything else that's been going on with DS9 AND the Relaunch. I mean, look at what's going on not just with Bajor's faith, but the Oralian Way: there are no pat answers when it comes to those two faiths. The whole "God Is Dead" metaphor just does not work thematically against that. I'm not saying every myth has to be truth, but I just thought this one was particularly brazen, the way it was handled. This was bad enough to put me off of the entire relaunch for years, until I decided to take a risk (one that paid off) on Terok Nor.

But last and most infamous (to me): the entire misfire that is New Frontier. I have no idea how Peter David ever got the clearance to launch an entire series on this anyway--it's like a parody of Trek, in my opinion.

 

[Trent Roman]

I know Starfleet is short-staffed and everything but there is surely no way in hell Tom Paris is ready to be a first officer.

Or would even want to be. Paris found respect in his job, but he's never been a Starfleet man; rather, he forms select, powerful ties of friendship and loyalty. So for him to leave behind his wife and child in order to further his career... mind-boggling. Like he's regressed to his 'irresponsible rogue' persona from the earliest episodes... except even then he had more loyalty to people than ideals. Honestly, sometimes one thinks Golden hadn't a clue what to do with half these characters, which is why they get plugged into random and non-sensical roles (Kim at security, the EMH and Seven sidelined in a think tank...) or vanish altogether (Tuvok, Barclay).

EDIT:

I also had huge problems with Worlds of Deep Space Nine: The Dominion. They couldn't have come up with a more blatant Nietzsche lovefest if they'd tried. Beyond the fact that I found it aggravating on grounds of my own beliefs, I also thought it flew against everything else that's been going on with DS9 AND the Relaunch. I mean, look at what's going on not just with Bajor's faith, but the Oralian Way: there are no pat answers when it comes to those two faiths. The whole "God Is Dead" metaphor just does not work thematically against that. I'm not saying every myth has to be truth, but I just thought this one was particularly brazen, the way it was handled. This was bad enough to put me off of the entire relaunch for years, until I decided to take a risk (one that paid off) on Terok Nor.

That's funny; I've also stated my philosphical objections to Olympus Descending (despite the fact that I consider it well-written), but from the opposite angle: I couldn't reconcile the notion of the Founders as such devoted theists with the fact that they had created a power structure based on what they know to be false claims to divinity. Too much cognitive dissonance. I'd never looked at it as a kind of Nietzchean metaphor before; maybe I should re-read the story with that background in mind, I might enjoy it more.

Fictitiously yours, Trent Roman

 

[Steve Roby]

Oh...I enjoyed the New Earth series, as well as Spock's World. (I haven't met a bad Diane Duane novel, even though I think Intellivore could've been improved.)

Kinda sounds like you might be confusing Diane Carey (New Earth) and Diane Duane (Spock's World). One of those things is not like the other. At all.

 

[Nerys Ghemor]

I also had huge problems with Worlds of Deep Space Nine: The Dominion. They couldn't have come up with a more blatant Nietzsche lovefest if they'd tried. Beyond the fact that I found it aggravating on grounds of my own beliefs, I also thought it flew against everything else that's been going on with DS9 AND the Relaunch. I mean, look at what's going on not just with Bajor's faith, but the Oralian Way: there are no pat answers when it comes to those two faiths. The whole "God Is Dead" metaphor just does not work thematically against that. I'm not saying every myth has to be truth, but I just thought this one was particularly brazen, the way it was handled. This was bad enough to put me off of the entire relaunch for years, until I decided to take a risk (one that paid off) on Terok Nor.

That's funny; I've also stated my philosphical objections to Olympus Descending (despite the fact that I consider it well-written), but from the opposite angle: I couldn't reconcile the notion of the Founders as such devoted theists with the fact that they had created a power structure based on what they know to be false claims to divinity. Too much cognitive dissonance. I'd never looked at it as a kind of Nietzchean metaphor before; maybe I should re-read the story with that background in mind, I might enjoy it more.

Whereas I get cognitive dissonance from the way the Prophets and Oralian Way have been treated. Especially if you read Garak's firsthand account of the latter in A Stitch in Time and the account of Astraea in Terok Nor, the overriding theme seems to be that there's something more going on than meets the eye. Especially in the case of the Oralian Way and some of the phenomena surrounding it, there has not been any definitive be-all end-all explanation behind it. The Bajoran religion, if anything, has expanded: we now have the Eav'oq and the Ascendents somehow tied to the Prophets. As for the Oralian Way...there are compelling reasons to see it as possibly connected. Consider also that the Prophets apparently went all the way to Earth on at least one known occasion, and you're starting to approach epic magnitude here.

It's almost reminding me more of nuBSG than the Roddenberry strict-atheist vision. That made Olympus Descending extremely jarring. I would've expected that of New Frontiers, not of the DS9 relaunch.

Oh...I enjoyed the New Earth series, as well as Spock's World. (I haven't met a bad Diane Duane novel, even though I think Intellivore could've been improved.)

Kinda sounds like you might be confusing Diane Carey (New Earth) and Diane Duane (Spock's World). One of those things is not like the other. At all.

No confusion--just talking about two different things at the same time and could've worded that better. Two different posters voiced objections to New Earth, and to Spock's world and I tried to economize by responding to them at once. It backfired.

 

[Brian]

Ghost Ship (Diane Carey) comes to mind. I think I probably didn't like it because it was written before TNG actually aired, so it didn't really "feel" right after having seen some of the show. For one thing, Data uses contractions throughout.

The first Enterprise novel (By the Book, Dean Wesley Smith & Kristine Kathryn Rusch), for much the same reason. They referred to "Ensign Hoshi" all through it.

Correct me if this is the wrong book, but if it's right I think it points to a general dislike of Diane Carey's writing style. The first book in the Invasion! series, the TOS entry First Strike. Does that one have a scene on Capella IV, which takes place shortly after "Friday's Child"? If that's the right book, I remember stopping reading at some point, thinking that Kirk's internal monologue about the loyalty he inspires in his crew was sorely misplaced in the middle of a hand-to-hand combat scene. I looked forward and back and found that the monologue stopped the action in its tracks for several pages. It was like this knife fight was going on, them bam! "Mental Ode to Kirk, by Kirk" derailed the story.

 

[Christopher]

For one thing, Data uses contractions throughout.

As he did in virtually every episode prior to "Datalore" (and a couple of times in "Datalore," due to some poor script editing).

 

[Brian]

And... ?

It doesn't change the fact that I disliked the book. Should it?

 

[Christopher]

Just offering a little perspective. What you do with it is up to you.

 

[Brian]

Sorry, snap judgement. It seems that often enough to be quite annoying around the BBS, when one states an opinion, the opinion gets attacked for being "wrong" and you get challenged with demands to cite examples, references and such, and dumped on with reasons why your own opinion is wrong. I thought you were doing the latter. Apologies.

 

[JD]

The Mirror Universe book by Christopher Bennett. How can one person get everything he writes so wrong? Actually, I should just put everything by that "writer" in the same category. I've pretty much despised everything he's put out. "Bad fanfic" describes it pretty well.

Do you mean Myriad Universes? Because he hasn't done any Mirror Universe stuff.

 

[Christopher]

Do you mean Myriad Universes? Because he hasn't done any Mirror Universe stuff.

Well, I have done one thing: the Mirror Titan story "Empathy" in next January's Shards and Shadows anthology. (Or, rather, a story with the Mirror counterparts of Titan characters, not the Titan itself.)