15th October 2010

Daedalus's Children is a very similar book to its predecessor. It continues the story of Enterprise's crew trapped in a parallel universe where they are allergic to the food, in the middle of a civil war that they feel partially responsible for.

Unlike the first book, this one doesn't just focus on Trip, adding in Captain Archer as a second character to align the reader to. Neither character comes across particularly well though - Tucker feels less stereotypically southern but otherwise both are a sort of bland superhuman without any real emotion. The other main characters from the series are just given rather cursory bit parts, with the possible exception of Travis who at least gets a little bit of action before his limelight is stolen away again.

Stern's grasp of science continues to be lacking, which is rather unfortunate for what is at root a science fiction novel. His interpretation of parallel universes leaves a lot to be desired and one particular statement renders the most important plot point contradictory. It's almost as if he had half heard of several concepts and rammed them together and tried to make up the rest without any research.

I found it hard to get going with this. My motivation was particularly sapped by the direness of the previous novel, and so I wasn't too disappointed that this book lived up to those expectations. I wouldn't recommend you bother win either half of the duology - they add nothing to the Star Trek experience.

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27th August 2010

I've had this book for several years, probably since it was published, but until now had not got around to reading it. I soon found out why.

The book focuses on Trip Tucker, as Enterprise and its crew are captured by an alien dictator who seemingly appears out of nowhere while they are investigating a spatial anomaly. Trip manages to evade capture only to find himself being drawn into the local war.

The style of writing is horrendous in its simplicity. I found it really hard to focus on the words and found I was only skim reading the entire novel, something I've never known to happen before. It's writing in a very casual manner, almost like a first draft where the author is just bashing out whatever comes to mind rather than caring about how it comes across.

I found the absence of the other main characters annoying. I like ensemble pieces from my star trek novels, and even Hoshi (who is misnamed throughout as Ensign Hoshi rather than Ensign Sato) who seems to be tagging along for the ride is soon conveniently written out. The romance sub-plot feels unnecessary and in there only to pad out the length, and the main plot itself is filled with thinly veiled coincidences. Its most redeeming feature is the end, which gives a nice 'ah-ha moment' and a lot of earlier things start to click into place. It almost makes up for some of the really bad science from earlier.

Overall I have to say I was disappointed. I'm not sure how I'm going to bring myself to read part two. This came over as a badly thought through and badly written implementation of what could have been a nice idea.

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