Do Comets Dream? Review, ** / ***** | Report this post to moderator
By: egervari (Odo's file, contact) @ 21:31:26 on Jul 20, 2003

The book starts off well for the first 100 pages, as we learn about a xenophobic and highly religious race that wants to die by the means of a comet that arrives every 5,000 years. This race also has a very strict caste system and a bunch of stuff is really messed up, but they are perfectly cool with it. The beginning reads much like a real Star Trek episode that you would expect from the 4th season (I got that feeling anyway). However, the book is seperated into 4 parts, each clearly dealing with a new aspect/transition of the story, but the 3rd part is simply rubbish (pages 130-200 basically).

When I closed in on page 200, I decided this book was really terrible. My reasons for not liking the book are not because of the canon/continuity (as some people have stated), but the book is really poorly written past page 130. This section isn't polished and there is much confusion. The author uses the phrases, "he thought" and "he said" all the time, never referring to who is saying what. Since everyone in that dragon machine is linked to the past and contains all these new parallel characters with no introductions, so it can be very mind boggling.

I can't get over all the characters' names (which are up to 5 words long) and the actual language itself used in the book. It's as if every strange word begins with a 't' (except for that hallucination drink, that begins with a 'p') and they range from 8-20 letters long. It was very hard to understand what the heck the author was talking about half the time.

I think using Data as a conduit for linking the past and the future worlds was never well stated or described and it's hard to build nice mental pictures of all the people and scenes going on. Many times people would move from one place to another and no explanation would be given. Other times people would be the mother or brother of someone else, but you'd find this out chapters later.

The scenes where Deanna is connected with the boy in the comet are equally confusing. Most of the dialog never makes any sense and it keeps referring to all these proper nouns that have a very specific meaning. The problem is that they are only mentioned once throughout the book and are never defined so you have no idea what the author is talking about. Then he mentions more specific religious items and figures, as if we are supposed to be familiar with all this background material. I find it really hard to believe that anyone could know the background of these twin planets and their religion as well as the author just by reading any of this stuff. You'd have to read the 3rd part 2 or 3 times unless you are Data himself.

I believe this is a very mediocre piece of science fiction. I believe the author just used Star Trek: TNG as a launching pad for his crazy story in the first place. Pages 130-200 are just filled with rubbish. I don't know what the author or Pocket Books was thinking when they put the Star Trek label on this one. It's not even a real Star Trek story past this point.

However, I did find it interesting that one advanced race built the comet and these biological machines, and are using them to destroy the civilization, building an entire religion around it. However, all the fluff and disconnected conversations and explanations talked about nothing.

At leat I found the last 65 pages (part 4) was a lot better. The ending was actually pretty cool since everything was fulfilled and how the minor characters actually had a purpose, except for Envig that is - he was a useless character except for a convenient plot device in a few occasions at the beginning of the book.

I would advise all to stay very much away from this one. I'm not sure all these 5 star are are warrented on Amazon. I too have written books and I know what's it like to have the publisher or friends hype the book. Many of them are also anonymous and that makes me wonder about their validity. This book really isn't worth your money. Try some other TNG or DS9 books instead, like A Stitch in Time, which is a great book.

Reply

Quote

RE: Do Comets Dream? Review, ** / ***** by sttngfan 1701d @ 03:02:55 on Jul 29
    RE: Do Comets Dream? Review, ** / ***** by Brikar @ 01:09:36 on Jul 30
    RE: Do Comets Dream? Review, ** / ***** by egervari @ 07:10:05 on Jul 29