By BWilliams / 16:48, 6 April 2004 / Reviews - Books

As we know, four years passed between the events of INSURRECTION and NEMESIS, leaving the field wide open for almost anything to transpire for the NEXT GENERATION crew. By the time of NEMESIS, Riker and Troi will marry and move to the Titan, Riker’s new command, and Beverly Crusher will head up Starfleet Medical. But the series of events that set them on their path away from the Enterprise has never been told… until now.

In an all-new NEXT GENERATION series, Pocket Books fills in the gap with A TIME TO BE BORN by John Vornholt, the first in a series of nine novels that explains what happened in the year leading up to the events of NEMESIS. Each book in the series takes its title from the Book of Ecclesiastes, Chapter 2, and like its Biblical origins each novel explores the themes of each verse of Scripture. Like the previous LOST ERA series, each novel is designed to stand on its own merit while forming the tapestry for a larger saga waiting to be told. In this instance, A TIME TO BE BORN focuses on three specific aspects in the STAR TREK mythos.

One of the more well-publicized events focuses on Wesley Crusher, who as we all know returned for a brief on-screen cameo in NEMESIS, a return appearance analyzed and chronicled by Wil Wheaton on his official web site and by the fans. Leave it to John Vornholt to skillfully exploit this all-too-brief moment into a full-fledged storyline of its own. Without going into specifics, Wesley is forced to choose between remaining with the Travelers (the mysterious race of beings seen briefly in TNG’s “Where No One Has Gone Before” and “Journey’s End”) and returning home. Like the Q Continuum in VOYAGER, we are given our first look into the Travelers’ realm, a place beyond space and time. Such a look is well deserved, as we have been told absolutely nothing about the Traveler’s origins and realm, and Vornholt gives us our first tantalizing morsels into their lives, their world, and their beliefs. However, that’s all we’re given… just morsels. But such a journey has to start somewhere, and Vornholt has done just that.

Unfortunately, Vornholt leaves this plot thread dangling until about two-thirds of the way through the novel. But he manages to slowly but surely weave this plot thread back into the story, and in an interesting yet familiar way.

We are then thrust into the main story: the Enterprise-E is assigned to salvage operations in the Rashanar Sector, an area of space known as an intergalactic graveyard filled with the wrecks of hundreds of starships as a result of the Dominion War, to retrieve crucial Federation starship hardware and to keep it free from the hands of greedy scavengers looking for anything to make a quick buck. Vornholt throws a twist into the story, indicating basically that all may not be as it appears.

One of the key appeals of A TIME TO BE BORN lies not only in the main story itself, but also in the threads of the smaller character interludes woven throughout the novel. We see continuing elements picked up again, plucked, and caressed into the developments that ultimately occur in NEMESIS. We see the continual developments in the Riker/Troi romance, Picard and Crusher’s on-again, off-again romantic flirtation, and Data’s emotional chip.

However, this story has been a bit of a slow road to plod through at times and not one that picks up speed right away. That’s been my only problem with A TIME TO BE BORN. Vornholt takes his time in telling the story and setting up the events to come in the later books in this series. But by the novel’s final quarter, things pick up speed, unfortunately, for the worse. This is not the final word on the story, as it continues with A TIME TO DIE.

For now, sit back and enjoy the ride.

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