Customer Reviews
A few flaws, but still good
This is astonishingly the first time I've given a Peter David novel less than a 5 star rating! This is one of those types of books were you read certin things in the plot and wonder "Was there a huge underlineing signifigance about this part, that I missed, or what?"
Be mindful, though, that this book did have some very good points. Some surpriseingly drimatic points. Like Picard's encounter with a mirror image of him self as Locutus of Borg - or Q's travels in the vally of dispair. (Truely, I could almost feel the hopelessness.) The characters were very in-character. (Why another reviewer would think otherwise is a mystery to me. There always seem to be people who think that, for the strangest and unkown reasons.)
The story, as a whole, is very symbolic - which, based from past Star Trek episodes, you'd expect. Symbolism can be very confuseing, sometimes, but some times, also, very enjoyable. I think the "End of the Universe" plot of this story was very symbolic of our approching "End of the Century" Which I found as a very enjoyable twist. The symbolism, though, gets strange at the end, concerning the end of the universe. (Which we wen't really told how it ended.) But, then again, to not understand is to truely understand.
A good book, but not really worth the cost of a normal hard cover. (Too small for a hardcover) Wait for the paper back, which might look a little bigger in terms of size.)
"I'm not a demi-god but I play one on TV"
It definitely took John DeLancie, the man who plays Q, to know more about what Q does and does not do than any author could manage on his own. If co-author Peter David had not joined DeLancie in this book's writing and wrote it himself, he still have would have needed to put DeLancie on his speed dial. That notwithstanding, all this book has going for it is the fact that it's the only one with the Great Omnipotent Smartass himself as main character. Apart from that, it's fairly mediocre as stories go, particularly Peter David material. There are all sorts of borrowed cliches here. The part where the Universe As We Know It begins to come to an end in a humongous whirlpool? Poe's "Descent Into the Maelstrom" gets raided there. The freight train that's been loaded with Good Guys by Bad Guys who are taking them to be exterminated? Any Holocaust story, particularly "War and Remembrance" by Wouk. You get a mental picture of Cardassian stormtroopers bellowing "LOS!....LOS!" as they throw people into the boxcars. Even an in-house cliche--Q can't understand why Data wishes he were human when he's already superior to us. Know what I can't understand? Why that question is still important to Q when Trek writers for both the screen and the page realized it was getting old along about the third season? The Data we know now has outgrown that old Scarecrow Of Oz dilemma. I'm glad I waited for the paperback edition.
Powerful !!
This is the best book of Star Trek kind I ever read. From the beginning to the end, very philosophical and interesting.
