courtney12345's review against another edition
5.0
Starts as a knock-off dune and ends as a PBS special about the dangers of climate change. Fun from beginning to end.
bev_reads_mysteries's review against another edition
3.0
Weinstein is good, but I think he's more at home with TOS characters. I find his novels about the original series much more compelling.
frakalot's review against another edition
3.0
I enjoyed this story. The characters were presently fairly perfectly. The scenario was very classic. The solution offered by the Enterprise was fair if not completely satisfying.
djwudi's review against another edition
3.0
Much better than the last one. While the environmental themes are pretty heavy-handed, it’s nice to find a Trek novel where everything isn’t wrapped up neatly with a bow by the end.
judenoseinabook's review against another edition
3.0
Surprisingly topical, even though it was written some years ago! A world is being destroyed by industrial pollution etc. A good read
octavia_cade's review against another edition
3.0
I quite enjoyed this, thinly veiled polemic as it was. The Enterprise has been tasked with distributing famine relief to a non-aligned planet suffering heavily from industrial pollution and exploitative environmental practices. This, combined with a changing climate, is going to lead to mass starvation and ecological collapse within fifty years. On top of that, there's essentially a civil war going on between the polluters and a splinter group of religious fanatics who, while caring primarily for the environment, are so wedded to dogma that they're largely as unwilling to compromise as the first lot.
As the book wound down, and I was getting to twenty pages or so from the end, I was thinking "Picard's going to have to come up with something pretty quick to solve this!" because that's what he does, generally. Not just him, but Starfleet captains in general. Trek tends towards optimism, so I expected a quick if not particularly credible fix. There wasn't one. Picard gets all sides to listen to his presentation on just how fucked they are... and it doesn't make a difference. On the one hand, that's quite a brave move by Weinstein, within the context of Star Trek, anyway. On the other, as I said, it's a very thin warning about what we're doing to our own planet, and if science fiction is often used as application and metaphor, well, sometimes I want a little more than that. Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed this quite a lot - I nearly gave it four stars, and tie-in novels don't get that often from me. It needed a little more character work for that, though, I think.
As the book wound down, and I was getting to twenty pages or so from the end, I was thinking "Picard's going to have to come up with something pretty quick to solve this!" because that's what he does, generally. Not just him, but Starfleet captains in general. Trek tends towards optimism, so I expected a quick if not particularly credible fix. There wasn't one. Picard gets all sides to listen to his presentation on just how fucked they are... and it doesn't make a difference. On the one hand, that's quite a brave move by Weinstein, within the context of Star Trek, anyway. On the other, as I said, it's a very thin warning about what we're doing to our own planet, and if science fiction is often used as application and metaphor, well, sometimes I want a little more than that. Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed this quite a lot - I nearly gave it four stars, and tie-in novels don't get that often from me. It needed a little more character work for that, though, I think.
More...