I enjoy Star Trek. I've seen all the movies, and many of the TV episodes (except for Deep Space 9 and Enterprise; I never got into those), but I had never read any Star Trek fiction. I'm glad I watched Star Trek: Generations recently. Otherwise I would not have liked this book much. The story of The Stuff of Dreams takes place some time after the Enterprise's encounter with the Nexus in the movie. The Enterprise returns to the Nexus to rendezvous with a Federation science ship, with orders to destroy the Nexus. It seems some unfriendly neighbors, the Kinshaya, have plans to claim the Nexus for nefarious purposes.
What follows is classic ST:TNG material. Picard's hunches are right, Geordi is smarter than the other Federation scientists, Worf is tough, the bad guys are really bad, and the Enterprise, though battered, prevails. In short, this is a ST:TNG TV episode, or maybe a double episode, in print. That is either criticism or praise, depending on how much you loved ST:TNG. If you've seen them all, and can't get enough of Picard and his crew, read on. If you're a casual viewer, content to watch reruns of ST:TNG, you might not want to pick this up. For both groups, this story is a bit of a tease; the great characters or ST:TNG have many more stories to tell. It's just too bad the TV show couldn't go on forever.
So the bottom line: James Swallow is a talented writer and tells a good story. Fans of Star Trek, especially TNG, will love this. General readers may feel like they've entered the middle of a stranger's family dinner and they don't know who anyone is or what's going on.
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Thanks to Edelweiss and the publisher for this complimentary electronic review copy!
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