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It is only two days before the end of the universe and only
Q knows it. Of course it wouldn't be a Trek celebration
without guests and a gaseous anomaly. When the anomaly appears,
members of the major races encounter it, whilst around Gorsach
IX Picard and his new crew encounter a perfect planet, perfect
enough to be artificial. Here is a conundrum created by Them
and if Picard cannot work his way through this particular
Gordian knot, the price of failure is the end of everything...
Star
Trek: The Next Generation: Q&A is the new Trek
book by Keith R. A. DeCandido. Now Keith is a well known writer
in the Trek Universe, with many fine books under his
belt, so I don't really understand what happened with this
one.
There
is little, by way of criticism that can be levelled at his
writing style. It is very straight forward and unchallenging,
which is not a problem as it's the sort of thing that you
would generally look for in a genre book. Lets face it, it's
horses for courses. I doubt James Joyce could have written
this without going off on one, mind you it would be an interesting
read.
The
main problem with Q&A is that it is, for the most
part boring. I grant you that it is a real page turner, but
only in the sense that you could actually skip pages at a
time without loosing much of the plot. Fans of Q will be disappointed
by the first part of the book as he only appears in interludes
which do little more than recount his previous encounters
with the crew of the Enterprise, whilst at the same
time trying to tie them all together to give the impression
that they were all part of a greater plan.
There
are also endless references to the last Borg incursion, with
few real details, so I can only surmise that DeCandido wrote
the last Borg story and was so pleased with the result that
he felt the need to add in numerous references which amount
to little more than an irritating advert. It wouldn't have
been so bad if more background information had been included,
which would have allowed the rest of us, who missed the book,
to join in.
Q&A
also suffers from small universe syndrome. So an anomaly pops
up, as they do in the Trek universe, and is detected
by the major races. What do you think is the chance that the
main characters involved have never met each other, or interacted
in endlessly referenced books and film? I'll save you the
bother; the chances are next to zero.
So
the end of the universe is possibly here, or realistically
not, still how has the author cranked up the tension? Well,
we get to enjoy a peek into Picard's and Dr Crusher's love
life, Geordie spends time contemplating his navel and missing
Data, and some woman, who I didn't really care about, bangs
on and on about her kids, apart from that nothing really happens
for the first two hundred pages.
All
in all a disappointing book that just confirms that this is
how the Universe ends - not with a bang, but with a whimper.
Charles
Packer
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