Another Howard Weinstein novel, and number fourteen The Next Generation novel.
As with Weinstein’s previous TNG novel, the story concerns a planet undergoing political turmoil resulting from environmental problems.
In brief: Polluting-aliens need help from eco-aliens whom they exiled a couple of centuries back. Political mish-mash and hand waving is needed from the Enterprise to negotiate this cooperative process. Internal complications ensue and the whole mess is finally cleaned up by a wearisome dues ex machina.
Comments:
Note: If you look at the dates, you’ll see that there’s a huge time gap between this post and the one previous to it. Unsurprisingly my initial motivation writing these reviews lost steam and finally stalled. Additionally, since this book was read all those months ago (c. 08/2010) I’ve had to write this based on my own notes made at the time (plus online references).
Based on my notes I can remember not liking many things about this novel. Insofar as trivial complaints: I suspect that I’m not alone in having an idea of what the various cannon character’s sound/talk like, and as a consequence judge novels on how close they align with that ideal. For me, at least, Weinstein doesn’t do Picard’s voice right. Also, given the number of gnomic phrases that pepper the story I’d guess the author wrote this novel with The Penguin Book of Quotes at hand.
More significant I think is the problem found often in mass paperback books, which is the simplicity of all the individual elements. This is a plot with an ethical message, but neither the plot nor the ethics are at all nuanced. The latter especially is unfortunate – for a book that ostensibly expressed the author’s concerns, it does very little to either convince the reader of anything nor assign any arguments. The range of ethical argumentation is limited to Exiles serving as a cautionary tale: if we (i.e. here and now) don’t clean up our act then Earth’s future will be unbearable, just like it is in this story. Oh, and animals are pretty. The message is legitimate, it’s just not enough to carry the whole book.
External links: There’s nothing worth clicking on yet at the memory wikis at the moment.
