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Finding little entertainment
on board the Starship Enterprise, Ensign Hoshi Sato, Ensign
Travis Mayweather and Crewman James Anderson become involved in a
role-playing game (RPG) run by Ensign Elizabeth Cutler. Their objective
is to retrieve the Universal Translator, lost somewhere in a Martian
city and surrounded by ravenous Martians. When the crew of the Enterprise
find a planet with intelligent life, Captain Jonathan Archer is eager to
make contact and reveal themselves to the inhabitants of the planet.
Subcommander T'Pol advises against revealing themselves until much is
known about these humanoids. Archer, impatient for his first contact,
does not wait and ends up blowing his first chance at glory. Angered by
the fowled up contact, and not understanding why the Fazi are so
structured and aren't just like the human race, he then blows another
meeting, this time on the viewscreen as the aliens cut the transmission.
Another race has been discovered on the southern continent. These
spider-like aliens mostly live underwater in the oceans. When an away
mission to take some reading of the structures on the southern continent
goes awry, Captain Archer is at a loss of what to do.
This is the first original novel
starring the crew of the Starship Enterprise, NX-01. It is based upon the characters on the television
show Enterprise, a precursor to the original Star Trek series shot in
the 1960s. This book takes place pretty darned early in the show's
history, so don't look for a lot of the characters to be fully
developed.
I was excited to start
reading my first Enterprise book, but was confused when the first
chapter contained some character that I knew little to nothing
about...and they were playing an RPG? Okay...this seemed a little
different, but I accepted it. After decades of knowing about the Prime
Directive, I had trouble with Archer just wanting to rush in with little
thought of how his actions would affect the Fazi. One thing I didn't
like about this book was how Archer was portrayed. I thought he was a
little to rash, or maybe a better word is "obsessed," with
making first contact, and damn the consequences! T'pol was great and the
authors did a grand job of nailing her character. They also did a good
job of writing Hoshi Sato. And once I accepted the RPG and Archer being
irrational, I quite enjoyed the book. Sure, I would have liked to see
more of the main characters of the television show, as we barely saw
Commander Charles "Trip" Tucker III, Lieutenant Malcolm Reed,
or Doctor Phlox, but that wasn't the focus of the book. Overall, I did
enjoy this book, but was hoping for a little more. So, if you are
looking for an Enterprise book, and since there are only two of them out
there right now, and the first one is just the pilot from the series
entitled Broken Bow, then you will want to pick this one up.
I rated this book a 7
out of 10. |
