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jrobles76's review against another edition
4.0
I have been away from Trek books for too long, this was a great re-entry to the book universe. What's fun about books is casting decisions are yours. Want a young Leonard Nimoy, Nichelle Nichols, and Majel Barret? Have at it! I did for the most part use the actual cast in my head, but it was fun to have the options. Definitely recommend for any Strange New World fans, which was the title of the fan fiction series in the books.
thxlbx's review
4.0
Read like a really good episode. Characters were spot on....could hear the actors voices in my head. Away team store--not much Enterprise...but a really good story and a fun read. Hope to see more books from the Strange New Worlds universe.
kakitalbot's review
adventurous
hopeful
lighthearted
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
3.5
keptinonzebridg's review against another edition
3.0
how many side characters are too many side characters? just pick up this book and you’ll get your answer. I wish we’d gotten to see more of the Enteprise crew, instead of all those different stories that barely entwined at the very end.
neilrcoulter's review against another edition
2.0
I’m not a huge Trek fan—I love the original series, and I’m somewhat familiar with The Next Generation and a few of the movies—but I really enjoyed the first season of Strange New Worlds. To me, it felt like exactly what Star Trek should be, and out of eight episodes in the season, only one was not good.
When I saw a Strange New Worlds novel, I didn’t have much hope that I’d love it, but I was curious to see how a novel would expand the characters I’d grown to love in the series. Predictably, the novel was not at all the “expand the characters” that I was looking for. There is something to be said for the taut, streamlined episodes of less than an hour. That’s the kind of adventure in which the characters can shine. This novel, by contrast, takes more time to read (I listened to the audiobook) and takes more days for the characters than the entire first season of the series. It’s just so, so long. And tedious. And convoluted. The story actually seems closer to a classic Doctor Who story, but even then, it’s like one of the six-episode stories where I feel that five—or even four!—episodes would have been adequate.
I found the story in The High Country very hard to follow and impossible to invest in. The new characters introduced in this book are corny, and the situation on the planet where the Enterprise crew are stranded seems completely implausible. The TV series rarely demands that I know every detail about other Star Trek series, but this book has what I assume are important connections to someone named Jonathan Archer and something he did in the past, presumably in an episode of a series I’ve never seen. Not much fun to hear people talking about Jonathan Archer and have no idea what they’re referring to, and the novel was not nearly intriguing enough to make me spend time looking around for explanations online.
At best, a Trek novel should enjoy more space and a broader canvas to consider questions of colonization and the Prime Directive that have to be sidelined or simplified in a TV episode. And The High Country has moments like that. But those good moments are overwhelmed by what I would call “frantic tediousness.” This is not a contemplative novel, but it’s also not a particularly exciting one.
The audiobook narrator puts his all into the reading, but even though he very accurately captured each character’s accent—eerily like the TV actors in some cases—I wasn’t drawn into the reading. All the female characters sounded whiny, which is exactly wrong for Una and annoying for all the others. The reading makes the book sound like an endless stream of wry quips, and that became annoying well before the end of disc 1 (of 13!).
What I learned: Strange New Worlds is great TV, but not great literature. Not a surprise. Really glad to be done with this book.
When I saw a Strange New Worlds novel, I didn’t have much hope that I’d love it, but I was curious to see how a novel would expand the characters I’d grown to love in the series. Predictably, the novel was not at all the “expand the characters” that I was looking for. There is something to be said for the taut, streamlined episodes of less than an hour. That’s the kind of adventure in which the characters can shine. This novel, by contrast, takes more time to read (I listened to the audiobook) and takes more days for the characters than the entire first season of the series. It’s just so, so long. And tedious. And convoluted. The story actually seems closer to a classic Doctor Who story, but even then, it’s like one of the six-episode stories where I feel that five—or even four!—episodes would have been adequate.
I found the story in The High Country very hard to follow and impossible to invest in. The new characters introduced in this book are corny, and the situation on the planet where the Enterprise crew are stranded seems completely implausible. The TV series rarely demands that I know every detail about other Star Trek series, but this book has what I assume are important connections to someone named Jonathan Archer and something he did in the past, presumably in an episode of a series I’ve never seen. Not much fun to hear people talking about Jonathan Archer and have no idea what they’re referring to, and the novel was not nearly intriguing enough to make me spend time looking around for explanations online.
At best, a Trek novel should enjoy more space and a broader canvas to consider questions of colonization and the Prime Directive that have to be sidelined or simplified in a TV episode. And The High Country has moments like that. But those good moments are overwhelmed by what I would call “frantic tediousness.” This is not a contemplative novel, but it’s also not a particularly exciting one.
The audiobook narrator puts his all into the reading, but even though he very accurately captured each character’s accent—eerily like the TV actors in some cases—I wasn’t drawn into the reading. All the female characters sounded whiny, which is exactly wrong for Una and annoying for all the others. The reading makes the book sound like an endless stream of wry quips, and that became annoying well before the end of disc 1 (of 13!).
What I learned: Strange New Worlds is great TV, but not great literature. Not a surprise. Really glad to be done with this book.
twistedspyder's review
adventurous
hopeful
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.5
allisonnaut's review
I've been trying to read this all year and couldn't get into it