Reviews

The Last Roundup by Christie Golden, David Kaye

toastlover1's review against another edition

2.0

Whenever I see a Star Trek book at a thrift store or library book sale, I usually pick it up if there is any chance I haven't read it because reading these books give me a pleasant sense of nostalgia. However, this one was so poorly executed that I received no enjoyment at all. I've been off and on reading it for the last couple months because i hate to leave a book unfinished, but I have finally given up over 200 pages in. The writer has a decent understanding of structure, and the novel cuts from scene to scene and character to characters appropriately. Her writing style is effective, if not innovative, and the editing is clean. Unfortunately, all the strong points are wasted on a convoluted story with poorly written characters (especially Kirk) that do not match everything we know so well from the Star Trek universe. I often read the words that a character is saying in my head using their "voice," and I found this book made that nearly impossible. Although each author is entitled to their own take on even the most familiar characters, the problem is that everyone is so transparent and simple that even the Enterprise crew has to be "dumbed down" to fit in with the absurdity going on around them. I liked some of the underlying ideas the author used to build the background of the two closely related races that are introduced and whose history informs the plot, but Kirk's nephews, the colonists, and the bad guys are all so single note that they come across like annoying adolescents and have nothing resembling a complex or multi-faceted persona. Coincidentally it is a little similar to when I try watching the classic series now, and compared to TNG and the shows that followed, many of the characters in the original seem undeveloped. Of course this has been remedied in the movies and countless books, but here they seem just as limited and much more inconsistent. I've read the reviews that mention this author's later work was much better, and I can certainly see the potential for that here in this mess.

bdplume's review

3.0

Somehow I missed updating this one when I read it a while ago. I include this in my review only because it says something about the book's quality. Not bad, but not particularly memorable.

yoshi83's review

4.0

There is not quite as much Spock and McCoy as the cover would indicate. However, all seven of the main TOS stars do show up and lend a hand.

I liked this story a lot. It used its post-TUC setting well, and it introduces one of my favorite book-original characters in Skalli.