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A review by taaya
How Much for Just the Planet? by John M. Ford
1.0
The first Star Trek novel I wanted to throw away halfway through.
It started of great, 5* potential with a malfunctioning computer that actually had some kind of personality of it's own. THAT would have been a great story but in the end this plot was discarded without a proper solution for about 200 pages of ... nonsense?
There were too many holes in the logic of this novel. First of all, there's a whole Starfleet crew stranded on a planet. The planet is full of dilithium, most important stuff in the universe, yes, but once Kirk beams down, he's too busy eating, drinking and helping a princess that's not really a princess to make her lover look like a hero in set up robbery. He doesn't ask for his missing fellows, he doesn't ask for the dilithium and his crew goes wandering off on their own without either permission or telling anybody.
And second the planet's inhabitants say (among themselves, so not in a way to discourage the Federation or the Klingons) that nobody can send a message from the planet, but not only do they know that the Federation shows a video produced by one of the inhabitants, but there's also a lot of trading with other worlds?
This book is just extremely badly edited. Because that is not even part of the whole comedy the inhabitants play for both the Klingons and the humans, but the basic setting and characters are already faulty.
The story itself then is actually simply not interesting. A headache infusing spinning between plot lines that never seem to lead anywhere.
But the worst part are the songs. Every few pages somebody bursts into songs without any reason. It's extremely annoying and actually way out of character for Kirk and his crew (maybe except Uhura) to simply listen to it instead of demanding information in a more effective way.
So apart from the first maybe 20 pages this book is unfortunately not worth reading.
And who the hell are Gilbert and Sullivan? And where is this supposed to be Shakespearian? I love Shakespeare, but this is nothing like his plays.
It started of great, 5* potential with a malfunctioning computer that actually had some kind of personality of it's own. THAT would have been a great story but in the end this plot was discarded without a proper solution for about 200 pages of ... nonsense?
There were too many holes in the logic of this novel. First of all, there's a whole Starfleet crew stranded on a planet. The planet is full of dilithium, most important stuff in the universe, yes, but once Kirk beams down, he's too busy eating, drinking and helping a princess that's not really a princess to make her lover look like a hero in set up robbery. He doesn't ask for his missing fellows, he doesn't ask for the dilithium and his crew goes wandering off on their own without either permission or telling anybody.
And second the planet's inhabitants say (among themselves, so not in a way to discourage the Federation or the Klingons) that nobody can send a message from the planet, but not only do they know that the Federation shows a video produced by one of the inhabitants, but there's also a lot of trading with other worlds?
This book is just extremely badly edited. Because that is not even part of the whole comedy the inhabitants play for both the Klingons and the humans, but the basic setting and characters are already faulty.
The story itself then is actually simply not interesting. A headache infusing spinning between plot lines that never seem to lead anywhere.
But the worst part are the songs. Every few pages somebody bursts into songs without any reason. It's extremely annoying and actually way out of character for Kirk and his crew (maybe except Uhura) to simply listen to it instead of demanding information in a more effective way.
So apart from the first maybe 20 pages this book is unfortunately not worth reading.
And who the hell are Gilbert and Sullivan? And where is this supposed to be Shakespearian? I love Shakespeare, but this is nothing like his plays.