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A review by octavia_cade
House of Cards by Peter David
2.0
The first in the New Frontier sub-series in the Star Trek universe, and it's clearly a set-up novel. Nearly the entire first half of the book is taken up introducing three new characters, giving them all separate origin stories. The second half is all plot set-up. Spock is shoe-horned in, I assume for the sake of ratings, while Picard and other Enterprise characters decide that, for humanitarian purposes, a starship needs to be sent into a war-torn region of space. Together, they need to find a captain to take on this likely disaster. Now, credit where it's due, I thoroughly enjoyed the TNG characters in this, and I think the mission itself has the potential to be interesting, although it hasn't started yet. Presumably that's what book #2 is for.
What's causing this to get a two star rating is the new characters. Of those three, I'm afraid I'm only interested in Dr. Selar. The other two just make me want to roll my eyes. Soleta is deeply annoying just on the face of her. I rather suspect I'm supposed to see her as spunky, whereas she really just comes across as rude. But the bigger problem is the chosen captain. Mackenzie Calhoun, once we get rid of all those bloody apostrophes... boy rebel genius turned adult rebel genius, apparently, albeit this constant state of rebellion is against two different institutions. Well. Like most people I have a streak of perversity, and you can only tell me so many times just how edgily fantabulous some character is before I start thinking bollocks to that. Picard's constant slavish praise does not help. I get that it's authorial manipulation: You trust Picard, and Picard says Calhoun is the best thing ever, therefore you'll think Calhoun is the best thing ever. Well I don't. I'm quite prepared to be manipulated for the sake of story, but this is just too damn blatant. Maybe it'll improve. I hope so, because right now it's all subtle as a sledgehammer, and about as realistic.
And, finally, if any Trek author feels the need to write about Orion slave girls ever again, they should put down the keyboard and go have a nice lie-down until the upper brain reasserts itself, because there is only so much eye-rolling one girl can reasonably be expected to perform in a single sitting. That is all.
What's causing this to get a two star rating is the new characters. Of those three, I'm afraid I'm only interested in Dr. Selar. The other two just make me want to roll my eyes. Soleta is deeply annoying just on the face of her. I rather suspect I'm supposed to see her as spunky, whereas she really just comes across as rude. But the bigger problem is the chosen captain. Mackenzie Calhoun, once we get rid of all those bloody apostrophes... boy rebel genius turned adult rebel genius, apparently, albeit this constant state of rebellion is against two different institutions. Well. Like most people I have a streak of perversity, and you can only tell me so many times just how edgily fantabulous some character is before I start thinking bollocks to that. Picard's constant slavish praise does not help. I get that it's authorial manipulation: You trust Picard, and Picard says Calhoun is the best thing ever, therefore you'll think Calhoun is the best thing ever. Well I don't. I'm quite prepared to be manipulated for the sake of story, but this is just too damn blatant. Maybe it'll improve. I hope so, because right now it's all subtle as a sledgehammer, and about as realistic.
And, finally, if any Trek author feels the need to write about Orion slave girls ever again, they should put down the keyboard and go have a nice lie-down until the upper brain reasserts itself, because there is only so much eye-rolling one girl can reasonably be expected to perform in a single sitting. That is all.