Star Trek: Enterprise: The Romulan War: To Brave the Storm [Mass Market Paperback]

First, I would like to thank Amazon for lowering the price of the Kindle edition after I pre-ordered and paid the regular price. Nice to know the company appreciates customer loyalty.

I thoroughly enjoyed "Beneath the Raptor's Wing" and the books leading up to the Romulan War saga. Unfortunately, "To Brave the Storm" does not live up to the quality and excitement of its predecessors. The story feels rushed and disjointed. Months pass where nothing happens. And when something finally does happen, the story picks up after the incident, unlike Raptor's Wing were we are taken into the heart of the conflict. This book should have been filled with exciting space battles and undercover intrigue. Instead, it felt like a 600 page novel trimmed down to 300 pages with the most exciting chapters left out.

A perfect example is how the author and editors decided to deal with Trip. I'm about to give away a major spoiler here, so stop reading if you want to be surprised. In the prior novels we were always show how Trip escaped death defying cliffhangers, like his escape pod heading for a gravitic mine at the end of "Kobayashi Maru". Not so in this novel. During the final confrontation between the Coalition and Romulan fleets Trip escapes from the Romulan flagship in an escape pod. He is given a device that he believes to be a homing beacon. Once activated, it counts down to zero and that last thing Trip sees is a blinding flash of light. We later discover his escape pod has been destroyed during the battle. Twenty-five years later we discover Trip is alive and well living on Vulcan with T'Pol. No mention is given as to how he escaped. This is typical of the "let's pull a rabbit out of the hat" mentality of this novel.

Perhaps some day the publisher will come out with a special expanded edition of "To Brave the Storm", including all the important parts left out of this edition. Until then, we are left with a half-told, unimaginative story about what should have been one of the most exciting times in the history of Star Trek.

Michael Martin has managed to butcher Enterprise's potential and leave me feeling as let down with this series as I was after watching the show's television finale. The failings of this book begin on the cover where you see multiple NX class ships in a battle with "War" in the title. This is extremely misleading as the Enterprise is the only NX ship in the book and all the major battles and incursions in this war are skipped over save the final one with Enterprise rarely supporting the war effort. Reading this novel is like tuning into a football game only to have the reporters focus completely on what's happening with the players on the bench.

Granted, the editors at Pocket Books cut the series down to two books, but rather than make the most of this with an action packed and morally provocative story with rich character development, Martin skips over the meaningful parts in a careless way that leaves the book without depth or emotion. So I'm glad I know how the war went but I am left feeling like I would if my entire knowledge of WW2 came from its Wikipedia entry.

I'm glad the overabundance of side stories involving forgettable characters and the author's philosophical musings about warfare that plagued "Beneath the Raptor's Wings" are not in this book. Even though this was largely done, the book still hops around a lot with large gaps between chapters with every chapter seeming more like its own individual short story than part of a singular and unraveling plot. There were still erroneous and boring mini stories involving Enterprise rescuing ships in distress and the Vissians from ENT: Cogenetor that were not effectively related to the whole and should have been removed in favor of more interesting action sequences and the compelling formation of treaties that concluded the war and formed the Federation.

It was frustrating how Martin would spend pages setting up interesting tactical situations and as you are ready for a great battle sequence, the action sequence would be skipped over and take the reader directly to the aftermath. A major victory for the Romulans was taking an enemy dockyard, but we just get what happens after they've secured it. Later a Romulan ship is going to execute a masterful strategy against 2 Starfleet ships but then the attack is skipped completely as the Enterprise crew discusses what just happened; the conversation involves dropping the name of an important character in the series so this scene easily could have been developed with an appeal to readers but instead we just get a casualty report which has nowhere near the emotional impact. Later still, there is an attack on Earth and Mars but the pivotal moments are skipped leaving you having to glean what happened by characters discussing it. Is this a war story or a book about desk jockeys talking about a war around an office water cooler!?!

Martin has effectively killed all the enthusiasm I had for ENT novels after reading "The Good That Men Do" and for any of his future works. Though I'm glad to have at least a basic knowledge of how the war went and how the Federation was founded, I feel Martin needs to make like the protagonists in this book and watch Trek stories unfold from the sidelines.

Is this the end of Enterprise? I certainly hope not.

To Brave the Storm certainly is a fitting ending to the show. I covers the Romulan War a bit too quickly and at times I wanted more details on the action, but the author stayed true to the show by staying true to the characters. The focus is more on the personal relationships among the crew and how they're affected by what's going on around them than the war as a whole. While more ink could have been devoted to the action, particularly avoiding gaps in time that covered weeks and months, I was happy to see the characters handled as they should be.

Everything comes full circle in this novel. Without spoiling anything, you'll see what happens to all your favorites and finally get at least some of the details on the legendary Romulan War. As much hype as the war has been given in Trek lore, it would have been good to see it stretched out more, but give them credit for bringing things to fruition in a timely manner.

I finished the book and sat it down with one regret: I found myself wondering if I had just finished reading the end of the Enterprise series. I hope they're not ending it here, but the way it all ended makes me think that they are.

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