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2.0 out of 5 stars
Another novelization by Diane Carey., Oct 5 2003
Diane Carey is a multiply-published author of Star Trek novels, and is frequently the one called upon to write novelizations of popular episodes. This is unfortunate, because her strengths as a writer (and yes, she has some) lie in her ability to create interesting plots and characters, her pacing, and other details of the creative craft, all mostly already done in a novelization of someone else's story; granted, her ability to create tension comes into play, as does her pacing (a related skill) and her ability to make her characters come to life is not without use, although it doesn't get as much use as it would if she were free to characterize without the frame provided by the pre-digested story.Her weakness, unfortunately, is in the nuts-and-bolts use of the language; she tries desperately to make creative and original use of words; all she manages in most cases, unfortunately, is to make incorrect and distracting use of the language. This isn't ALWAYS the case; there were very few examples of this in "Ship Of The Line" and "Day of Honor, Part 1". Other books, such as her novelizations of "The Search" and "Descent", were virtually unreadable due to the frequency with which she butchered the language unmercifully. This book isn't quite as bad as those (in spite of the fact that it starts poorly, with THREE silly word choices on the first page) but it is much closer to that level than to the level of her better work. (To give examples of what I'm referring to, I'll cite the three from the first page: she uses the non-word "unassuring" where she intends "not reassuring", as in "Phaser rifles. Lightweight, efficient, somehow unassuring at the moment." Later, she describes Sisko's skin as "resined" with sweat, presumably trying to capture the visual effect of resin beading (rather than simply saying the traditional and therefore "uncreative" "beaded"). Unfortunately, the property of resin that comes immediately to the reader's mind is not that it beads, but that it makes things sticky; if Sisko's sweat makes his face sticky, he is, shall we say, somewhat unusual. Then, in the same sentence, she refers to his attitude as "charred"; I'm not entirely certain WHAT she means by that, but I assume it has something to do with his patience being burned away by the frustration he's been experiencing. In any case, descriptive words that leave the reader more puzzled as to what was described than they would have been without them are poorly chosen words, and further, words that are SO creatively used as to jolt the reader's attention away from the story that he's attempting to immerse himself in are likewise poor writing. The story itself is a fine one, one of the best of the DS9 stories; it's the one in which Worf moves from the Enterprise to DS9. It's unfortunate that the writing of it was given to someone who did it so little credit.
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