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.

As with the first book of the "Captain's Table" series, this is a frame story. The story within the frame is a story about Jean-Luc Picard, told "in his own words", and is an excellent story. The outer framework of the story involves his arriving at the mysterious bar, "The Captain's Table", meeting some fellow captains, and being persuaded to tell his story. "The Captain's Table" is sort of a cross between "Callahan's Crosstime Saloon" and the cantina in the original "Star Wars" movie. It's an interesting concept, but I honestly don't think that it works for the Star Trek universe. A shame, really, and it admittedly isn't as obviously unworkable in this book as it was in the first, but the concept still misfires slightly.

There was a good bit of useful information here, and more than a few helpful hints. Perhaps I simply expected too much, but I can only say that I do not feel significantly more prepared to write a novel now than I did before reading this book, and that was not the result I was expecting.

More useful, I think, for the journeyman writer with some experience under his/her belt who needs tips on how to improve, than for the beginner who has yet to complete a manuscript.

Or more to the point, seeing something that isn't there. It seemed to me that there were some references in this book to events that happened on the Excalibur that I haven't seen, in spite of having read all seven of the previous entries in the series; Shelby refers back to "when Riker was in command" in a way that I thought meant "in command of the Excalibur", rather than referring back to "Best of Both Worlds", the "Next Generation" episode that introduced us to Shelby, but I could have been mistaken on that one; unfortunately, it also seemed to me that the relationship between Xyon and Kalinda was more advanced than it had been when last I'd seen them. (But again, it's been a couple of months since I read book seven, so maybe I'm misremembering.) In any case, I find that there IS a book that came out in the same year that this one did (1999) that involves Calhoun, and presumably the Excalibur: "TNG#55, Double Helix #5". So maybe that's where the intermediate events take place, if in fact there ARE any intermediate events, and I'm not just imagining things. If so, I'm annoyed, because I hadn't planned to read that book any time soon; I'm only up to #18 in the "Next Generation" series.

But since none of the other reviewers seem to have noticed this discontinuity, it may well be that I'm imagining things.

On its own merits, this is quite a good book; as usual, Peter David manages a fine balance between drama, action, and humor. And if some of the drama has something of a silly tone to it (the "villain" is, essentially, a swarm of interstellar locusts) this isn't really out of character for a Star Trek story; it has been justly compared (by David himself, in the text of the story, among others) to the original series episode "The Immunity Syndrome", which features a giant, spacegoing, world-devouring amoeba.

Not his best, but about par for Peter David.

What I expected out of this book was "In this book, the part of James Bond will be played by a tall, dark, handsome lesbian."

What I got was "In this book, the part of the normal person pressed into service trying to impersonate James Bond will be played by a tall, dark, handsome lesbian."

A good concept, but I'd rather have seen the other. Still, I must say that this book does a marvellous job of parodying the James Bond novels, something that's hard to do considering that the originals are so close to self-parody. How often can one claim, in all honesty, that the characters in a parody are better-developed and less cardboard than those in the original? One can here; granted, the peripheral characters, like Agents Pumpernickel and 008 and Chief "N" are two-dimensional, but not really any more so than typical characters in a James Bond novel, while Jane and her friend Simon are significantly better-rounded than anyone likely to appear in those books. And while names like "Pumpernickel" and "Tupenny" seem like sufficiently silly names to qualify for parody, are they really any sillier than "Moneypenny"? (To say nothing of names from the movies, like "Pussy Galore"; I don't know whether that one made it into the book, since I've never read the book version of "Goldfinger".) Still, the plot was silly enough to be clearly a parody, and I suppose that that is why the book succeeds.

Not as good as "Eat The Rich" or "Parliament of Whores" or "All The Trouble in the World" or "Holidays in Hell" or "Give War A Chance"; those books are thought-provoking as well as screamingly funny. This one is just screamingly funny, but this might actually be a plus for people whose response to some of P.J.'s better works is a defensive "That's not funny!"; P.J. has a tendancy to poke fun at EVERYTHING, including the sacred cows of people who he disagrees with (and sometimes those he agrees with.)

This could very easily have degenerated into a cookiecutter DS9 story; all the standard elements were there: Bajoran terrorists from Kira's past, treacherous Cardassians, a threat to the existence of the station and the future of Bajor, scheming, greedy Ferrengi, and an overworked Sisko regretting that he hasn't time to spend with his son. There were a couple of new twists, such as a sympathetic look at a Cardassian, and we were missing the requisite appearance by the Prophets, but for the most part, there was nothing really new here.

Still, the writing was good enough to overcome that, at least for the most part. The story was a good read in spite of itself, and the characters were mostly well-handled, although Odo seemed a bit more cardboard than usual.

If you're looking for a novel and different DS9 plot, don't look for it here. But if you're looking for a competently executed rehashing of all the standard elements that make DS9 what it is, this is a fine example of the genre.

Or fifteenth, if you count "Out of the House of Life", a novel that is primarily a spinoff novel about Saint Germain's vampiric "childe", Madeline de Montalia, but does have some scenes that are flashbacks to the early years of Saint Germain's vampiric life.

Or Eighteenth, if you include "A Flame In Byzantium", "Crusader's Torch", and "A Candle For d'Artagnan", the spinoff trilogy about Olivia Clemens, a previous "offspring".

This is one of the best books in the series; many of the later books have been much more complex in their scope and plotting that the first four books in the series, all of which had a very strong tendancy toward the "Historic Romance" novel. There is still an aspect of that to be found in the later books, but there is more complexity to the characters, the plots, and the love interests than can be found in the earlier books. I wasn't entirely satisfied with the ending of this book, but not sufficiently unsatisfied to spoil the enjoyment of a fine story.

For those unfamiliar with the Saint Germain series, Saint Germain is a vampire who has lived for over 4000 years; each book places him in a different time period, and a different locale. This book finds him in India around 1400, during the time of the depradations of the man known in the west as Tamerlane (Timur-i locally). Saint Germain is not the antihero or sympathetic villain found in much of vampire literature, such as Lestat in the Anne Rice books; he is a legitimate hero; occasionally, he will make mention of the fact that when he first became a vampire, he was a more traditionally minded vampire, but has learned in his long life to avoid such rampages and bloodshed, as he has learned how to overcome many of the limitations of vampirism. In 4000 years (3400 at the time of this book) he has actually become one of the most civilized beings one could imagine.

A fine historical novel, one of the best of a fine series.

Was FDR one of the four or five greatest American presidents, a man who worked tirelessly to alleviate the suffering caused by the Great Depression and who was instrumental in our victory in WWII, or was he a conniving manipulator who took unfair advantage of the fact that the depression started during his predecessor's term, and played politics with the suffering of millions in order to consolidate his and his party's power base, at the cost of establishing an entitlement culture that is even now, 60 years later, still sapping the vitality from the great American tradition of self-reliance?

If you have an opinion on the answer to this question going into this book, your answer will determine your opinion of the book, for the book is unquestionably (and unsurprisingly; biographers only rarely take the time to study and write about a subject they dislike) pro-Roosevelt. If you had no idea that such a question existed, this book certainly won't make you aware of it, and you may well find it a very valuable and informative biography. But if you, like me, were aware that the question existed and were undecided on the answer to it coming in, this book gives very little information to help resolve the debate, because it is so unshakably favorable that it discounts, rather than attempting to refute, the arguments defending an anti-Roosevelt viewpoint. As such, it is virtually impossible to judge, based on the information given here, the value of the man, because the information is simply not produced dispassionately enough.

This is a reasonably good novel, but not nearly as good as the first of the series. For one thing, it is less able to stand on its own merit without reading the rest of the series than the first was; for another, the writing/editing was sloppier. There are a few of the typical mass-market paperback errors, which I don't remember seeing in the first book, things like saying "seceded" when "succeeded" was intended, or "face" instead of "fact". Also, there is one place where Kell is referred to by his brother Karel's name, and one where Karel is referred to as Kell. These are minor quibbles, but still annoying, and when added to the fact that the book suffers from a mild case of "middle-book-itis", the bane of second books in trilogies, it keeps it from being rated quite so highly as the first. Still, it is an enjoyable read, and the characterization, plot, dialogue, and pacing are all quite good.