If you don't know what Q&A is, it's the third novel in the Star Trek: The Next Generation relaunch series. You can purchase it here: http://www.amazon.com/Q-Star-Trek-Next-Generation/dp/1416527419/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/103-4517723-4494238?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1193603769&sr=8-1
This is an updated repost of the review I posted at Amazon.
A Sound Novel For the TNG Fan
My first reaction is simply "Wow!" I have to admit that while I had been looking more towards Resistance, I was let down by it for a couple reasons. The first reason was that I couldn't comprehend Picard ever choosing to be reassimilated as Locutus under any circumstances. There were still options they didn't bother to consider, and ultimately the only reason he chose this course was because the Borg now attack on sight. Does this mean that engaging a hostile enemy is such a huge risk that it makes more sense for the captain to try to infiltrate rather than simply taking them on? It was a brash move that made very little sense to me.
The second reason I didn't love Resistance was that it left me wondering who in the heck was going to round out the command crew of the post-Nemesis Enterprise. Sure, we got to meet T'Lana in that book, but it didn't seem like a true re-launch, where we would get to see the new cast of characters as they interacted with each other for the first time. This novel should have been the pilot for what is essentially Star Trek TNG: Phase II, but I don't feel that we reallygot that until Q&A; which brings me to the novel I'm actually discussing in this review.
I have to admit that I went into Q&A fearful that it would be another retread, much like Resistance. Is it possible that the TNG well has actually gone dry? I read the teaser text inside the front cover, which described Q getting kicked out of the Continuum, and I rolled my eyes and wondered why I was even bothering with this. Q was originally kicked out of the Continuum in the third season episode Deja Q. As it turns out, the teaser text was just a flashback to one of the better Q episodes, and the rest of the novel was not a retread of a previous story.
So let's get down to it.
The Good: it finally deals with Data's death in a way that felt real. In particular, Geordi had to deal with Data's replacement coming aboard, and it became apparent that he was not handling the death of his best friend all that well, even all these months later. I kept wondering if they were going to use Q to restore Data, since he has the power to do so. I'm not going to ruin that surprise with this review, though I will say that a character or two portrayed on-screen by Brent Spiner make an appearance.
We also finally get to meet the new members of the new command staff. I think they did a good job adding two distinctly new personalities, neither of which seem like old characters that we've seen before in any of the other iterations of the Trek franchise. I had feared that they would go with Trek's tendency to overdo the diversity and include either a pair of females or bring in new or obscure alien species that end up being hard to imagine. I'm pleased that neither of these scenarios played out the way I expected them to, and I'm actually interested in seeing more of them in action.
The new second officer is a human female of Japanese/European heritage named Miranda Kadohata. She was handpicked by Data to be his replacement as Second Officer when he was to be promoted to First Officer. According to her back story, she served aboard the Enterprise-D where she worked in the science department and reported to Data. The fact that she knew Data and was familiar with many of the other crew members of the Enterprise helped her integrate into the command structure while simultaneously providing us with an outsider and insider perspective of the characters we know and love. The bit that is really unique about this character is that she's a career mother. While Star Trek has featured mothers before, this is the first time that we see things from the mother's perspective as she goes about her career while husband and family are left behind off the ship. There are no children on the Enterprise-E!
The other character came as a bit of a surprise. Zelik Leybenzon is a very flawed human with a receding hairline and a cheesy mustache. He takes an almost standoffish position towards the other officers, Geordi LaForge in particular, and his methods of motivating those under his command immediately appear harsh and heavy-handed. Miranda Kadohata at one point refers to him as a wanker. But, he was selected by Worf, who served with him during the Dominion War, so Picard allowed the appointment, despite the fact that the guy never even went through Starfleet Academy. We get to know Zelik Leybenzon fairly well by the end of the novel, and despite his flaws, I'm actually looking forward to seeing more of him in future novels.
The bad: Too much space in the book was wasted on pointless cameos. Riker and Troi are shown aboard the Titan. Donatra, the Romulan who arrived to help the Enterprise against the Scimitar in Nemesis also made an appearance, as did a two-bit trader in the Gamma Quadrant, and some radiation dumping alien from a mildly interesting episode of Voyager. Multiple pages were written around each of these secondary characters, and by the end, the repetition became rather annoying.
The most ambitious aspect of the novel was to take every Q episode and frame it within the context that everything Q had done over the years as a means to prepare Picard for the events of this novel. Although this was well executed, I felt that this had a profound effect upon the series, and might be reaching just a bit much for a story that is not canon (in case you're wondering, no Star Trek novels are canon).
Conclusion: So why was I wowed? In the end it wasn't the story itself, but the execution; DeCandido did the right things at the right times in this novel, and it was a definite page turner. He spent a great deal of time dealing with the interpersonal issues aboard the Enterprise, which I think is something that was needed in light of all the changes that had occurred in Nemesis. He didn't just gather the characters in one place and then send them on a mission, he had them meet, rub each other the wrong way, and build up some dramatic tension between them. We then have the joy of watching those tensions play out throughout the course of the novel.
Once we move beyond that, the middle portion of the book does an excellent job discovering the nature of the issue, all the while amusing us with Q's antics. Again DeCandido does an excellent job of portraying Q as he appeared in Next Generation. I didn't feel like I was watching Q as filtered through an author's voice; he felt authentic, and he was definitely more true to form than he was in his Voyager appearances.
Finally the ending seemed a bit surreal, but it's a Q novel and that's expected. There isn't much I can say about it without giving up too much of the novel, but I will say that I found the chaos and sense of risk and wonder just as satisfying as All Good Things.
Overall, it isn't a perfect book, but it's a very good book. It's one of the better Next Generation books I've read, and unlike the A Time to.... series, the pervading sense of gloom finally seemed to be lifted. It is exactly what I was hoping for from a Next Generation relaunch book, and unlike most of the books I tend to read, I could actually see myself reading this one again.
Four out of five stars.
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