Stargazer Book Two

ST: Stargazer - Progenitor:
Before the Enterprise, "Q," and the Borg, Captain Jean-Luc Picard's first command was on the U.S.S. Stargazer. This adventure of Star Trek: Stargazer - Progenitor by Michael Jan Friedman is about the continuing adventures of Captain Picard's first command. This is a character driven adventure mainly focusing on two stories interwoven within the main theme of this book. But there are sub-stories within this tapestry... potential for sabotage, deceit, and intelligence gathering. Also, there is great character interaction and interplay. This is a well crafted story and will keep you interested... galactic heroism and a race for a bloodline survival... hence the title "Progenitor." The book takes right off where "The Gauntler" left off and builds to two important climaxes as the captain and crew work their respective ways through a maze of twists and turns. All testing the mettle of the characters as self-doubts and second guessing play into the characters thinking. Also, as the characters work through the story, they find their respective talents and strong suits making an interesting story better. This series called Star Trek: Stargazer has a lot of potential and so far has delivered... both in character crafting with a cohesive narrative along with action and adventure spiced with intrigue. This provides us with a much needed backstory for one of the most interesting of all captains Jean-Luc Picard. If you are a fan of Jean-Luc Picard this is a good series to get to know him when he was a younger and more free captain. Start with "The Valiant" from the TNG series to get a good foot hold on the series... if you happen to have the "Double Helix #6: The First Virtue" it has background and is worthy of reading for this new series. Fascinating potential for a new series in the STAR TREK Universe.

The lizard race:
In this second part of the new Stargazer series the Chief Enginner and the Scond Officer Wu are the main focus. Simeon has to return to his world and has to participate in a race with other of his kind. In this race if you win you get to fertilize the eggs and continue your family line. Simeon has to have some people with him in this race and he picks his Stargazer friends. His family members hav died off and only one remain so this is why he has to pick offworlders. While this is going on Wu has to rescue a ship and decide if she wants to stay on board or become 1st office of her old ship. If this was not enough we hav good old politics going on back at Fleet headquarters. This is a continuation from the first book where there is this admiral determine to mess up Jean-Luc. The story also has some interesting cameos from people such as the Hansens (Seven's relatives), Rachel Garrett and a new crew member someone with the last name of Paris. The series is off to a good start and I can't wait for more. The only flaws I saw was a printing mistake that merged some stories together without a break between them. I also saw that Picard's first officer referred as human which I believe he is not. But those errors are very minor and not important to the story.

Picard on his way up the Starfleet Chain of Command:
This is a great series and it shows a young Jon Luc before the officers aboard the Enterprise followed him without question. It shows an untested captain and makes for much more interesting stories.. there is a scene in this novel where the characters are surrounded by intergalactic wolves. Greyhorse is another one of those Friedman characters that always surprise the reader. This series is going to rival that of Peter David's Excalibur series. I just wish they would do more than two a year. At that pace no one is going to get into this series without having to wait a very long time for the next installment.

Great Continuation:
Book #1 of the Stargazer series was very well done even though it required so much time to be spent on exposition of all the new players and their responsibilities. This is only the second book with Captain Jean Luc Picard in command, yet he is already demonstrating character traits and leadership style that would be familiar to those fans of the TNG television series and films. As many of the more successful stories have done in the past, "Stargazer Book #2 Progenitor", includes two solid story lines that are linked yet distinct, and includes other more minor themes from the first book encompassing the machinations of one Admiral McAteer. A name that will be familiar to many fans is mentioned only in passing, but when the name is Zefram Cochrane many memories and Star Trek History are recalled. Ensign Jiterica whose species I found so interesting in the first book plays a major role in this second book, which also introduces the now familiar space-time rifts that are explored and endured by so many Trek crews. There are also some crew changes that were made known at the end of book one, and further development within the crew, both as a team and as individuals who make great positive strides. The introductions were handled in book #1, and many personality issues identified as well. In this second book that are largely rectified one way or another. Captain Picard takes an away team off in support of his chief engineer much in the same way he will support Whorf some 3 decades later. None of the players on this crew are common to the TNG crew, but they are all just as interesting in their diversity, and some resemble the first Enterprise crew in their good-natured bickering. Also, as in the first book politics plays a large role, and like they often are in day to day life they are distasteful. I used the Microsoft E-Reader for this book although I have used the Adobe Reader as well. Purely from an ease of use, and from an easy on the eyes perspective, both readers are perfectly acceptable. The Microsoft version offers a text reader option which I have not used. I am running these on Windows XP although I don't know that this makes any difference.

Not very good.:
Oh, it's far from the WORST Star Trek novel I've ever read, but it's even farther from the best. For one thing, the main plotline -- the one from which the title is taken -- is far too reminiscent of the original series episode "Amok Time" to avoid the charge of being derivative, and if it's better handled than that episode in some ways, it's also handled less well in others. The secondary plot, the one involving Commander Wu and the ship, is somewhat better, but still rather predictable. And the subplot of the admiral who has it in for Picard is getting annoying. Not to mention the nit-picky fact that the editing is rather sloppy; there are numerous places where we move from one scene to another -- from the primary plotline to the secondary one, for instance -- and ordinarily, there would be an extra linefeed to set the scenes off from one another, and there isn't, which makes a rather jarring transition as we go from "Commander Wu did thus-and-such" to "Picard did thus-and-such", without getting our standard hint that we're changing scenes from one in which he isn't present to one in which he is. Trivial, but sloppy and annoying. If you liked the first book of this series, you may like this one. Then again, you may not.