Yeah, I was trying to set up a clue or just a really bad pun at the end of my last 50BC09 post regarding the next book that I was going to read…but then I got side-tracked by my latest purchase, J.M. Dillard’s TNG novel, Resistance. I wasn’t really feeling all that well on Friday afternoon when I got home, so I had no plans to exercise. And there this little book sat, waving at at me from atop one of the many piles of unread novels I have strategically positioned throughout the house. So I thought, what the hell. I might as well see what it’s all about.
Let’s start with the most blindingly, glaringly, irritatingly obvious fallacy of this book (to me, at least): Beverly Crusher does not have green eyes.
You want to write a TNG novel and you can’t even get this very basic fact correct? You’re already in the red zone with me. Besides this fact, there are just so many things wrong with the newer TNG novels. This one, just like its predecessor, Michael Jan Friedman’s Death in Winter, takes place after Nemesis. So Data’s dead, Riker and Troi are on the Titan, and all is not right in the TNG world. You don’t want them to be this scattered or this scarred by such a dud of a Trek movie as Nemesis.
I will say this about the post-Nemesis TNG books I’ve read so far: Beverly Crusher gets far more attention now, even if it is by authors who can’t be bothered to invest the two seconds it would take to look at a photo of Gates McFadden and her very blue eyes. Death In Winter, in fact, was all about Dr. Crusher, and Captain Picard’s efforts to save her. In Resistance, Crusher and Picard are now lovers. Sadly, I must confess to a tiny sliver of puerile joy over this fact. I very rarely give a razzy rat’s romp about “shippers” or “shipping” or whatever the hell they call it. But this…this makes me happy.
Ick. I feel dirty making that confession.
As for this book’s main story? It gets a full-blown meh. The Enterprise must battle the Borg. Again. Picard must defeat the Borg Queen. Again. It was tired and trite, with smatterings of sad reminders that this is not the crew I love so dearly. Riker? Replaced by Worf. Troi? Replaced by a Vulcan counselor who hates Worf. Worf now owns Spot and the biggest scene in the book to feature Geordi LaForge is the one right at the beginning of Chapter One in which he deactivates and disassembles B-4 for shipment to the Daystrom Institute.
Am I giving too much away? Nah. I’m saving you from wasting your time on this lame Trek novel. True, it’s not a time-consuming read; I started Friday afternoon and finished yesterday evening. Is it worth it, though? I don’t know. If you’re really jonesin’ for some TNG reading, sure, give this a try. Or Death In Winter, which was better than this one, but still not that spectacular. Or go back to the early TNG novels, hunt down something by Peter David, and settle in for a really good journey with a still-intact crew of the NCC-1701-D.
Final score: 1.5/5.
I’ve already started my next book. It’s still not the one I was setting up the last time. I will say only this: His is the House of Pain.