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This is an odd one. Author John Vornholt drops two away teams comprising all the senior bridge crew onto a medieval world where everyone wears masks. They bumble around looking for each other and for the guy they were sent to find- Almighty Slayer, to initiate diplomatic relations. They get lost, they bump into all kinds of important people, and ultimately don`t do much of anything. But, it`s not bad. Instead it`s just quite odd.

It turns out they knew about Global Warming back in 1989. They knew about the problems of pollution, the reliance of any one country on any one fuel source, and to boot they knew about religious terrorism. Howard Weinstein wrote ‘Power Hungry‘ with an eye on all of this, these problems that we seem to think of as new to our times. Obviously they are not, and were very much on people’s minds 20 years ago too. The Enterprise turns up at Thiopia, a mismanaged world reeling from decades of exploitative strip-mining by foreign powers. Riker beams down to discuss …

And so we come to the first of the Peter David books. Peter David is something of a legend in Trek fandom; for his prolific output and incredibly entertaining render of the Trek universe and crews. His book `Imzadi` about the origins of the Riker-Troi love connections crossed over into the mainstream with enormous success, reachng the top of the New York Times bestseller lists. His other works messed with time, space and story structure in mind-boggling ways. On top of all that, he started off his own ship and crew in the Trekverse- New Frontiers, with Captain Calhoun aboard …

Survivors by Jean Lorran really took me by surprise. It’s a great book, a refreshing new take on both Data and Tasha Yar. Did anybody else know Data had ‘flirtation routines’ that made him more popular with the ladies than even Riker? Not me. The story is about a lot of things; Tasha’s early life, Tasha’s death at the hands of Armus, ethical dilemmas, and Data’s gradual emotional awakening, all sewn gracefully through a narrative that sets Tasha and Data off on a mission together, to look into the cries for help coming from a fringe non-Federation planet.

With The Children of Hamlin by Carmen Carter it feels like we’re settling into a rhythm. The first book strained the characters in ways that didn’t feel realistic. Picard was a grumpy old git, Troi was flimsy, Riker was racked with self-doubt. By #3 though that stuff is ironed out, and the characters are basically acting as they should. The story is about the Children of Hamlin, who were abducted from their settlement by the Choraii, a bunch of crazy musical aliens. Of course it riffs off the story of the Pied Piper, but that never jars. In fact it’s …

The Peacekeepers is the second Next Generation book, written by Gene DeWeese, and feels much more like  a run-of-the-mill episode than the previous one Ghost Ship. We occasionally dip in and out of characters heads, but never for extended periods. Instead we are faced with a simple conundrum that must be unraveled- a high-tech but derelict space pod grabs Geordi and Data and teleports them out of sensor range, bringing them into contact with a man who reveres them as ‘The Builders’ and wants nothing more than their approval for his use of their ‘gifts’.

They started releasing Star Trek Next Generation books almost simultaneously with the series on TV. The first book was a novelization of the pilot- `Encounter at Farpoint`. The second, listed as #1 on a roster that has now grown to over 70 books, was Ghost Ship by Diane Carey. I read several of them when I was a kid and heavily into TNG. In the last few years I rewatched the whole of the TNG series run, and enjoyed it immensely. Now it`s time to read through the books, all of them, starting at #1. Most of these books are …