Customer Reviews

Across the Universe

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(6)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

Starfleet has discovered an early model ship from earth's past. The Enterprise is dispatched to intercept the ship and meet with its crew. Once Captain Kirk meets with the ships captain, he has some initial doubts. Despite his doubts, he finds himself liking the captain and his crew. The inhabitants of the ship were originally on course to a distant planet to start a new colony. Once they meet up with Captain Kirk and the Enterprise, they discover the planet they were heading to no longer exists. Left without a place to go, Starfleet finds them a colony world to go to. When they arrive at the colony world though, they find that they may have gone to a planet that is on the verge of destroying the colony and all of it's inhabitants.
At it's core, this story has an interesting premise, unfortunately, the author's do not in my opinion, bring it to fruition. "Across the Universe" is one of the few Star Trek books that I found to be hardly captivating. At only 217 pages, this is an extremely short trek book. Hopefully any future trek books I read by these authors will be a lot better than this one.

I have read virtually every Star Trek book written and this is the worst I can remember. The story is lame...Killer Mold...I don't think so. There is virtually no character development of the several new characters. And the treatment of the regular cast of characters (Kirk, Spock, McCoy, Uhura, Sulu, Chekov, Scotty) makes me wonder if the author has ever seen a Star Trek episode, movie, or read a book. To tell the truth, I have only made it 2/3 of the way through this book and don't think I can finish it. Felt like quiting 1/3 of the way through and wish I had.

I cannot recommend this book even to the hardcore fans of ST universe. The flat pompous prose is more then a little irritating. The plot is completely and totally awful. The "lost in time" colonists do not even need to be included. As it is their angle of the story is not developed at all. Similar recovery is much better covered in ST:NG episode. The idea of living planet intelligence is also nothing new. I have seen it presented in much more interesting and poignant ways, my recent favorite being the "PoTayBee" trilogy from (I believe) McAfrey. Loss of time and money and not worth the materials used for printing.

Also, the "serial novel" idea in this format is not the brightest one I've ever seen. Not everyone is such a devoted fan of the ST books (especially considering the quality of this one.)

And in conclusion I also had problems with the cover. Why, for instance, Captain Kirk is the only face on the cover (he did not play an overly important role)? The backside promotion is misleading. Do the people who write them actually bother to read the books?

Maybe I should go down to one star?

This book started out with some promise and took a hard left to nowhere. The anacronistic space traveler has been used far too often. There were so many references to earth in the description of the alien world that the whole idea that this took place somewhere other than Washington state is hard to believe. The idea of 'killer mold' is pretty hard to swallow even for the most die-hard Treker. I was about half way through when I cut my loses.

Star Trek - The Original Series: Across the Universe written by Pamela Sargent and George Zebrowski is a ship from the past novel that is looking for a place to start a new colony book.

This book is a weak story and the planetary intellegence (a large green moss like substance) is ruthless or so it seems, in its protection of its nerve center. As this adventure unfolds, Kirk and the Enterprise crew try to solve the problem of finding a place for a group of 21st century colonists that time has left behind from the colony ship Hawking and dealing with a planetary intellegence that no one has previously seen.

The story plot is rather weak and the book is short, with those two things going for it makes for a quick short read. I wouldn't recommend reading this book as it is not that well-written and doesn't challenge the reader. I thought that this book was written more for the juvinile mindset not a sophisticated TREK fan.

This book can garner no more than 3 stars and that is generous under the circumstances.

This is a reasonably well-written, reasonably enjoyable Star Trek story. It has nothing to make it stand out from the large number of other stories that would fit that description, however. The plot is pretty standard fare, and is a pretty standard, off-the-shelf plot for a Star Trek story or even just a science fiction story in general. Nor does it blaze new trails in terms of character or background world, or give the reader anything to think about that hasn't been addressed in Star Trek many times before. If you enjoy the genre, you should enjoy it. If you don't, you won't.

I really need to read this book again, cause I felt like I was missing something....the book wasn't bad, but the writers made me feel like I had walked into the middle of a conversation. Did not seem to really explain the so called horrors that these travelers from the past had gone through in all the time they were traveling. I feel we should have had a lot more background story. Plus I had a problem with the green monster that was terrorizing all the people on the planet that they found for the colonists...I dont know, just seems a bit hokey. Though I did enjoy when everyone decided it was time to "mow the lawn" It just seemed like I was reading a sequel where I never read the first book...characters were not fleshed out as well as they could have been, Especially Uhura's friend from the past. I did rather enjoy Chekov meeting an old family member, Chekov has always been my favorite character (In fact I judge a lot of ST books as to how well they use Chekov, and if they bother to put in his accent even better...one gripe I have is a lot of writers will go through the trouble of doing Scotty's accent but not Chekov's. Seems to me if your gonna bother doing one you have to do the other as well...oh well) It's not a horrible book, I've read worse ST books, but I'm not sure if I can really recommend it...read it for yourself and make up your own mind

I gave this book five stars because it was a short book that was written in an easy reading style. Plot was good and had a fast pace. I read nearly all the Star Trek original series novels except the ones with sequels, I don't want to get bogged down with those. A none Star Trek fan may give this book less than five stars, and my five stars assume you are a Star Trek fan.

This story starts out with a lot of potential--a 21st century ship discovered with her crew intact. Unfortunately, the focus then shifts to the planet Merope IV where the newfound crew will settle, and to some "moss creature" there. A great premise, but then the story goes in the wrong direction...

It started out o.k., but The Attack of the Killer Bush? People being "cradled" by The Bush? It's just not worth the time and money.