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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
Academy Dropout, September 25, 2000
It looked like fun, a book about Starfleet Cadets. Sadly, Susan Wright manages to impart interesting information in clunky dialogue and dull descriptions. There are vague moments of interest in the young characters, but unfortunately most of them succumb to the "Wesley Syndrome": any personality they might display is quickly sacrificed to the need for them to be annoying over-achievers. They just happen to find themselves in the right place at the right time to shine. The cast of characters reads as if Wright had loooked at a personality assessment test and assigned one characteristic to each character ("perky", "insecure", "shy", "merry") and none of them ever develop another dimension. The Quad concept (eight cadets of differing backgrounds and year levels live and work together) is carelessly discarded as two characters are almost immediately written out, and the rest of the plot is just as cursory. What a pity. What a wasted opportunity.
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3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Where no one has gone before., March 18, 2004
There will, undoubtedly, be people disappointed with this book because it has only cameo appearances by the familiar characters; the story centers around the Starfleet Academy years of six cadets, from around the time of the episode "Time's Arrow" through slightly after the "Generations" movie. The author does a fine job of integrating the known background of the series into a story about people only marginally touched by those events, but the real story is a very touching coming-of-age story. As such, it is very different from what we've come to expect in a "Star Trek" novel, but there is enough action that anyone who reads these books for the action should be satisfied, even if the action is mostly episodic and does not provide the overarching storyline, which focusses primarily on character development. What makes this book special is the two love stories it contains, both between pairs of the primary characters. In both cases, this is treated in a very unusual way (and one that I would dearly love to see more often): the people in question first get to know one another, then become friends, and only later fall in love and pair off. This remarkably sensible form of love story is doubtless considered very unromantic by some, thanks to the standard "Romeo and Juliet" love stories that we've all been force-fed since before we knew enough to resist them, in which the couple fall in love first, and only then (sometimes) get to know one another and become friends. Anyone with an ounce of sense knows that this story's take on the concept is the best way to go about things, but there are way too few people out there with an ounce of sense. What REALLY makes this book special, however, is that one of the couples in question is two women. Taking the great tradition instituted by Gene Roddenberry that Star Trek is set in a world where all of the prejudices, biases, and disputes that so upset our century have long since ceased to be issues where it has never been taken before, Wright tells a love story between two women in which the words "lesbian", "gay", and "homosexual" never appear, and in which none of the characters find it at all odd or worthy of comment that the two friends/acquaintances of theirs who are in love happen to be of the same gender. In neither love story is sexuality more than hinted at; still, the pairbonding is clear and unambiguous, and totally unashamed. A beautiful novel.
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4 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
A decent story, but somewhat confusing at times..., February 6, 1998
If you're into a series of short (and barely connected) stories about cadets going through Starfleet Academy, you won't be dissapointed by this story. The only problem that I had in reading the book is that just about every story has one (or more) of the cadets pulling off some sort of scientific or diplomatic miracle (aka the "Westley Crusher syndrome") that somewhat suspended by belief as story after story went by. Granted, the first few stories deal with them screwing up and being repremended, but after that they individually pull off too many successes afterwards to be believable. One cadet is gifted with a memory that doesn't allow her to forget anything-- (very much like "Mr. Spock" or "Data"), allowing her to pull off some pretty heavy stuff. I personally get tired of miracle workers doing superhuman stuff all the time in the Trek universe, so I tired of this character rather quickly. However, one of the many stories dealt with a Cadet accidentally getting involved with an alien-based slave trade, and I felt it was particularily outstanding. Several characters didn't get developed enough (in my opinion) during the stories, and I thought that a greater examination of them would have made the stories more enjoyable-- specifically, a cadet who is a Bajoran ex-Vedek(sp?) and a female cadet that is biologically and socially at the level of a 10 year old (a normal characteristic of her race) are two characters that would have been interesting to see how they perceived their stay at Starfleet Academy from their unique perspectives. The author also takes a risk and breaks Trek writing style by exploring a (very tame) lesbian relationship between two of the cadets that is threaded throughout the book. It made the stories a bit more interesting; the relationship is viewed in the 23rd century as being so natural that there is no examination/introspection whatsoever of the character's genders. One could substitute a male cadet for one of the females, and the story would read exactly the same. It made for some refreshing reading.
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