2.0 out of 5 stars
Worst SCE Book I Have Read!, October 24, 2008
This review is from: Collective Hindsight Book 1 (Kindle Edition)
Warning: SPOILERS!
This is one of the worst SCE books I have ever read! I mean the plot and concept had promise, but the execution was so flawed. Aaron Rosenberg isn't on the up and up of anything technical it seems.
He makes several obvious mistakes that made me NOT want to finish reading the book. Though I eventually did finish Book 1 and still slowly going through (or rather forcing myself) to finish Book 2, mainly because I am a big fan of the SCE series and I don't want to miss any character developments that might happen in this flawed book that might be referenced in books after this one.
Firstly the author invents a mystery ship that is powered by absorbed solar/stellar energies. This ship ends up in a system with a semi-unstable star and a hidden federation outpost. The ship detects the hidden outpost and the crew had to commit suicide because get this: the somewhat unstable star somehow caused the mystery ship to absorb more energy than it can handle and had to "vent" the energy. It vents the energy internally because venting it externally supposedly would cause the system's star to go Nova. Uh...like...duh! I don't care how much energy a ship can absorb from a star...whatever amount it is is not enough to make a star go Nova when "vented". That energy came from the star in question to begin with...and it wasn't enough to make the star go Nova when the star was outputting it!
2nd "duh" mistake: Gomez's predecessor Salek, had to sacrifice himself for no sane reason that the author can explain properly. Basically Cardassians detect the mystery ship and head to intercept it and the da Vinci. Salek ends up controlling the mystery ship's energy venting thing as weapon. He did this by reprogramming the ship to perform the venting action...internally. Then he controls the da Vinci's transporters to beam whatever energy was vented internally to the Cardassian ship to destroy it. Salek perishes during the internal venting of energy. This does not compute! If the vented energy is powerful enough to destroy the Cardassian ship (which was way bigger than the da Vinci), how the heck can the da Vinci possibly hold all that energy in its transporter buffers without totally overloading their transporters?! Also if Salek was able to reprogram the mystery ship's systems to do what he wanted to do...why the heck did he have to stay INSIDE that ship while it did its thing? Why not beam back to the da Vinci? Why throw away his life when it was not necessary? Does not makes sense right? The author never explains why Salek had to be PHYSICALLY present inside that ship for it to do what he wanted it to do. You will go insane when you read this book. The author is extremely very technically-challenged.
And I'm only a few chapters inside Book 2...but that one seems even more flawed than the first. In the first book, when the da Vinci crew first boards it...they notice charred remains of its crew (charred...but intact). Then in book 2, the author claims the crew of this ship was "vaporized". Big difference between charred remains of the crew and "VAPORIZED"!
And the worst technical error so far: it is well established in Star Trek canon that going to Warp in a gravity causes major problems for the ship (if not the source of the gravity well too). However our technically-challenged author has the mystery ship circling a SUPERNOVA at ABOVE WARP 1, then using that to SLINGSHOT itself to WARP NINE! Uh...gravity well (massive gravity well in this case) and warp speed DO NOT MIX! And Warp 1 to Warp 9 using the "slingshot effect" is just extremely impossible that your brain hurts just trying to figure out how this author could have even come up with this. Has he never read or watched other Star Trek shows or books before writing this book?
Perhaps I am being too nitpicky here. But this is an SCE book. Technology and Engineering matters feature front and center in this book. So whoever writes SCE books should at least get the basic Star Trek TECH STUFF RIGHT! Warp 1 to Warp 9 via a slingshot effect! c'mon!
Unless you are a big fan of the SCE series, DO NOT READ THIS BOOK...it will give you headaches! I'm only forcing myself to read it because SCE books tend to refer to past books for something or other and I don't want to find myself reading a book written after this one referring to something that happend in this flawed flawed book, and me not knowing what the reference was about
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1.0 out of 5 stars
hate it, July 6, 2010
This review is from: Collective Hindsight Book 1 (Kindle Edition)
never read this book.. Its fulled with stupid stuff.. You woukd like watvhing a sail moves. hahahaha
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