Customer Reviews

Contamination (Star Trek: The Next Generation, No. 16)

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

 

 

This was one of the best books I have ever read. I love reading Star Trek books, and this one is one of the most enjoyable yet. I only bought the book because the synopsis seemed very interesting. This was an excellent book about deception and truth. Perhaps even a little microbiology! The suspense never ends!

This book describes the activities of a group of scientists involved in microbiological research aboard the Enterprise. What's intriguing is a murder mystery with several elements: another Betazoid aboard the Enterprise besides Troi; a disagreement about a scientific discovery that the Betazoid wants to sell to a higher bidder;an angry young woman seeking revenge; a revisitation from the Kreel (from "Strike Zone"); murder and a trial with Worf as a prosecutor. In short, a nice novel you can absorb on a plane to California. Here's a neat tie-in to another STTNG novel: If readers wonder about why the transporter complained of infection in "The Last Stand," the answer is that the transporter was fitted with the biofilter that was invented by a "Contamination" character!

This is great! I listen to the tapes too and I disagree with the reviewer named Scott that this was a bad story and that it was poorly read by Michael Dorn (Worf) and agree with the reviewer named Ann that it was wonderfully read by Michael Dorn! Awesome job!

Star Trek The Next Generation #16 Contamination is John Vornholt's second Star Trek novel and though it's not his best work in the Star Trek genre, it's still a pretty good book and well worth the time to read! Once you get used to his writing style, you will find it be fairly fluid, in his "own" way.

Of interest in this particular novel is the premise of murder on the Enterprise, something of which is not supposed to happen in the twenty fourth century which lends heavily to the shock factor among the Captain and crew. John Vornholt deals with the issue fairly well throughout the book, delivering another good Star Trek novel.

The premise:

The crew of the Enterprise is quite shocked to find that a famous scientist named Lynn Costa who was visiting the ship is murdered. Captain Picard must see justice done so he assigns the task of discovering the murderer to Lieutenant Worf and Counselor Deanna Troi. Our erstwhile heroes soon find themselves embroiled in a web of deceit and betrayal all while an assassin is aboard the Enterprise...

I highly recommend this novel to any and all Star Trek fiction fans who are interested in reading a fairly well written Star Trek story by one of Star Trek's top ten authors. {ssintrepid}

Star Trek - The Next Generation: Contamination written by John Vornholt is for all intents and purposes is a murder-mystery that occurs on the Starship Enterprise.

This is a classic Worf and Deanna Troi book as Captain Jean-Luc Picard assigns Worf to investigate a murder on the Enterprise of a prominant research scientist, Lynn Costa. As the book goes into detail, we the reader get a better look into the ship's science labs and we are exposed to betrayal, madness and down right deceit as Worf investigates. We get to see Worf's investigative skills emerge as all parties are guilty until a confession is beaten out of them... but of course Captain Picard wants Worf to use more refined skills and we get to see how good Worf can be.

I enjoyed this book, but I must say, that the true murderer was revealed too early on in the book and it made for an anticlimatic ending. Too bad the author couldn't of hidden the identiy for a little while longer.

Other than that the book was a very good read and it warrants a 5 stars for the mystery, intrigue, and for excellent charter developmet of Worf.

I listened to the audio cassette recording of John Vornholt's book and I enjoyed it and was really impressed with Michael Dorn's audio reading, I have listened to many audio recordings in many dfferent generes, Scince Fiction, Romance, Classic Literature, mystery and Supsense etc, but out of all of the ones that I have listened to I was most impressed with his reading, as usual he was great as Worf the character he played but he did a great job with all the other voices too, I especially liked his voice for Emil Costa, I also liked the sound effects they used in this audio and though maybe it wasn't the most challenging mystery I really did enjoy it and I would reccomend this audio cassette recording to any fan of Michael Dorn! This is a keeper!

Let me start by saying that the story itself is great. I'd give 5 stars on the story and the paperback version.

The problem is the Kindle edition. DO NOT BUY IT for Kindle!!!!! It is missing all parentheses around character dialog. It's completely unreadable. I've wasted 2-3 hours already with support with no resolution. I get emails that it's fixed, but nope, it's not fixed yet. All support wants to do is give me a refund and pushing me aside. Very poor showing on Amazon's side.

The first half of this book is a murder mystery. Worf and Troi are trying to find the killer and getting nowhere. It might irritate them, but it is very well plotted and written and entertaining for us. Then the action starts: more murders, attempted murders, and a hijacking. Then we go to a trial, which of course has the wrong person accused. Worf finally figures it all out, and gets kidnapped. More action ensues. The action and character interaction and the trial are all very well done and immensely entertaining. This is one of my favourites in the Next Generation books.

I read the back cover and was intrigued to know more, but was soon disappointed. Although it says that Lt. Worf and Counselor Troi are doing the investigating, but the extremely annoying Wesley Crusher is brought in to the picture half way through the book and manages to screw up the rest of the story. Not to mention the ending was very predictable. Not at all like previous books by Vornholt. I recommend Genesis Wave, if you want something good by this author.

Counselor Troi and Lt. Worf working together? Sure they do it everyday, but not like this. This alone could have set the stage for their relationship in All Good Things. Talk about things that make you go Hmm