Customer Reviews

Death of a Neutron Star (Star Trek Voyager, No 17)

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(10)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

OK, maybe that's a little extreme, but... This book is nothing but poor stereotypes and cliques. The Quavok (bad guys) are particularly annoying, I mean everything in their language starts with Q and that seems very childish. The Q race was understandable because they have a comedy- centered attitude. Janeway is constantly either thinking or talking about coffee. Again, annoying! In fact, the first ten or so chapters ALL contain references to coffee! This book makes Janeway out to be obsessed with coffee. The aliens are stereotypical, the bad guys ugly reptiles, not like in "Seven of Nine" or "The Dragon's Honor" where the reptilian aliens are graceful, but deadly or so, and the good guys are the unusually beautiful humans so common in the TOS trek series. Speaking of Seven, in this book she lacks the depth and complexity her character requires, and comes of sounding like the original Enterprise's monotonous know-it-all computer. And another recycled Voyager plot, the "Oh no, a terrible spatial anomaly threatens Voyager again!" like we don't get enough of this from the TV show. The writing style is boring and childish. If you want a good Voyager story, read "The Black Shore" or "Ragnorok".

While not being one of the best "Voyager" books, this is defintely not among the worst of them. In fact, it was pretty refreshing in that it wasn't the normal "Voyager" book which is typically based on the old "We need food from this planet and the bad guy's won't let us get to it." That said, I rather enjoyed the book, despite what some of the other reviewer's stated about the author focusing too much on Janeway's enjoyment of coffee and the ever present technobabble. Star Trek in and of itself is based a lot in technobabble, no big deal.
In my opinion, this was an extremely well done first foray into the Trek world by Eric Kotani. Hopefully we'll see some more trek stories from him in the future. Overall a well done book and I would recommend it to anybody who reads trek. Thank you to author for a good read.

This is by far the best Voyager book. My favorite Star Trek book is Double Helix #2 Vectors, Death of a Neutron Star came close to beating it. I did get a little annoyed with Janeway thinking and talking about coffee so much, but I got used to it. If you want a good Voyager book then read Death of a Neutron Star.

This book offeres interesting astronomical scientific information.

And why is that interesting?

Bacuse it was the cornerstone of the whole plot.

Like you might have guessed, this didn't work too well. It might have worked a lot better, but also a lot worse.

Good thing that I like seeing 'guest stars' in prominent roles since this book does that, and does it farely well, even if certain stereotypes can be detected in the case of the quest characters.

The problem is the plot, wich is uniquely unbelievable and slowly progressing, thus making the reader bored.

When you add absolutely no character exploration of the 'regulars', (although that was compensated by the original characters), the outcome isn't the best possible.

I liked the science, but the story left me dissapointed.

Despite what the previous reviewers said, I have enjoyed the plot-driven character of the book. It has at least as much to recommend itself as the character exploration style. Both are present in the StarTrek TV series. The book might be predictable, but fun regardless.

I was surprised how intriguing this book was. At first you might think it is boring because of all the scientific data, but the author certainly did enough research to bring to life the awesome threat of a powerful force of nature. This novel is like the Voyager show in the sense that you get a feeling the characters really care about each other, and not only the crew but the guests. I really enjoyed the relationship between Dr. Maalot and Tyla and it drove the story nicely. I couldn't put it down! got throught it in less than 3 days. They even threw in the doctor with his patented, "State the nature of your medical emergency." Somebody replicate Janeway more alien coffee!!

I look forward to seeing more titles by Mr. Kotani. He wrote an excellent page-turner in Death of a Neutron Star. Despite some of the less-than-positive reviews by some, I believe this to be one of the better entries in the Voyager series. An plot-driven book to be sure, with very little focus on anyone except Janeway or the guest alien, Tyra, but nonetheless, it was great! And Janeway doesn't even drink any coffee in the second half of the book! Get over it, people!

I don't know much about stars but thankfully, I did understand quite a bit of it in Eric Kotani's "Death of a Neutron Star". Janeway and her Voyager crew was there to save the day and I liked this story because of the action, adventure and even suspenseful scenes that it created in my imagination. We all know Captain Janeway would help anyone and here, she found a way to avoid the destruction of homeworlds and this she did with the help of Seven, B'Elanna, Tuvok, Paris, Kim, Chakotay, etc plus help from new friends Dr. Maalot and Lieutenant Tyla. I thought the Doctor would not be in it but appeared at the very end too. :) I enjoyed this book and would recommend this to anyone who likes Star Trek Voyager. :)

Death of a Neutron Star isn't a terrible foray into the realm of Voyager. Unfortunately the mostly interesting plot is drowned out in the beginning with some healthy treknobabble and Janeway's strange obsession over some coffee beans they picked up on a planet they stopped at before the book starts.

Now coming off the amazing Seven of Nine (ST:VOY Book#16) Death has a pretty big burdon. Still it is a decent Trek novel and if you get into it develops quite nicely. The author's unique characters were some of the more pleasant, though not necessarily best written, in the Voyager novels.

Although not the best ST:VOY book I've read (check out "The Nanotech War" for a great read), the plotline was interesting and suspenseful.

The entire book leads up to a final encounter, where Janeway and her team uses innovative and surprising methods to save their ship, their new allies, and perhaps the rest of the galaxy.

These types of situations aren't new to any Federation Crew, but Kotani and Smith provide a unique and great conclusion.