Customer Reviews

Double or Nothing (Star Trek The Next Generation: Double Helix, Book 5)

5 star:		(17)
4 star:		(9)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This is another great installment to the New Frontier and the Double Helix series. Not having read the last of the Double Helix books yet, it seems that this one pretty much finishes the Double Helix???? A favorite quote from the book, Riker - "I've got to get off this ship." Peter David did an excellent job of integrating Picard and Riker into the New Frontier. It's really interesting and well done how he brought Riker and Shelby together again. That portion was done very well and even better than I'd expected another meeting of those two. Overall another great book by Peter David.

Although the plot is a little too "Star Trek saves the world", Peter David entertains us with a fast paced story filled with great character interaction, action scenes, and more background on some of the shadier sides of Star Fleet. My only critique is if the reader is not familiar with the crew of the Excalibur from the New Frontiers' series, they may get be easily confused. This is a must have for anyone enjoying the New Frontiers series right now.

Peter David has writen another amazing New Frontier story. Completely filled with twists and surprises all the way to the end. Also it has numerous familar guest stars. Particularly like the ongoing conflict between Riker and Shelby.

This book was just like nearly all the other Peter David books - very interesting, very well-written, very funny and packed with a few two many plugs for David's other books. Although the book is classified TNG, it's really about Calahoun and the Excalibur crew. This is the climax of the Double Helix series (I've read all but the third and the sixth), and it seems to be the important one. Ironically, David deals with the Double Helix virus as just another super-galaxy-threatening weapon, which is kind of disapointing - one of the things I liked about the series was seeing the crew deal with a less physical threat. I wasn't impressed by the mysterious villain lurking around in the shadows until this book. You can buy this book without the rest of the Double Helix series without a problem. I also want to add that it seems David watched one too many James Bond flicks while he was writing this.

This is the fifth book in the "Star Trek: Double Helix" series I'm reading about a mysterious villain who has been releasing biological agents across the Alpha Quadrant in an attempt to perfect the ultimate 100% fatal virus.

Now the journey comes to an end, as we finally learn who the mysterious villain is. And it's up to a teaming of Jean Luc Picard and Will Riker with the crew of the USS Excalibur to stop his final plans for wiping out all of the Federation in one fell swoop.

Highlights: 1) TNG cameos of two admirals and a major villain. 2) a James Bond-style spy adventure starring Captain Mackenzie Calhoun, complete with gadgets, brutish henchman, a feisty babe and mad villain. 3) Will Riker taking temporary command of the USS Excalibur and having to deal with its eccentric crew and his old nemesis, Shelby. 4) the Excalibur crew themselves shine in all of their wacky glory. 5) you learn even more about Calhoun's character and why he's one of the most unique Starfleet captains ever.

Nitpicks: 1) a glaring boo-boo about where the Bajoran wormhole goes to. 2) unless there's another one, Thaddeus Riker was supposed to be a Civil War not a Federation pioneer. 3) I still think the mysterious villain is way too big for his britches, and one look at his awe-inspiring impressive headquarters will make you agree. 5) unless the Narobi have been used before in a previous book (or in the next book), this interesting race wasn't utilized to their fullest potential.

All in all, this was my favorite book of the series. Peter David writes for fans, so it was fast-paced and fun to read. Those who haven't read Peter David's "New Frontier" books or aren't familiar with the Excalibur crew might get a little confused keeping track of all the characters. However, if you are a "New Frontier" fan, it must be pointed out that this book does stand by itself, so you can read it without bothering with the rest of the "Double Helix" books.

Last but not least, if you're wondering why a six-part series ends with a fifth book, the next book is a prequel that explains why The General hates Picard and the Federation so much.

Haven't read the rest of the Double Helix, but picked this up for 'ol lavender eyes. It was a quick, light read. Peter David can be an erratic writer - or perhaps it is a severe lack of editorial guidance - because this one is much tighter, smoother and far more enjoyable to read than most of the New Frontier stuff.

This book is more like his Captain's Table entry which is also tighter and smoother(and gives more detail on Mackenzie Calhoun's strange career).

I've been intrigued with the very odd Excalibur crew and have followed them regardless of the sometimes disappointing writing. This book makes the effort worth it. More rational interactions between Excalibur crew for a change, a dash of the Next Gen crew thrown in to leaven it out and an interesting (if Star-Trek predictable) galaxy-wide threat.

It's fun to see Picard in his "double-agent" role again. Why does Starfleet use high-profile Starship Captains as spies anyway?

Pick it up - it's a better read than most out there and truer to the TV personas of the Next Gen crew than the usual Star Trek book. And if you don't know the extremely odd Excalibur crew, this is a good way to meet them!

... well, then again... The previous reviewer hinted at the Bondesque portion of this book. But he didn't tell the half of it. There is the mad-villian, typical of Bond, who matches the Moonraker villian who built a space station to house his own kind of perfect people to survive a similar distruction of all known life. There is even a Bond girl, who winds up like most other Bond girls (at least the first one 007 sleeps with--in the old ones, Calhoun even ... well, uh... gets seduced by her Bond style--in a "rescue pod" after he rescues her from sure death.) There are the contraptions and the Q character AND even an M character... matching with the new female M in the newer Bonds. There is a near perfect match for the guy with the metalic teeth, too, exept he talks. And, if you're still with me, the final scenes on The Voices space station and in the opening scenes are sooooo typically Bond it's pathetic: a normal looking guy goes through [challenges] that would kill anyone else and survives through luck, a bit of ingenuity and with the help of his toys.

Luckily, I'm a Bond fan and a Calhoun fan (stopped reading the series after they killed him off. I was peeved.) Sadly, I"m on another Calhoun adventure, one where we find out he's not really dead... and Peter David has him in a typical Coyboy movie a la "Shane"... I know David writes a lot, but Damn! Could he be less inventive? I allowed for the fact he patterned Calhoun after Alexander the Great in the first part of the series, and even enjoyed it, but this is getting weird.

Good thing he writes well.

Peter David is a genius in writing. Honestly. Once again he's managed to come up with an interesting story plus numerous b-events that all fit together in one big, exiting and thrilling piece of literature.

Even though this book is stated to be a novel from "The Next Generation", it can hardly be connected to Picard's adventures.

However, for me personally the most fun was to see how much Commander Riker is suffering under his first real command. It reveals a lot of his motivation and why he has never accepted commanding a vessel of his own. Shelby gives him a wilful adversary as she'd done before when she was assigned as his First Officer back in the days of "The Best Of Both Worlds".

Also, Peter David again manages to include a lot of guest stars, such as the admirals Nechayev and Jellico, who both have become leading characters in the word of "Star Trek: New Frontier". Jellico again gets a much bigger character now, not only being the madman. Not to forget, the James Bond-theme of an unknown technician, creating lots of little toys! I really had a hard laugh on that one!

The only negative fact I found is the revealing of Burgoyne's pregnancy or better to say non-pregnancy. For fans, it is sad being forced to buy this book in order to get to know how the story between Burgoyne and McHenry. For Peter David, it's again a good way of getting more money out of his enjoyable novels.

But all in all, it's a solid book with a challenging storyline, filled with tons of double-meaning remarks!

Only after page 200 did the mention of a virus even come up except for one sentence before that. Doesn't belong in the double helix series. Ridiculous, and not even much of a plot but more about sex and dumb jokes.

OK, first of all, I've got to admit that I'm a huge fan of Peter David's work and have been since he published the first really great TNG novel, Strike Zone many, many years ago. That said, I've got to admit that this was the one novel of the Double Helix series I was really, really looking foward to.

I read it in three days. It's just that good.

First of all, it features David's wonderful cast from his New Frontier series. Secondly, it's got several of the members of TNG interacting with them with some great results. (There's a huge shouting match between Riker and Shelby that rings so absolutely true that it's painful.) Finally, it's got David's compulsively readable style of writing that makes the pages just fly by with ease.

I'd love to discuss the details of just why this book is so good, but it would ruin the series for those of you might not have read it yet. Suffice it to say, this book makes the entire Double Helix worthwhile and worthy of being a six book saga.

A must read for any Trek fan...