Customer Reviews

Dragon's Honor (Star Trek: The Next Generation, No. 38)

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

 

 

Dragon's Honor shows what a great crew Picard had with the Enterprise-D,
everyone in the crew was used smartly, even Deanna Troi with her "unusual" dealings the Dragon, surprise ending too.

There is a play by Gilbert & Sullivan, the Mikado, based on China but in the style of Pirates of Penzance. This is a Star Trek style adaptation of it. All of the Next Gen regulars are involved, although Geordi's part is quite limited. The situations in themselves are actually quite reasonable, but then taken to absurd limits. The results are hilarious. Some of the situations: Picard is "honoured" by sharing favourite foods with the Dragon Emperor, foods that everyone but that Emperor considers offal. Riker attends the bachelor party, where the guests are more inclined to have funerals for each other the next day. Dr. Crusher ends up, to quote: playing den mother at a kung fu slumber party. Data, onboard Enterprise, engages the commander of the approaching alien fleet in what the Old Norse called a flyting: an insult contest. The Old Norse flytings were long, nasty, inventive and incredibly amusing, and they would have loved Data's performance. That was the best part of this very funny book.

It is quite interesting to note that in the recent release of Greg Cox's "The Q Continuum," with an interview between Greg Cox and Kevin Dilmore that this outstanding STNG novel wasn't a collaborated effort between Kij Johnson and Greg Cox but more of a re-write on Greg Cox's part. Apparently, Kij Johnson was only able to get the first draft in on time due to her changing jobs. Pocket Books and John Ordover asked Greg Cox to step in and write the second and final draft. While the excellent premise and characters belonged solely to Kij Johnson, the credit for the exceptional characterizations and pacing goes to Greg Cox for this wonderful STNG story.

While the cover art for this STNG novel is pretty much standard fare for the time in which it was published, the art is a cut above the rest.

The premise:

The Enterprise is en route to Pai, the throne world of the Dragon Empire in order to secure the insular empires entrance into the United Federation of Planets. In order for the entrance of the Dragon Empire to happen, Captain Picard and crew must ensure the wedding of the Emperor's son to the only daughter of their oldest enemy goes off without any problems, effectively putting an end to decades of civil war.

This great story takes a turn for the worse when Dr. Crusher who has a very prominent role in the story, wins the confidence of the bride to be and discovers that she is reluctant to carry out the wedding. Adding to that, a vicious alien race comes into the story and they will stop at nothing to prevent the Dragon Empires entrance into the United Federation of Planets...

What follows from there is nothing short of one of the best numbered Star Trek The Next Generation novels that both authors deserve a great amount of praise for bringing to print. I highly recommend this novel to any and all fans of Star Trek fiction! {ssintrepid}

From THE SPEAKING TREE MAGAZINE:

STAR TREK -- THE NEXT GENERATION: DRAGON'S HONOR
by Kij Johnson and Greg Cox
Pocket Books, ISBN 0-671-50107-0, $5.99

Why is it that things never go as planned? It sounded so simple! Attend a wedding as a representative of the United Federation and get a signature on a peace treaty -- ending decades of civil war. What could go wrong?

Hmm. Either these Star Trek books are getting better or I am starting to sort out the characters. I think this is the second one in a row that I have liked.

A wonderfully fun quick read, DRAGON'S HONOR sets a good pace from the beginning. The story is told with humor and style. I figured out the mystery about half-way in, but that didn't stop me from enjoying this tale to the utmost. This one is going to go on my book shelves to reread some rainy afternoon when I want to lose myself in a story.

 --Reviewed by Elspeth Sapphire

©199

Star Trek-The Next Generation: Dragon's Honor written by Kij Johnson and Greg Cox is a who-done-it complete with mystery and intrigue as Captain Jean-Luc and the Enterprise crew battle an alien armada and are at an exotic Dragon Empire ready to join the United Federation of Planets.

What I liked about this book is the mystery as you try to guess who-done-it with the clues furnished by the author as you read on in the book. There is a wedding between to old foes with mistrust running rampid and this "Royal Wedding" is entrusted for its security on Picard and the Enterprise crew. I like how the fleshing out of the characters in this story were written.

This is a well-written book the will keep you on the edge of your seat. Without the wedding there can be no peace and the treaty with the Federation would never happen... but this isn't all... there is some really bad guys that would stop at nothing to see that peace never happends. Thus, this vicious race plans assassination to all out invasion, just to keep the Empire from joining the Federation and this is where you'll read about Captain Jean-Luc Picard and his formidable skill as a negotiater.

There is action and advenure in the book along with the mystery and intrigue that will keep you reading till the end of the book. This is a classic Picard saves the day book.

The very first thing that I want to say about this book is that I like it. The storyline was very interesting, although intensely predictable. I rather enjoyed a specific poker game being played throughout the book, although it did tend to drag on after a while. The book itself was nicely put together, but the flaws were a bit hard to ignore. The only two flaws that I can really point out are these: First, there are far too many spelling mistakes as well as grammar errors throughout the entire book. I am not sure of there was a single chapter without a mistake. Second is the fact that alot of times in the book, a character will act in a way, or say something that just doesn't seem to be something that they would normally do. For example, I caught Data using contractions. As I recall, this book takes place before Data reached an emotional status, which means he should still be saying "is not" instead of "isn't". However, once I was able to discard these flaws, the book was rather enjoyable. I have to give this book 3 stars for being a fairly decent title. Kij Johnson and Greg Cox did a cool job on this one.

Well Picard does in this gruesome tale about food and marriage. The food in here is not to die for, you just might die eating it. Well the main plot is about a young girl getting married to the older brother of the one she trully loves. You can probably guess the end to this one. There is also a conspirousy on someones life. This book is ok, but the food is gross, in one description I almost puked my dinner.

I simply found the basic concept silly and boring; technically, it's not badly written. If you enjoy reading books set in traditional Chinese culture, and also enjoy Star Trek stories, you'll probably love this one. I find traditional Chinese culture stultifyingly boring and thoroughly annoying, and would not, once I'd seen that this book involved the Enterprise crew forced to attempt to make diplomatic contact with an offshoot of that culture, have bothered finishing were I not compulsive about reading every Star Trek book.

Just a question of taste; this book was not to mine.

I have to give this book four stars because : 1) I like alien races. 2) I enjoy books that deal with Asia and this book has the 'Dragon Empire', who seem to have a society based on early China. 3) It also has a mystery and I love trying to figure out things before the characters in the book.

It starts out with action and has enough to keep you going to the end.

I'm a huge fan of Star Trek, and I will be impressed by almost anywork but this one just didn't go over all that well with me. Sure the writer uses extremely descriptive language and draws you in at some points, but the story line gets very redundant at many points. Sometimes you just want to get up and scream "GET TO THE POINT ALREADY" when reading this book. Bottom Line, if you're a speedy reader and can plow through a book in one sitting you should definenlty pick this one up, casual readers might want to look into more of Peter David's work.