Customer Reviews

Gene Roddenberry's Earth: Final Conflict--The Arrival

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

 

 

I am a big fan of the television series, Gene Roddenburry's Earth: Final Conflict, and personally I would have found myself reading this book one way or another. I was happily surprised, though, by both the ability of the author to accurately portray the Taelons, and by the actual basis of the story. At first review, I believed the novel would span a much longer period of time after the arrival of the alien Companions. As I found out, half of the book is actually spent in a flashback that yields incredible information about both the Taelons and another mysterious type of being that I had not known about previously through the TV program. This past-tense adventure, told through the eyes of Jonathan Doors' father, is an insightful tale in itself, bordering on fantasy slightly more than science fiction. Then, following Jubal Doors' confessional, occurrences in the present begin to uncannily equate to those from the past. Pure action encompasses the better part of the conclusion of the novel, and thus the reader knows what Jonathan Doors truly stands for. As was Gene Roddenburry's ongoing intension, the mystery of alien abilities never ceases throughout the tale. I would highly recommend this book to anyone interested, whether or not the reader has knowledge of the show on TV. Of course, I believe that having watched the show since its premiere made this first tale of The Arrival even more comprehensible, and certainly much more intriguing.

I thought this book was OK. Not great. I would think they would want to start the EFC book line with the best story they could get. Still this book had it's good points. It didn't totally rewrite EFC history. The story does explain how Doors starts to suspect and work against the Talons. Thats the good point of the book.

The bad points. Mainly technical plot errors. Errors which show that the writer of this book does not exactly watch the show reguarly. 1. The writer does have the Talons touching humans, taking and mimicing their DNA. 2. A rocket missile is said to have hit a Talon shuttle, but the shuttle isn't even scratched. This is contradictory to an episode in which a shuttle is destroyed by a rocket launcher. 3. This mistake was a major disapointment to read. The write says a Talon is scratched, bleeding black blood. Hello! The Talons are suppose to be pure energy! They just had an episode about the Talons being worshiped just becuase of that. There are also numerous refrenses in the show to this fact. (Like when Zo'or was a jury member in the Ro'ha trial.)

I know it's just a book based on a show, but it's still sooo much more enjoyable when a book accurately fits in with the show's plots.

Bottom line: wait for the Paper back if you must read this. Don't get me wrong, the book is good in some points. Just little details like these just ruin the plot sometimes.

This book was very bad. I always have a problem when authors go back in the history of a story line without knowing what the show is all about. The author of this book doesn't watch EFC, or if he does it is a different show than I watch. He brings in things that are totally wrong, I did not like this book and will not buy the other ones when they come out.

'The Arrival' is an ultra-cool book, it is not nearly as 'fannish' as one would expect. There are some plot problems, but not major ones, for example, the show suggests the first Taelon landings were during the day, not at night. Also, the cover is slightly misleading-it shows the EFC character 'Lili Marquette', but she is not even mentioned in this book. Most of 'The Arrival is written in a flash back to 1936, a time when Doors' father is 'abducted' by the Taelon 'Lekron.' Dispite the fact that most books based on tv shows are quick reads, this book is well written. I reccomend this book to EFC fans-you know who you are-and others, though if you are not an Earth Final Conflict fan, I suggest you watch the show for a better understanding of the characters.

What a disappointment! After eagerlay awaiting the first EFC book and having to have it 'hot off the press', after only a few chapters I wondered why I bothered. The author began the story with gusto then became mired in the most boring trivia, going on ad nauseum for over a hundred pages where nothing more happened than Doors slept / tried to find food / got lost / found his way again and had some terrible visions. The inaccuracies with the storyline were a glaring embarrassment. One could have forgiven those errors if the story had been rivetting enough to hold a reader's attention. The only saving grace, I really liked the dust cover. Please Mr. Saberhagen do your homework before you attempt another novel. It makes for excellent bedtime reading ... for an insomniac.

I'm afraid that this novel was very painful reading. The plot flowed slowly, (which would have been okay, if it had only been more substantial,). The dialogue was wooden. The old characters, (e.g. Doors and Da'an,) were written fairly well, but the new ones, such as Jubal and Esther were very poorly portrayed. (With the one exception of Lekren, a Taelon.) Half of the book was spent in Jubal's flashback which, although it revealed necessary information, could have been far shorter than it was.

Buy the paperback if you are a fan of EFC, (since it's the first novel - you know you have to have it, even if it is muck *g*). If you're not, avoid at all costs.

I have enjoyed catching up with this interesting, though sometimes uneven, series now that SciFi is showing it. Turning to the books in order to flesh out some of the back story, I had high hopes. Unfortunately, after beginning well, this book drowns in repetitious and annoying writing. It's as if Saberhagen said, "Well, I have to write a certain number of pages, so I'll just have the same event occur a few times, modifying it slightly, to fulfill my duty." Of the 300 or so pages, about 50 are worth your time.

I've probably read over a million pages of Sci-Fi in my 49 years,including just about every word written by Heinlein and Clarke. I haven't read much by Saberhagen, but I'll bet he spends more time and effort on his own material.AS a dyed in the wool E:FC Fan, this is a real stinker that drags all the way through and has none of the appeal and action of the T.V. series. Maybe the teen set love it because it's something from the show, but, in my opinion, the publishers waisted their money,because it seems that is all Mr.Saberhagen was interested in. I'd almost bet that he hadn't even read the E:FC "Bible".

And I thought this book was really disappointing. And instead of being about how the Taelons came to Earth and it's mostly about Doors father in the 1930's. And there's more about Errol Flynn fooling around with David Niven than anything with Taelons. And Lilly Marguette is on the cover and she's not even in the book. And the author started so many sentences with "and". And it was really annoying, considering I don't think you're supposed to start a sentence with "and". And it got so bad, I couldn't help thinking every sentence started with "and".

Usually books that spin off of serialized TV shows tend toward the negligiable, but Saberhagen wisely sets this book at a point before the show's premiere, and sets up some backstory. Not quite as much as I'd've liked, but it's still a solid story that'll hold your attention for a little while.