Customer Reviews

Ghost of a Chance (Star Trek Voyager, Book 7)

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

 

 

This was the first Voyager novel I ever read. I'm new to the Delta Quadrant (I started watching in Season Four, how's that for new?), and before Voyager I never watched a Star Trek in my life! So, as far as this book goes, it was pretty good. I enjoyed the setting of the planet (Janeway, Tuvok, and Kim) much more than what was simultaneously transpiring on Voyager itself. I was VERY frustrated with Chakotay! Paris's reaction to the beautiful aliens is to be expected, unfortunately, but I was hoping for more objectivity from the usually level-headed Commander. Other than that obvious inconsistency, I felt that the others were mostly in keeping with character. It's good to see the same people in the novels that we see on the show . . . instead of reading and saying, "Oh, they would never do that!" As far as the whole "ghost" story, though, I wasn't very impressed. It never was made very clear exactly what they were--at least not for me. Why couldn't the crew have just discovered this new race, had to deal with the treacherous Televek (although their treachery was awfully obvious quite early on), and been able to shift the moons and save them, without a bunch of ghosts?? Yeah, I know that without the ghosts Janeway couldn't have had the knowledge that she needed to rescue the aliens, but any author who could write a Star Trek novel in the first place must be creative enough to come up with a better solution! And to agree with someone else, the whole transporter solution was a little too last-minute to be plausible. But I'll give it to them--after all, it's my first novel, I can't be too critical. To close, this will not be my last "Voyager" novel, but I do hope that there is some improvement in the others. I hesistate to give the book three stars; I think it's more deserving of two and a half, but keeping in mind that I'm new to Star Trek, I decided to give it the higher of the two ratings.

"Ghost of a Chance" is the first of only two Star Trek novels by Mark Garland and the only one with Charles G. McGraw. While I found the premise of this story to be a very interesting one, the plot setup, execution and pacing to be somewhat troubling, detracting from the experience of the book. The saving grace for this novel is the authors' characterizations which were pretty good.

The cover art for this novel is pretty much the standard fare for when it was published, somewhat bland.

The premise:

While making an attempt to plus up the ships supply of deuterium, Voyager encounters a brown dwarf star, causing a great amount of damage. Chakotay starts having "visions" and believes they're linked to one of the planets in the Drenar system where they encountered the brown dwarf.

They soon discover that many of them are having visions and since the engines are in need of repair that will take several days, they decided to explore Drenar Four and discover a primitive civilization and their plight, severe volcanic stresses. The question of violating the Prime Directive comes immediately into play. An alien ship soon enters the picture, the Televek and they offer aid to both Voyager and the planets inhabitants but Captain Janeway finds their offer questionable and she soon finds herself in a quagmire...

While "Ghost of a Chance" isn't among the top Star Trek Voyager books available I would still recommend it as an interesting read in the series. {ssintrepid}

This is a pretty good story; there's plenty of action and drama, plenty of excitement, and if the authors' understanding of the Prime Directive is a little faulty, I suppose that's a fairly minor quibble. All in all, it's reasonably competently written, the characters ring mostly true, and the overall feel captures the feel of the fairly early Voyager episodes pretty well. Worth the read if you find yourself missing the show and wanting another story from the period before the Seven of Nine era.

First off, the book really starts off on a high note with a troublesome encounter in the beginning. Throughout the book, however, there is a plot that makes the reader wish he could scream to the Voyager crew about the danger ahead of them. It's a good read, and if I were you, I would by all means, pay full price for this book if I couldn't get a discounted used book. It's just that good, in my opinion.

This book had some very enjoyable moments. I really enjoyed the Janeway/Tuvok/Kim interaction. And it was nice to see the spiritual side of Chakotay again.

The aliens were interesting, and I got a kick out of the way Paris and Chakotay were almost unable to resist, but it was a bit overdone.

While I enjoyed some aspects of this book, it failed to really draw me in and capture my imagination.

For novels of the Star Trek shows, I have a bit of lowered expectations as they never seem to live up to the episodes.

However, for a Star Trek novel, this one is pretty good. Yeah, there are some little minor problems in it, but I don't think I've read a television series novel without any. The storyline kept my interest and I actually wanted to keep reading it to find out how everything worked out in the end (because we all know no main characters will die and everyone will generally be happily ever after).

So if you're looking for another Voyager novel to read, pick this one up.

It's difficult to say why this is a two star Voyager novel. It's not to bad a read, but it couldn't really tease me into te story. And what I minded next to that, is that it's far to obvious what the aliens on board are doing to Chakotay and Paris, but the authors keep on "exploring" that issue time after time. Beside that I can also not appreciate the quick-fixes they use. For instance how the transporter gets on line just in time to save everybody's life, in situations that would otherwise have been unresolvable, or the fact that the shields were fixed just in time to save everything when there was no other hope. It's just to easy. And then there is the role Kes plays in this novel: in a considerable amount of the book her dialogue resticts itself to statements that "people please should listen to Neelix"...!

So why isn't the book only a 1 star novel? Because the aliens on the planet are worthwhile; because the idea of the effects of having 3 moons are interesting, as is Torres' idea on solving the problems; because the Janeway-Tuvok-Kim-interactions are done well.

So far I haven't been really impressed by the numbered Voyager novels that take place during the show. This is the first Voyager novel that takes place in the second season of the show. Beside number novels 2 "The Escape" and 3 "Ragnarok" 4-6 have been rather uneventful. This novel isn't much better, but it shows Janeway defying the prime directive in helping the Drenarians whose planet is almost being destroyed by cosmic earthquakes, while also trying to do business with the suspicious Televek. Sometimes I wonder how much Janeway's 'kindness' will go in helping almost every vunerable race in the DQ from the Ocamapa to the Drenarians. The "Ghost" in the crew's vision only appear during the beginning and end of the novel. Overall this book is much better than books 4-6 but not as good as "The Escape" or "Ragnarok".

I thought this book was great. I would recommend it to any Star Trek fan.

I don't care if this gets posted or not--I just want to say, what is with that last (or first, I guess it would be) review???????? Someone reviews a Voyager book to tell us to go read a completely different book called "Dorella"?? WHY WAS THIS POSTED?? If you want to praise "Dorella," go right ahead--but not in the space for another book. HELLO, AMAZON?