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8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Captain! Our suspension of disbelief is overloading!, May 31, 2000
This review is from: Ice Trap (Star Trek, Book 60) (Mass Market Paperback)
The authors who publish under the pseudonym L.A. Graf have turned out some of the best Original Series professional fiction available. "Ice Trap", unfortunately, is one of their worst collaborations. The characterizations are poor, the setting is highly derivative, and the writing is uneven and choppy. One of the reasons we read Original Series profic is that we love the characters. What a shame it is, then, that the most important characters in this book are portrayed so badly. I was embarrassed by Uhura's overt sexuality while on duty and annoyed by Chekov's neurotic whining, but Spock: poor Spock comes across as a pathetic bookworm who loves the sound of his own voice and who wouldn't lift a hand to save his own captain. The poor characterizations make it difficult for the reader to suspend disbelief long enough to enjoy this book. Unfortunately, the setting compounds the difficulty. The writers seem to have written this book as a tribute to Canada; the original characters are mostly Canadian, and the alien world, Nordstral, is astonishingly similar to northern Canada -- or to what a Californian might think Northern Canada was like if they'd never actually been there. It's as if they got everything from an outdated copy of the Encyclopedia Britannica. It's distracting and at times unintentionally hilarious: in one scene, a character swears there are no sailboats in Calgary, which might not have been as funny had I not been on a sailboat in Calgary at the time I read it. To top it all off, the writing is weak and very uneven. It's as if one writer contributed the A story, the other the B story, and both collaborated on the bridges. Unfortunately, it doesn't work. This is perhaps the weakest of the L.A. Graf collaborations. I don't recommend it.
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5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
Sailing, Sailing, on an Iceberg too, November 21, 2006
This review is from: Ice Trap (Star Trek, Book 60) (Mass Market Paperback)
Wow. This has to be one of the dumbest novels I've ever read. The characters are presented lamely, the story should have been solved days before the Enterprise arrives, and the iceberg....
Throughout most of the story Kirk is a Captain. However, for one chapter he becomes and Admiral. Then he is a Captain again.
Did you know you can use a tent to turn an iceberg into a sailing ship?
The most common reaction to anything by any crew member is to "gasp".
Vulcan's can't go to cold planets or they will die.
Kraken's get goo-goo eyed over communications officers wearing masks.
The story consists of Chekov and Uhura running from bad guys, and Kirk and McCoy trying not to drown.
I cannot even begin to imagine how drunk the authors had to be to envision this as a good story. I also cannot imagine what publisher would have printed this garbage.
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
A little good, a lot of bad, September 21, 2009
The alien race was actually interesting, but could have been fleshed out more. Chekov was the high point: we get into his thoughts as head of security and as a leader. McCoy dukes it out with another doctor, which was entertaining.
But McCoy also turns out to be afraid of water in a childhood flashback, then predictably gets trapped in a cabin filling up with water. That kind of stuff ruins a book for me. Long-lost relatives, "incurable" diseases, and previously-unknown phobias are the refuge of bad writers who can't see the rich characters right in front of them.
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