Customer Reviews

No Man's Land (Star Trek Voyager: Gateways, Book 5)

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Often when a Voyager novel is included in a crossover series it falls flat. Seemingly just along for the ride. "No Man's Land" certainly did not fall flat. It's an enjoyable, if not outstanding read. But it as far as placing it among the other Gateways books it does feel as if it's just along for the ride. Perhaps because the plot is so far removed from the main story line of the series. Author Christie Golden always captures the Voyager crew members very well. Her characterizations in "No Man's Land" are one of the books highlights. With a deft touch she brings the crew and factious aliens to life, leaving you despising some while admiring others.

Set during the sixth season of Voyager, the crew is beginning to feel like they will actually be getting home someday. The recent contact with Starfleet has raised hopes and spirits. But directly in their path lies an extremely hazardous region of space that the crew dubs 'No Man's Land'. After deciding that traveling around the region is not an option, Janeway concludes that they could all benefit from a little R & R on a nearby uninhabited class-M planet before the ship undertakes this
latest challenge.

Shore leave is cut short when a mysterious portal opens on the planet depositing one very lost and confused alien canine. Investigation of the portal provides no answers and the crew seems to have acquired a grateful mascot when suddenly large portals begin to open all around Voyager in the surrounding space. Voyager soon finds itself overwhelmed and outnumbered by ships from all over the galaxy that have suddenly found themselves displaced. 62 vessels, representing 48 different
races, most previously unknown, all lost along with Voyager in the Delta Quadrant.

By now the crew has realized that these portals are some kind of Gateways. Gateways which seem to have closed, at least for the moment. Janeway decides to extend Voyager's companionship, protection and assistance to any of the vessels that wish to accompany them on their travels. Hoping that by working together they can solve the mystery of the Gateways, share resources and all somehow arrive home. A number of the ships, representing very diverse species decide to take Janeway up on her offer. Some of these species are obviously peaceful. Others arrogant or hostile.

As this ragtag fleet of disparate ships sets out they have no way of knowing what dangers lie ahead as they attempt to traverse 'No Man's Land'. Or if they can truly trust each other. One thing after another goes wrong with the situation quickly becoming even more tense and desperate. The Gateways keep reappearing and disappearing. Each contact draining the ships of power. Just as it seems that they may all be forced to abandon their vessels Janeway makes the decision to step through a Gateway and try to discover if the answer to finding a way home can be found in what lays beyond.

"No Man's Land" is a very short, light and fast read. The plot moves quickly. While there is nothing particularly outstanding about the story it is filled with interesting characters and has nice touches of humor. The story never really develops a sense of urgency, although it does present a number of small mysteries and subplots.

I don't know what to say about this book. For a Star Trek story, it was good, not the greatest thing but a good book. For a Voyager story it was even better, Janeway's ability to lead and conquer impossible situations shines though in this book. For the Gateways series... this book was useless.

I'm a huge Voyager fan, so this was the very first Gateways book I read. After reading it I thought it was phenominal, Janeway, all alone in the Delta Quadrant, happens upon SEVERAL other ships now also lost with her. Some of them friendly, some of them hostile, some of them at war back on their home planets, and some of them (the Hirogen) who are supposed to be enemies but don't seem to be. And then the end (in book 7) was "WOW."

But, now I've read three other Gateways books (TNG, DS9, and NF), and I have found that the Voyager installation in the Gateways series really had absolutely nothing to do with the Gateways in the other books. The only link is that you find out where the Iconians got the Gateways to begin with. But the Gateways in Voyager were not of the same sort as those in the other series, making this a useless read if you want to follow the Gateways series specifically.

My recommendation here is if you like Voyager and want to see some typical Janeway diplomacy and tough-as-nails leadership read this book. But if you are only getting this book for the Gateways' series skip it.

Let me start by saying it would be just plain impossible for me to give a bad review to Christie Golden. Sorry, but I just can't do it. As an added bonus, she used the word "gibe" correctly. This alone was worth the read. (An inside joke, to be sure, but it still counts for me.)

Unfortunately, I could give this one only three stars because the story itself is pretty watery, though I don't necessarily blame Christie for it. She wrote a VOY novel set prior to the series end, as part of a crossover series of stories. I wouldn't wish for a worse set of parameters! No way can a VOY story with these kinds of limitations ever hope to be anything more than a swift ride with Janeway at the helm.

And that's just what this one is. Strange gateways open in Delta Quadrant space, spilling out all manner of ships, containing friend and foe alike. Janeway herds and leads. Things happen. Up pops a dangerous nebula. Janeway leads the caravan through. More things happen. In the end, we find Janeway herself going through a gateway on a planet and disappearing - thus the set-up for the conclusion, contained, together with conclusions of the other five books in this series, in Book Seven of the Gateways series. One thin thread keeps this story bound together, but it seems a bit far-"fetched."

This book stands alone as much as any of the 5 Gateways I've read, except that like the others, it says "to be continued" in book 7. However, the story to this point does have some partial conclusion. It is a good Voyager story and involves all the crew, but a lot of focus is on Janeway's dilemas leading the caravan. I must say it isn't totally clear why ships from all over the galaxy would want to follow Voyager the direction they are going, especially since danger lies that way. But once you get past that, OK.

This is a very good book. It has Captain Janeway in a very sticky stitution. She must lead a fleet of alien ships through a dangerous sector of space and most don't trust or even like her! This book is good on how it has Janeway and the crew deal with slavery, greed and just plain rotten people. Seven has some interesting sceens in this book which makes it even better. The books first two chapters are a little slow but it picks up. An all around good Star Trek adventure.

Christie Golden can now be called the "Official Voyager Novelist" as most Voyager books coming out are under her moniker. This stood out as one of the better novels in the Gateways series, but the reason I did not give it a 5 star rating was that this book could have been a stand-alone novel. This book was about Voyager leading a fleet of miss-matched vessels through some hazards in the Delta Quadrant. As it was in the Gateways series, the tagline was:

"Voyager leads a fleet of mismatched vessels through some hazards while trying to avoid the Iconian Gateways in the Delta Quadrant."

It could have been:

"Voyager leads a fleet of mismatched vessels through some hazards while trying to avoid the [insert random space/time distortions] in the Delta Quadrant."

Very good book, though.

This book is easily the weakest of the Gateways series so far. Part of it can be blamed on the fact that the Voyager is simply too far away from the events that are taking place in the Alpha Quadrant to get the reader to care much (whereas the TNG, DS9 and NF appear to share a common linking thread of seeing the various crews work toward the same goal and getting three different perspectives on that, the Voyager book finds the crew outside the loop and thus, clueless as to what is going on, which is frustrating. Had this book been the first of the series, it might have been better). Another problem with the book is that the characters are too one-dimensional--including the new aliens we meet. It's obvious who the good and the bad guys are from the beginning. Finally, the ending of the novel is far too forced to be believed. I found myself wanting to throw the book aside in frustration several times in the final 50 or so pages.

The book is very loosely linked to the Gateways saga. There are times when the Gateways concept seems forced upon the book--almost as if the author had a good idea for a story but was forced to make it fit into the current series. Overall this leads to a lot of my dissatisfaction with this book.

And it IS a fun book. Its too bad that like the other Gateways books, it is really only a boo..., because there is no ending in this volume. This was a Gateways series "marketing ploy" to force customers to buy an extra book that they should not have had to buy. In the history of publishing I cannot think of a time where the end of 6 books were held ransom before. It was sleazy, and there is no other way to express it. Most of the Gateways books are missing both a beginning and an ending. This book, given that you are familiar with Voyager basics at all, doesn't have that problem. It is only missing the ending, and I have docked it one star for that.

Now for this book itself. The author captured the Voyager crew well, although some of the main characters get relatively short shrift. In an entire book, I would expect important characters in the show to play more than brief utility roles, as happens in this book.

As a Gateways story, this book is operating out to the side somewhere. The gateways are very different from the gateways in the other books (which you can "see through"), and they are inexplicably numerous. Possibly the "ending" in book seven explains this, but that isn't part of this book, so it doesn't count. I docked a second star because the book makes no attempt to fit in with how gateways work in the other books, and it is after all supposed to be part of the framework of the Gateways' series, hence the verbiage on the cover.

The story itself is interesting and involving, if not particularly exciting. Voyager encounters a large number of alien races all at once. The problems that arise and the intricacies of dealing with all these races at once is well handled by the author. The book even has a large scale murder mystery, which while introduced late and not left hanging for long, was also interesting while the plot element was active.

I found that the motivations of the characters and various races held together very well, with one exception. A race which kept "disposable" slaves on its ship was a major plot element. A portion of the slave-holding race resolved this inherent conflict a bit too simply and easily. It seemed like the author ran out of steam and just wrote that conflict out of the story rather than put in the effort to deal with it.

In another circumstance, tension between two races who had been in conflict for centuries, and about which the author gave us a major foreshadow, likewise was terminated in a short and simplistic manner, and in a way that invalidated the foreshadow. Frankly, the book could have been twice as long if these two plot elements had been fully fleshed out, and maybe that was the problem. Possibly the publisher told her to be done with them and deliver a book that would print to a certain number of pages. If that was the case, the story would have been better served to drop one of these sub-plots and complete the other one. As the book stands, the ending to neither sub-plot is at all satisfying.

Despite these problems, the book was an enjoyable read, and possibly from the standpoint of just sitting back and enjoying the read, the best of the series so far. At this writing I have read the TOS, New Earth, DS9, and Voyager books, upon advice to save the TNG book for last, even tho it is numbered third in the series.

I bought all these books used from Amazon sellers, and in every case so far I'm glad I didn't pay full price for them.

This may well be the best of the "Gateways" miniseries; the story is quite good, with an interesting plot, good characterizations, and good pacing. Unfortunately, it has the inevitable problem suffered by all of the books in this series: it ends on a cliffhanger. The first six books of the series are all incomplete, leaving their endings for book seven; book seven has no plot of its own, being simply six story endings. The concept was a cheesy excuse to sell an extra book; none of the first six books would have been made unduly long by including its ending, so there was no excuse other than marketing for arranging the series the way it was arranged.

If, like me, you are foolish enough to want to read all Star Trek novels, and are therefore intent on reading this series, I would suggest getting the whole series before beginning, and reading each book followed by its complementary segment in book seven, rather than reading each of the first six books before continuing to book seven. Of all the books in the series, this might really be the only one even marginally worth doing so for, but I'm unconvinced that even this story is worth the price of two books (which is what you need to buy in order to have it).

If, on the other hand, you actually LIKE cliffhanger endings and "come back next week, same bat time, same bat channel" stories, you'll LOVE this one.

I must say Christie Golden knows the characters of Voyager all too well and how to portray them in her wonderful writing. She styles them in a format that you could not tell was different from the television shows. But there was a typo- for starters this book takes place late in Season 6. She accidently calls Pairs (Lieutenant) a rank that he did not have during this time but regains in Unimatrix Zero. But throughout the rest of the book she refers to him by Ensign. Overall, I think the Gateway saga could have been the most thrilling for Voyager- the possiblity of returning home? This could have been another good 2 parter episode for their return home. I have not read any of the other Gateway books, but this could have been the most interesting saga of linking distance galaxies and other dimensions! Overall Golden has a lot of humor in this book something that has lacked throughout the Voyager novels along with Fluffly/Barkley. Great book and great to see the Hirogen make a come back!