Customer Reviews

New Frontier (Star Trek New Frontier)

5 star:		(28)
4 star:		(12)
3 star:		(6)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Peter David has done a wonderful job of creating a new crew in an already well defined universe. The characters are well developed and the story line is progresses smoothly.

The crew of the Excalibur is not as polished as the crews of the Enterprise, a detail that goes a long way to help the story out. It also helps that by the end of book 4 you are really rooting for these underdogs.

I also enjoyed getting all four books in one edition. To me that helped keep the flow of the storyline going.

I can't wait to read volumes 5&6!

Peter David did an great job writing this book. This book is highly recommended. After reading it I went back out and bought #5 & #6 for now. I'm not a big reader when it comes to books. So it might take me a while to read a book. I read this one in 3 days. Just couldn't put it down. Captain Calhoun is one of the great Captain's in star Fleet. Read it you will love it.

If you like Star Trek, and you like Peter David, you can't go wrong with the first four books of "The New Frontier", his introduction to Captain Mackenzie Calhoun and the rest of the crew of the Excalibur. I was hooked on David's writing through his classic "Grey Hulk" series of Marvel Comics. I find his prose and wit stands out from the crowd (though they did bring in some good writers for the original Trek book series).

These first books in the ongoing "New Frontier" series are classically organized, developing the characters in their individual threads and then bringing them together on the Excalibur for a unifying adventure in their new territory. There's very nice balance between characters and a breezy pace. The Star Trek comics, er books, have a little more leeway with asides that you don't get in the TV shows or movies. With Peter David writing, the often serious tone is punctuated with comic relief. The time and place is set around the time of the Next Generation, with Jean-Luc Picard and even Spock putting in an appearance.

Just to be clear -- these books read like comic books, or like a Star Trek episode. It's pure pulp, but pulp of the highest order. One word of warning: these "books" are barely novella length; it takes about an hour to read each, and that's if you read the funny parts twice. All in all, just as Star Trek should be.

I had latched on to this series when the books were initially released in the 1990's. After reading the first four books, I was hooked. Peter David is a fantastic Star Trek author and rarely does he miss the mark. This series is a home run!

My biggest complaint is that I purchased the series again for the kindle. The kindle version is absolutely riddled with spelling and grammar errors. Dialogue jumps all over the place in parts. Hyphens are placed in the most bizarre spots. The print versions are fine so I know it wasn't bad editing from the beginning. It is distracting at times, not to mention confusing.

Overall, if you can stand a few type-o's here and there, the kindle version is fine. If you can't, get the print version!

This is one of my favorite Star Trek books so I bought it for the kindle so I didn't have to lug the bulky hardcover around. Unfortunately, in the later books (three and four) it is occasionally missing lines of text, causing dialogue to appear to skip from one character to another midsentence, etc. The print version does not have these flaws. I found them incredibly distracting and had I not known that they aren't there in the print version of the book, it would doubtlessly have negatively impacted my view of the book as a whole. Instead it has just negatively impacted my view of whoever converted this for kindle. It's not TOO distracting, so far it's no more than maybe five lines missing, but it's distracting enough so that I knocked a star off.

To start my regular review - first of all, Peter David is a wonderfully witty author who never fails to create memorable characters. I've read some of his other Star Trek books and some of his regular books, as well as some of his comics, and his writing style is clearly recognizable (though subdued here from the outlandish turn it took in the Sir Apropos of Nothing books). Still, if you don't like witty asides served up with whatever drama is happening, you may want to steer clear of this book. I know I find myself chuckling out loud pretty frequently at it.

The novels are set up like most sci-fi spinoff series novels I've read, with each chapter following a different character or plot thread. I hear some people find it disconcerting but it doesn't bother me at all. The characters are, well, pretty awesome. As well as some familiar faces (Picard, Spock, Shelby, Selar, Robin Lefler) from the tv shows, there are new characters and old spinoff characters who add spice. Mackenzie Calhoun is a fierce captain who can go toe-to-toe with the best of them and who lead a rebellion to free his homeworld from their oppressors before joining Starfleet (and then unjoining. and then rejoining.). Shelby, familiar from TNG, returns here as the first officer of the ship, who is as rule-bound as Mackenzie is a maverick, and who also is Mac's ex-fiancee. They travel with a crew of assorted misfits, each of whom has their own secret identity/agenda/past (which gives tons to explore in the other dozen or so books in this series). I find all the books to be fast-paced and entertaining. More than anything else, they remind me of the Star Wars: X-Wing books by Michael Stackpole and Aaron Allston (humor, check. charismatic leader, check. ragged band of misfits in spaceships, check. derring-do, check and check.).

Basically, two thumbs way, way up for this book. If you want to try it, go for it. If you somehow got to this page, you're probably already the target audience.

House of Cards

In the mid nineteen-nineties, the Star Trek universe was placed in the hands of Peter David to begin a new novel-based series with a new captain, crew, setting, and a multitude of new species. A few had been seen before -- both onscreen, as side-characters -- and in some of David's Trek novels geared towards children (the Starfleet Academy series). In doing so, David created New Frontier, and did not disappoint. At all.

The series opens on Xenex, a desolate desert world, then runs the gamut of worlds from imperial homeworld Thallon (another species created for the novels, as well as Xenex) to Romulus and Vulcan. Many of the characters are introduced in this, the first novel (almost novella-length), eventually ending in a cliffhanger.

Excellent opener to an even more outstanding series.

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Into the Void

The second book in a series of four introductory novels within the "New Frontier" series is both character and action-packed, introducing the readers to the Excalibur crew left untouched in the first volume.

Excalibur has launched on her mission to Sector 221-G, and her commanders are hard at work sorting out personnel issues ranging from stowaways to the helmsman. But when a refugee transport loses power, it's Excalibur's job to save the ship -- and the people aboard.

"New Frontier", the first Star Trek series to be centered around non-canon characters, is, in my humble opinion, some of the best Trek fiction on the market. The characters, plots, and characters are all stunningly executed by one of Trek's best authors.

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The Two-Front War

"Two-Front War" is the third in a series of three short, interlinked novels designed to introduce the reading world to the "New Frontier" novels.

The refugees Excalibur has protected have come to what they hope will be a happy home on a planet home to a species known as the Nelkar. However, these Nelkar seem to have nefarious plans, and Excalibur's commander, Mackenzie Calhoun, suspects something ill is at play. Meanwhile, security chief Kebron and guest-ambassador Si Cwan are on a mission to find Cwan's younger sister -- which also reeks of subterfuge.

A direct continuation from the previous two books, "Two-Front" continues the bold new tradition of New Frontier. These books, exceptionally well-crafted, are in this reviewer's opinion, some of the best Trek to be found on or off-screen.

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End Game

The mysterious planet of Thallon is rent with earthquakes amidst political upheaval, and the crew of Excalibur is trapped at Nelkar, forced to resolve its refugee issue before departing to the home of the former Thallonian Empire to retrieve its missing crew. Meanwhile, the dark pasts of the crew seem to be catching up with them.

The final book in the introductory four-book series, "End Game" ends readers' first view of "New Frontier" with a literal bang -- and a hell of a good finale.

Usually I think of Star Trek as what mankind can do if it put it's mind to it. A utopia where anything is possible... If you are any of the following you might want to reconsider your those views and put them on the side before reading this series.

Peter David, has introduced a Hermaphrodite main crew character named Lieutenant Commander Burgoyne 172, she is the Cheif Engineer of an old Ambassador class vessel.. (Enterprise 1701-C was the same vessel class.) So far he/she has the hots for Dr. Selar... but I won't say more. If you can't tolerate this kind of writing in a story this novel is not for you.

Than there is the new Captain a brave Kirk-Sisko like character.
Mackenzie Calhoun. This man does not follow the tradition Starfleet by the book approach when you get into book 3 of this book, you will see why. I like this Captain only because he has a willingness to fight and or do the very unexpected when the odds are impossible.

I do not wish to go into the rest of the characters. I will say this... Peter David is a master Sci-Fi, writer, when he writes you can almost tell when he's having fun and when he's just writing... I like the inside jokes that Peter David writes.

If you are a TNG fan... You will like this novel. If you are a TOS fan you will like this novel. I have just ordered the rest of the series... I hope you all consider this a good novel.

First, this is a great story. It's the introduction of the New Frontier group, and it has some good characters. Now, the bad part: Joe Morton's reading. He does superb with several of the voices, but unfortunately when he's reading the part of Mackenzie Calhoun, he totally goes out of the character in the book. Rather than the intense yet casual hero the book calls for, Joe reads him by enuciating each-and-every-word-as-slowly-and-clearly-as-possible. This wouldn't be a big problem except for the fact that Calhoun is the hero of the book! That being the case, it gets annoying verrrrry quickly. But I have to say that his "Spock" and "Picard" voices are dead-on. If you can handle the parts of the audio book that sound like a "Speak English in 10 Easy Lessons" section, you'll enjoy the story.

From the man who brought us "Q in Law," and the "Imzadi" books, comes "The New Frontier." Given command of the USS Excalibur, recently repaired, we are introduced to a new crew and a very new captain, Captain Mackenzie Calhoun, a Xenexian who led his people to freedom as a young rebel leader.

The only downside to this book (or rather, these books) is that the story of Calhoun's past drags a little in the telling.

Calhoun reads very much as a cowboy, which suits a series set on a new frontier where they are very much the only federation presence, and an ancient and powerful empire is crumbling to dust, and anarchy is the rule of the sector.

Peter David drafts some great characters who cameod on Star Trek The Next Generation, and adds them to his own crew. The familiar faces include Robin Lefler, Dr. Selar, and - best of all - Shelby. Teamed up with a hermaphroditic engineer named Burgoyne (any resemblance to my last name is a total fluke), a strange seemingly-savant navigator named McHenry, a tactical officer who is a walking mountain named Kebron, and a half-romulan, half-vulcan science officer, Soleta, you'll find the Excalibur crew to be as amazing as I did.

These first four mini-books, collected into one volume, charts Calhoun's past, and the first mission of the USS Excalibur into what was once Thallonian space. Calhoun's past is out to kill him, and the growing pains of a new crew definately sets a good pace.

Oh, and did I mention that Calhoun and Shelby were once lovers?

Grab this one - it's a great read.

Peter David is perhaps the best writer of Star Trek fiction out there -- he has written many of absolute favorite Star Trek novels, Imzadi among them. In creating the New Frontier series, David breathes new life into a stale series that has been tied to the vision of Gene Roddenberry or the producers of the television shows. Not the case here. David mixes old and new characters to create an exciting story that is both original and true to Gene Roddenberry's vision. Among the new characters introduced Captain Calhoun is probably the best captain to sit a starship since Captain Kirk. He has many of Kirk's qualities, but also the leadership skills of Picard and Sisko. Peter David surrounds Calhoun with some old ST:TNG characters and new faces like Bourgoyne-172, a Hermat (hermaphrodite). Burgoyne-172 is the kind of charactes the TV producers would have been too scared to tackle. Overall, this book is a great new addition to the Star Trek universe.