Customer Reviews

Q-Zone (Star Trek The Next Generation, Book 48)

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(8)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

Star Trek: The Next Generation - The Continuum: Q-Zone written by Greg Cox is a book that unfolds more of puckish omnipotent troublemaker Q's past. This is the second book in a trilogy that began with "Q-Space" and will conclude with the third installment "Q-Strike."

This book slows down a little from the fast pace of the first book, but all that means is this book is more reflective and we get to know Q's past or part of it. As Q is chased throughout the galaxy... as a callow youth... we see Q's rather enigmatic past and encounter Q's enemies. Along for the ride, Jean-Luc Picard must find out what secrets are hiding within all of this. As we are taken on an odyssey of time, space and travel on transcedenatal planes only reserved for the omnipotent.

We get a closer look at Q, his "wife" Q, and their child q all being an omnipotent pain-in-the-rump as the Enterprise continues to battle one of Q's enemies. We see more of the omnipotent world as unrest and untrustworthyness seem to bring this astounding journey to a finalaty that would spell the end of time. As we journey from our universe's center to the galaxtic barrier, we meet some strange beings indeed, all in preperation for the first Q war.

This trilogy is interdependent upon what was said in each of the preceeding books, so you must read them in order to make any sense out them, as they are NOT stand alone books. So far, though, I can't see why it took three books to tell this tale, as one longer novel would have done the trick. That is the only drawback, so far, other than that, this is a good book for the endangerment of the known universe Q style.

This book suffers from the Star Trek "2nd Book" curse. Any time they put out a trilogy, almost inevitably the second book is just a lot of filler to justify calling it a trilogy ("Dark Victory" is another classic example). This whole trilogy would have made an excellent hardcover, and they could have disposed of almost all of this second book. Riker and the crew fight desperately and aimlessly against the Calamarain (a fight that would have been over in 3 chapters tops in other books). Q and Picard watch the fall of the Tkon empire (again, something that merits no more than a couple of chapters...but stretches through the entirety of this book). Nothing in this book merits a whole book. You'll have to skim through it to keep up with what happens in the third (go straight to the last few chapters - it's where the important stuff comes in), but you'll have to fight to let it keep your interest. Fortunately, the next book is the best of them and really keeps things going like a great ST book should. Hey, I'm a huge Q fan, and that's all that kept me reading this one to the end.

The first book was good and had much more action and humor than this second installment did. Here the story, while still partly in the present, actually takes us to the past to an event that changes Q's life forever. Though the premis is good, it is drawn out ever so long, and I found myself wanting to skip ahead to where the action is.

There are a few interesting events, but Q is not as well written as he was in the last book.

Other major characters take a back seat to the overall plot in this chapter.

The one thing that really bothered me is that Jean Luc, for reasons unkown, cannot figure out why Q is allowing him to witness events in the past. It is sooooo obvious to the reader, but Jean Luc only figures it out on the last page.

I honestly think the author could have condensed book two into books 1 and 3 respectfully. Make each one of the slightly longer and cut out some of the inaction and drawn out sequences.

This entire trilogy is a gold mine for those of us who are fascinated by Q. Unfortunately, it is probably not going to appeal to those who find Q annoying, or those looking for a classic Picard-centered adventure (even though he appears on the cover).

In this book, Q, having kidnapped Picard right off the bridge of the Enterprise-E, begins sharing parts of his past with Picard in typical Q fashion... by transporting them both back in time to witness the events first-hand. As he does this, he shows us a completely different being, in attitude at least, than the smug, self-assured Q we are used to seeing on the TV series. We also see that Q was at least indirectly behind several of the adventures of Kirk and his Enterprise.

The first book was utterly amazing and perfect. It gives everything I ever wanted to know about Q. Star Trek The Next Generation: The Q Continuum, Book 1 of 3 Q-Space by Greg Cox is all I could have asked for and more. The second one topped. If you've seen the Next Generation episode The Last Outpost (The first Feringi Episode) you will be utterly insterested in the Tkon Empire. Also, (even though it took awhile)the author, Greg Cox, made the realism flow. Because to the charactors, Star Trek V is their history lecture. Mr. Cox added a joke near the end, and if you've seen the Original Series Episode And The Children Shall Lead, is humorous. Recall the quote 'I was thinking maybe a children's crusade," Gorgan suggested, "starting with the youngest of their race...'(Pg. 254 Line 21) That sums it up for me. If you've read Star Trek The Next Generation: The Q Continuum, Book 1 of 3 Q-Space by Greg Cox this is a must buy.

This was a fun read, but not as thoroughly entertaining as I thought it would be. The story started off well with the first book. Cox has Q's voice down pat (the older Q that we are familiar with that is), and the inclusion of Q (Q's wife seen in the Voyager episode "The Q and the Grey") and q (their baby) was very entertaining.

Moving into the second book, the story slows down a lot. Overall the story is interesting, but not absorbing. I found that I had trouble focusing on it, but I can't say for certain why that was. The background on the Tkon Empire is interesting as is the previously unseen history of Q.

The third book, of course, wraps up the story. Despite the grave struggle that Picard, Q, and company went through to resolve things, I didn't feel the excitement of it all. Again, I can't put my finger on any particular reason, but the series was a bit of a disappointment, though it was still fun.

There are three major problems with the Q Continuum series:

The first is too much of a reliance on references to events in past episodes of the TV series. An occasional reference is OK but these books, especially the first one, are littered with them. There are so many of these that it becomes distracting. It is a great way to take up space and make the book longer, but it does nothing for the story since the people reading these books are already Star Trek fans and are already familiar with all of these events.

The second problem is spotty editing. This has been a problem with Star Trek novels, especially the Voyager books, but this series is, in this respect, the worst that I have read so far. The problems are mainly in the form of entire words missing from sentences, or duplicate words. One or two such mistakes in a 275-page book may be understandable, but when there are as many as there are here it just becomes distracting. There are 32 such occurrences in the third book alone!

The third problem that I had with the series is that even near the end of the second book Picard was asking himself why Q had brought him on the journey and what it had to do with the barrier. This is ridiculous. The reason is obvious to the reader as soon as 0 commits his first transgression and Picard would have probably figured it out even before that. To think that he still didn't know after all that he had seen is stretching believability.

But in the end this is an entertaining story and if you are a fan of Q then you should like it very much. They're not the best Trek books out there, but they are worth reading.

After the frentic pace of the first novel of the series, this one slows down a bit and allows the characters to breath and really explore the situation--not only of the Enterprise being in danger, but also of Q's past. It's an interesting journey and one that I really hope pays off in the final installment of this trilogy. However, the book does lag a bit towards the middle and end with Q's friends actions being described far too long and little or no reaction from Picard. I only hope part three can put all the pieces that are floating around together into a rocking, rollicking conclusion.

The second book in the Q-Continuum trilogy is even worse than the first one.

We get a novel with as much potential as any novel can have, and it's left completely unused.

"Q-Zone" centeres around Q's past, showing us Q's and Picard's journey through space and time. Unfortunately we don't get to witness the ultimate, surreal, fantastic Q-adventure, like the later released "IQ" by Peter David and John DeLancie, but insted we get to see tons of boring, irrelevant scenes, that are structured badly.

Meanwhile on the Enterpprise, things progress absolutely nowhere, giving us pages of nothing intellectually, or even emotionally appealing.

Irrelevant.

The character of Q that appeared in many episodes of "Star Trek: The Next Generation" was popular because he was in essence little more that a sprightly trickster. Nearly all cultures have the legend of the powerful creature that plays tricks on humans, leading them astray, testing them to see if they are worthy of various rewards. Therefore, Q is just one more expression of a common literary character. Unfortunately, in this case the powerful creatures similar to Q are extremely ruthless, willing to destroy trillions of sentient beings to make a minor point regarding their power.
There are two tracks to the story, in the first Q of the present has kidnapped Picard and transported them back billions of years in time to when Q himself was young. The younger Q is the "protégé" of a being called 0 and there are other powerful entities called Gorgan, "The One" and (*). Other than the young Q, none of the other three entities has any redeeming qualities. (*) is a being similar to the creature in the episode of the Star Trek original series "Day of the Dove" and "The One" speaks and acts like the God of the Judeo/Christian Old Testament. Future Q and Picard are unseen observers to the wanton destruction of a civilization containing trillions of entities.
The second track is back on the Enterprise, where it is under attack by a very angry Calamarain. This battle is taking place near the galactic barrier and is slowly being lost by the crew of the Enterprise. Within this thread there is the undercurrent of some very powerful creature that is trapped on the other side of the barrier and has a serious grudge against Q.
While I generally find stories where Q is present to be amusing, in this case the unimaginable destruction that the powerful creatures carry out billions of years in the past is so repulsive that I took an extreme dislike to the plot. This is one of the most difficult Star Trek books to read that I have ever encountered.

As is usually the case in the middle book of a trilogy, this book suffers badly from being a story fragment with neither beginning nor ending; at least in the first book of a series, we get a beginning, and in the last book, we get a bit of closure. In the middle book, we get nothing but ongoing angst with no intro or settlement. This book is a good example of why serializations of more than two books are unsatisfactory; the series as a whole continues to be of moderate interest, but this book by itself is pretty worthless. Necessary if you're to get from book one to book three, but definitely not worth reading on its own merits.