Customer Reviews

Section 31: Rogue (Star Trek The Next Generation)

5 star:		(25)
4 star:		(15)
3 star:		(7)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(8)

 

 

This is not typically the type of book I read, but felt the story was interesting and the cover intriguing enough to try it out. What a surprise! This book was absolutely terrific! I was so impressed with the writing and the flow of the entire book. I honestly couldn't put it down! The writers stay true to the characters (a reason why I don't like to read a lot of these types of books) and the story was very well developed. The gay characters are handled superbly and not overdone at all. Definitely a winner in my book!

I am so impressed with this book. It's been far too long to actually have an adult TNG book put out that not only stays true to the original characters, but that is both thought provocing and well written. The authors keeps you rivited to the story and make you want to keep reading to see what happens. The gay characterization was extremely well written and thought out. I certainly hope that Pocket Books leaves the story of Section 31 to be told by these two fine authors, for these men do justice to their treachery and the shade of gray the member of this organization walk to justify their actions.

Rogue is an interesting departure from many Star Trek novels in that it spends a lot of time on a mostly unknown character and fleshes him out. In First Contact, there is a character by the name of Lieutenant Hawk who is a helm or operations officer and who is tragically assimilated near the end of the movie by the Borg. He appears competent, has a few lines, and is otherwise wholly expendable.

This is his story. I don't think I'll be able to watch another "expendable red shirt" get phasered, assimilated, dissected, transporter discombobulated, disrupted or otherwise snuffed out of existence without wondering what their "story" was. Why were they ON the Enterprise? How did they relate to the "stars" of the show--Picard, Data, Riker and all the rest? What did they do for fun? In other words, why do they matter?

I think it's great that we get to see a character who you would not normally think twice about, given life and purpose. Some people may complain or gasp or cheer about the fact that Lieutenant Hawk was made by the authors to be gay, and has a male parter. Their relationship is mature, intimate and sensitively portrayed. As one would hope in a world which says that diversity is to be honored rather than feared, the rest of the crew really consider this to be no more "strange" than having pointed ears. There is absolutely NO amount of self-consciousness devoted to the fact that Hawk is gay. Rather, it is just another form of the diversity of Star Fleet and treated in a very casual manner.

The story reads well and, in particular, makes numerous references to various other incidents and people from past episodes. For someone like me who loves Trek Trivia and can recite obscure facts, this is great for a sense of continuity. For those of you not involved with that level of minutae, you might not get the same impression from the book.

The book deals with relationships than with action, though there is some of that. However, its more of a backdrop for making relationship and interplay between characters more meaningful, not just an excuse to fire up the ol' phasers and start blasting. For a Star Trek story, this is appropriate. Unfortunately, you are left with a certain sense of incompleteness at the end, as Section 31 still continues to menace and work behind the scenes. This may have been the authors' intention to allow the reader to experience a tiny fraction of the frustration that Picard must feel.

Overall, I very much enjoyed reading it. It is a refreshing change of pace from some very formulaic novels out there.

Ok so they aren't great literature, but after a plethora of classics, serious non-fiction and basically depressing modern fiction books these are just downright FUN! And this one is probably the best I have read since the wonderfully written, almost fully intelligent VULCAN'S HEART. I am even not ashamed to be seen with this one on the subway because it has a more adult cover (are you listening Pocket Books?). The writing is not great, but not as bad as so many of the others, and the story is downright good. I will not reveal anything here, just say if you are a fan go get it, and if not get it anyway because you will want to read a few more. It is certainly much better than that continuing soap opera with William Shatner's name attached to it (again Pocket Books...stop trying to fool us, we know he doesn't really write these things!). If you need a break from the world of depressing literature, go read this and have some fun. I gave it only 4 stars because let's face it, we aren't reading these for the magnificent writing style, but for the story alone, and this one delivers. Are there more like it on the way? I hope so.

The only reason why this is getting only 3 stars instead of 4 is because I wanted to indicate that it isn't quite as good as its companion novel, "Section 31: Abyss." With "Abyss," I was quickly caught up in the story despite a lack of familiarity with most of the characters and much of the backstory. As for this novel, much has been said about the subplot that establishes Lieutenant Hawk as a homosexual, so I guess I'll have to at least address the issue. Yes, Hawk is presented as gay, and to those of us who are a bit conservative, it is a little shocking to see how easily the other characters accept his homosexuality. In our world, most people would at least be thrown long enough for an awkward moment. But despite its many perils, "Star Trek" has always presented a world that is a little better than ours, especially in terms of acceptance toward others. After all, "Star Trek" is the world that advocates Infinite Diversity in Infinite Combination. So if the authors want to make Hawk gay, let 'em do it. Let's try to get past it and concentrate on the story. The story is one of political intrigue in the best "Star Trek" tradition. Specifically, the Federation of United Planets and the Romulan Star Empire both want to annex the same planet in the Neutral Zone. Of course, the U. S. S. Enterprise is sent to represent the Federation during negotiations. This could have been a formulaic story, but the authors are clever with how they intertwine the politics with the Section 31 concept and with the backstory established in the TV episode "Tapestry." If you ever wanted to know whatever happened to Picard's Starfleet Academy friends depicted in that episode, you might want to add an extra star to this review.

Regardless of all the complaints that this book focuses on the rather interesting yet racey first really out there ' gay' Trek character, being TNG's Lt. Sean Hawk being too much of a focus, shadowing the entire Section 31 theme, this book was good. Perhaps one of the better ones this year behind DS9's The Avatar books. Its interesting, yes it is a bit slow at times, the reason for the four stars instead of the five. Yet, I was able to get through it in no time.

First of all, this book does feature Section 31. It does a wonderful job in my opinion of reminding you of all your favorite things about those TNG years; good Riker and Troi moments, Beverly Crusher has more to do than in most books and even Nurse Ogawa makes an appearance. Reg Barclay is mentioned and yes, Lt. Hawk and his partner have good interaction that doesn't go beyond conversation and simple interaction. Nothing to cry over or to complain and pick about. It also features Picard's Academy pals as seen in ' Tapestry' play a major role in this book. Romulans, which are supposedly the main villans in Star Trek X factor into this book and spice up things as its a Section 31 meets Tal Shiar moment. In all, its a good reading. Picard handles himself well through out the book, and it takes place six months before First Contact. If your looking for a story that'll keep you on your toes till the last page, this is your book.

This is the reason I miss Star Trek:TNG. The great thing about the series were the characters and their relationships to one another. Stories on TNG weren't always the best, but you always felt you knew these people. And that's what I liked about this story. The story was interesting, and all the characters you knew were there, and they ACTED like the character we all know (unlike many Star Trek books where you find your self stopping and saying "_______ would never do that!" All the character traits were there, and the writers certainly had a good knowledge of their world ("easter eggs" abound!). The writing was descriptive and you could almost see the scenes in your mind. One reviewer above mentioned a "social agenda" above because one of the main characters is in a same sex relationship. The review implies that is all the story is about. Nothing could be further from the truth. The characters in the relationship are "on screen" together for less than 40 pages (my guess, I didn't cound specifically) out of 360. Hardly the focal point of the book. If the authors had written this book and replaced these two characters names with Keiko and Miles, their scenes together could have been written in exactly the same way. The issue wasn't that these characters were of the same sex, it was that they were integral parts of each others lives and that relationship was an important part of their lives. Reading the Epilogue, a tear came to my eye knowing the pain one of these characters was going through. And that is good story telling. The story does have flaws. The Section 31 in this story did appear to be about two steps behind all the time, and one of the main agents came across as being far too trusting to be in the position he was in. There is no "Luther Sloan" in this book. And for a book about Section 31 "No Law No Conscience No Stopping Them" that is going to be disappointing. But in general, the story was well written and the plot had enough twists to keep me engaged to the end. Definitely a 4, maybe a 4.5.

I should start this review by saying at the outset that I didnt believe in Section 31.

That is to say I didnt believe that an extragovernmental agency was tasked *from the founding of the Federation in 2161* to circumvent rule of law, to commit murder, to interfere in scientific research, to be accountable to no one but themselves in order to preserve the Federations utopian culture. What I wanted to believe was that there was a relatively small cell of Federation officials and Starfleet personnel whose perspective was so skewed that they felt no restraints on their actions in order to preserve a particular vision of what the Federation and Starfleet should be. (To use a movies analogy, more Seven Days in May than The Manchurian Candidate. Or, in science fiction terms, a combination of the Cigarette-Smoking Man and his cronies from X-Files with the ARM from Larry Nivens stories.) In May and June of 2001, Pocket Books released four novels that showed Section 31 in action and noted incidents cited in aired Star Trek (even prior to the DS9 episode, Inquisition, which introduced the shadow organization).

Andy Mangels and Michael A. Martins _Rogue_, set six months before the events of Star Trek: First Contact, reintroduces Jean-Luc Picards Academy classmates Marta Batanides and Corey Zweller. Batanides is now a vice-admiral with Starfleet Intelligence while Zweller is now chief science officer on the USS Slayton. One of those old friends is assigned to interfere with the Federations negotiations with Chiaros IV so that the latter world will go over to the Romulan Empire.

In _Shadow_ by Dean Wesley Smith and Kristine Kathryn Rusch, Seven of Nine meets with a series of accidents while Voyagers officers and crew race to save millions from the explosion resulting from three suns colliding.

In _Cloak_ by S.D. Perry, set during the original Star Treks third season, the Enterprise crew is present at a scientific stations efforts to synthesize an Omega particle. At the same time, Dr. McCoy is secretly dealing with the revelation that he may not live for long.

_Abyss_ by David Weddle (author of Inquisition) and Jeffrey Lang, Dr. Bashir is recruited by Section 31 to actually stop one of their own. Like Bashir, Ethan Locken is genetically enhanced. Unlike Bashir, Locken wants to create a new culture in the style of Khan Noonien Singh, the Eugenics Wars dictator.

All four of the novels make a good case for Section 31s tendrils reaching farther than just the relatively small cell I thought plausible. Section 31s existence does explain the actions of such people as Admiral Cartwright and Col. West in Star Trek VI, or Admiral Dougherty in Star Trek: Insurrection. As well, Janeways discovery of Section 31s existence -- and how it offends her sensibilities and ideals -- explains the anger with which she pursued Captain Ransom in Equinox.

Of the four, I enjoyed _Rogue_ and _Abyss_ the most. In the former, Mangels and Martin (who will be writing an Excelsior novel to be released in 2002) take a character from Star Trek: First Contact, the doomed Lieutenant Hawk, and develop an intereesting background and love interest for him (from the description, I suspect the love interest of being based physically on Mangels). In _Abyss_, we get inside Bashirs head as he struggles with Locken and realizes that *he* could easily have grown up to be his enemy.

After reading all four, I came away both entertained and thinking about the issues in a utopian society that a Section 31 calls into question. There was a period in the early 90s when I could read a Trek novel and not inhale -- i.e., forget it almost as soon as I read it. If the Section 31 novels (and the Avatar novels I reviewed recently) are any indication, I think that time is long past.

An outstanding novel. The best Star Trek book I've read in a long time. I enjoyed the character of Lt. Hawk. They treated Star Trek's first gay character with respect.

Geezer alert and Full Disclosure: I knew Andy Mangles When. Since the days of the APA That Dare Not Speak Its Name (long story short, we've corresponded, never met). I picked up this book because of his name on the cover. I like Andy, and I was predisposed to like his book. And I do.

One thing did bother me about the book that no other review has mentioned. The action takes place on Chiaros IV, a world that barely qualifies for Federation membership and is being courted by the Federation and the Romulans. The planet is tide-locked, one side perpetually facing its sun. The habitable zone is a narrow band at the terminator, the weather is always bad, and off-planet communications are through a tethered communications relay . . . huh? An orbital tether has to be anchored at geosyncronous orbit. Geosyncronous orbit for a tide-locked planet is the same as the distance to its sun. The Chiarosans' communications relay is on a tether 150 million kilometers long, a very impressive bit of engineering for a civilization that has not fully explored their own solar system. But it doesn't matter to the plot, and no one reads Star Trek books for the physics.

Characterization is excellent, all the Next Generation characters are consistent. Andy has done his homework, there is enough continuity and trivia to delight the most hard-core Trekie. Action sequences are well-paced and exciting. Don't know how it fits into the series, but it was good as a stand-alone novel.

It's difficult to take Section 31 seriously from this, the two operatives we see here seem incredibly naive in believing the Tal Shiar would hand over a list of their Resources in the Federation for anything, much less a marginal planet. These clowns seem to have more in common with the Watergate Plumbers than the Obsidian Order. If this is the caliber of agent Section 31 recruits, it is difficult to see how it has stayed a secret for two hundred years.

On a personal note, I tend to think of Science Fiction fans as more inteligent and more open minded than the average person, so I was somewhat disturbed by the reviewers who made a Big Deal out of the fact that Lt. Sean Hawk is Gay. Trekers follow stories of seeking out new life and new civilizations, it's disappointing that some of them find it easier to accept aliens than humans who are different.