Customer Reviews

Stargate SG-1: Hydra: SG1-13

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

 

 

I've always had a bit of a soft spot for Stargate books that wrapped up previous plot lines. It's nice to finally get some closure. I hope that lends weight to my review of this book, which I find to be rather disappointing.
First, the good stuff: WE finally find out about at least two plot points used in old SG-1 episodes, namely the Quantum mirror, and Harlan and his android "clones" of SG-1. The writing seems sound at first, balancing the action with the techno-babble.
Where did it all go wrong? There is an old saying "Too many cooks spoil the broth". in my experience with SG-1 novels, books with two authors never turn out quite right, and that holds true here. The first thing to discuss is the trust and there crew of renegade scientists. It seems illogical and impractical to create a large offworld base they couldn't even stay in contact with regularly, to create several robot copies of SG-1 to find alien goodies. Expensive too, considering the alternatives. it then splits up into a story about four different SG-1's that gets more than a little confusing. at some point, one of the copy teams decides to go looking for the origin of the quantum mirror, finding a world that it's hard to imagine even insane robots would hazard visiting. The reasoning becomes even more scewed at this point, with pointless decisions being made all around.The novel wraps up with a nice dosage of "WTF just happened?' And you are left trying to figure out what the consequences they talked about are, and what the fourth SG-1 copy is going to do with itself.
This is a book I recommend for diehard SG-1 fans, because it ties up loose ends, but not to the casual reader, as the plot quickly becomes mired down, and confusing.

I buy all the Stargate series books just to keep them going and I have enjoyed the majority of them. I think this writer has a decent grasp of the characters, however I found the way the book was written to be somewhat confusing. i know it was supposed to be written that way, but it was a little much trying to keep it all straight. Good idea, but it needed a better execution.

I just got this book yesterday and just finish reading it and I would say that this one is a cross between the episodes "Tin-man", "Double Jeopardy", and "Ripple Effect". I knew that they were some how going to bring the robots back in this story, but wasn't expecting this. For any who want to get a better perspective on this story, better check out the episodes first and then read it.

I read this book some time ago so I'll try to recap what was so great about it. The very first page threw me for a loop as Teal'c called Jack "Colonel O'Neil." Those of us who are FANatics of Stargate know that Teal'c calls Jack -- "O'Neil" -- nothing more. (He may have called him "Colonel O'Neil" in a very early episode - once.) So I began thinking "Oh great, another novel where the author doesn't really know the characters." It turns out, there is a very good reason for what seems to be an out-of-character error. There were some things in the book that were so well described, I could visualize it in my mind as if I were actually watching the action! I could write about things that I know would interest Stargate fans but I don't want to spoil the adventure for those who will take the challenge and read this book.

I hate to say bad things about this book. It really has a well thought out plot. It is intricate and interesting, but I found it difficult to follow. The criticism I have to offer is that the chapters do not go in consecutive order. They jump around. It all centers around the invasion of Eshet but you jump from way before the invasion to after the invasion to during the invasion. And you jump from the SGC to the NID to the various cloned teams of SG-1. It was hard for me to follow it. And it was difficult to keep track of which SG team the book was talking about and what did that team do and what are they doing now? The NID has created clones via Harlan to send out to do their dirty work for them. So you have the alpha Jack, Teal'c, Daniel, and Sam as well as the beta, delta, theta, etc. etc. One of the teams, the thetas, have gone rogue and it's up to the other teams to find them, as well as the actually SG-1 team. Usually the author did a pretty good job of letting you know if you were reading about the real Jack, or the alpha Jack, or the theta Jack, etc. Sometimes it wasn't very clear. And I had trouble keeping track of which Jack did what? Plus, having the chapters not go in order just made it more complicated. If I were to go back and read it again I would mark which chapters come first, second, etc. and probably try to read it in order because this story just really confused the heck out of me.

I've read almost all of the Stargate novels, and I've enjoyed them all. But there was always something that irked me at least a little bit in them. Not so with this novel. It has absolutely everything you could hope for; technobabble (which, according to a source I trust, is actually non-nitpick-able), great team moments, a solid and tight plot, references to the series without relying too heavily on the past. It satisfies on pretty much every score.

With this book, you'll get classic SG-1 doing what they do best: saving the galaxy. There's humor, action, everything you could want.

This book is SG-1 at it's finest. I look forward to more novels by these two fantastic authors.

This is the best so far of the SG-1 books. Keeps your interest and action moves quickly. I enjoyed seeing the SG-1 Team from the darker side.