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37 of 42 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
'Taking Wing" A Good Start, April 24, 2005
I'd say this is one of the few books that should be added to the "must read" list of Star Trek novels. This is, in a way, a follow-up to the movie "Star Trek Nemesis." This is the first full-length novel to feature the Titan and its crew. Captain Riker and Troi and the ship have both appeared in other post-Nemesis novels, including Shatner's "Captain's Blood." So, how does it do? It's a fun novel. We don't have Picard involved at all, we don't have Troi and Riker looking back or relying on the Enterprise-E, they're out on their own and there's a freshness to the entire premise.
Titan is a vessel whose mission is compared in text to the old Constitution-class vessels; long-term, deep space assignments. The premise of this first novel plays with this mission. The crew is bothered that Starfleet Command has chosen their vessel for an assignment into the Neutral Zone when the ship is meant for exploration and discovery. Part of the novel takes place days after Nemesis and the coming novel "Death in Winter," involves Riker's last visit to the Enterprise-E as seen in the movie, and him visiting Chrstine Vale (appeared throughout "A Time to..." series) to get her to join the crew.
I'd personally say this novel is more about the characters than the actual action. The plot of Riker and crew having to sort out the mess that's fallen upon the Romulan Star Empire is onlya backdrop to the characters. Each seems have something to work on; Riker on adjusting to his own command and finding his own style, Troi on proving she's more than Riker's wife and is a capable diplomatic officer, Vale being comfortable with leaving the Enterprise for an executive officer position, Ra-Harveii on ghosts from his past, Keru still hasn't gotten over the death of Sean Hawk in the novel "Rogue," Ree on being somewhat of an outsider among everyone. What's best about this novel is that the authors bring life into a lot of these characters. There are people from each series of Trek (except Enterprise) being involved. Tuvok, Spock and Admiral Akaar also play big roles in this novel.
What worked or didn't work? I felt as if the Romulan situation was so big that perhaps it was simplified for this novel. Tal'Aura (NEM) and Tamalok (TNG) have claimed power over the entire Empire while Donotra (NEM) and Suran (NEM) have claimed power over the military. Then you have the Tal Shiar, the Remans, and the Unificationers all working in the same picture, at the same time. Yet, the reader is only shown parts of this situation. We never really get a look at Tal'Aura beyond her wanting to stay in power. Who is she? Why did she feel she should support Shinzon in Nemesis? Who does she think she is to suddenly takeover the entire Romulan Star Empire? The end features her the typical angry, upset, fearful villain who realizes things won't go their way. Also, what's happening on Romulus beyond the capital? What's happening on other Romulan worlds?
The plot suffers also from a lot going on. I don't think there were too many characters introduced. It helped flesh out the Titan and set it apart from all the other ships out there. I liked that it is home to one of the first Cardassians in Starfleet and that there's a very different Ferengi doctor on the crew. Also, there was a death of a major crewmember while a couple had its first child by the end of the book, a rather amusing pregnancy indeed. Also, we got to see a rather uncertain Troi who doesn't do much counseling at all but plays up her diplomatic role. Even Spock has a moment when he learns his Unification movement may be in jeopardy. Tuvok, who's often ignored in Christie Golden's Voyager Relaunch novels, seems to have found a place here.
There are a few things that held this novel back from being a five-star novel. Perhaps too much focus on characters like Keru. A lack of development of the Romulan characters. Even though Sela will be a part of the "Death in Winter" novel, I'd have liked to have seen her in this situation a little since I'm sure she could have taken advantage of a Romulan Star Empire without any true leaders. I felt the ending mirroed a previous novel by these authors too much, and that it was too much like Star Trek Voyager redux. Admiral Janeway played a rather large role in the "A Time to..." series in Riker being assigned the Titan. Why wasn't she even mentioned here? Instead of Akaar being involved in the same capacity he is in the DS9-Relanch and TNG novels, the use of Janeway could have really been a creative point of the novel. The Romulan situation, by the end, seems to be wrapped up a little too well, though I was glad to read that the Remans played a major role in all of this.
So, perhaps it covers too much ground. Yet, it remains interesting throughout and introduces some great new charactes. This is a good series to get into, going back to the roots of Star Trek and putting a focus on the characters more so than big action and war. Definately worth your attention and money.
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11 of 13 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Ho Hum! New Frontier Does It Much Better, January 12, 2007
Taking Wing by Michael A. Martin and Andy Mangels suffers from a clear lack of focus, too many new characters, and too little focus. Entirely too much time was spent on the political aspects of Romulan society-- the writers obviously learned nothing from Episode 1 of Star Wars, The Phantom Menace. I found the political stuff just plain boring.
Then the two major criteria that Martin and Mangels seem to have for making someone a crewmember of Titan is that we must never have heard of them before and that the person be from a freaky alien society. Oh yes, they do pull in Nurse Ogawa, Tuvok and Lt. Melora Pazlar (from a DS-9 episode) as well as making the ambassador be the adult son of the baby Dr. McCoy delivered in a notable Classic Trek episode but at least twenty (I lost count after that) new characters are whizzed past us with little more than their name, occupation, planet of origin and whatever alien characteristic makes them stand out from everybody else. They make a big deal of Titan being unique because of the diversity of its crew, but Peter David's excellent New Frontier series with the Excalibur has a much more diverse crew and doesn't pat itself on the back for it every five pages. I don't care if Excalibur isn't canon; the writers certainly have to be aware of it and don't need to act as if it doesn't exist.
Finally let's get down to the reasons why we want to read the Titan series in the first place-- the continuation of the story of Troi and Riker. Riker spends too much time dealing with insecurity and angst over his new command-- come on, this is the guy who thought nothing of spitting in the eye of Captain Jellico and being relieved of duty rather than accepting commands from a royal idiot. Now he's second, third and fourth guessing himself. The Riker of Next Generation was always superbly self confident and self-assured. He knew what he was, who he was and was comfortable with it. The Riker in this book seems to have lost all of that.
However, his character is not as poorly dealt with as Commander Troi. Granted, I always felt that her purpose on Star Trek started out as being for more of the babe in a catsuit factor than anything else, but her character developed into being a valuable and necessary member of the crew. In this book, her role is more as Riker's wife than anything. She's supposed to be the diplomatic officer, but Riker handles all the diplomacy stuff- while she suffers a fit of pique at his doing so without including her. She's still the ship's counselor as well, which means we get treated to the, "I sense you are feeling troubled" type of dialogue from her that she was able to get away from after a couple of seasons of Next Gen. With this book, she seems to be back where she started, as more of a sex object than anything else. Very few references to her are allowed to slip by without including the qualifier that she is Riker's wife. Okay. We get it. They're married. Big whoop. Move on.
The book is redeemed by about 50 pages of action that happen near the end when crewmembers stage a stealth raid on Romulus to rescue a Federation operative. It's a great scene, with terrific action and suspense. But then, unfortunately, we are returned to the ship where we once again need a scorecard to keep track of all the characters. We probably don't need to bother, however, as a lot of them seem to be getting killed off before we have a chance to learn if we even care about them or not.
In short, this is a disappointing start to what I hoped would be a good new Star Trek series. Forget Titan, grab a New Frontier book and read the kind of series that Titan apparently aspires to be but falls short of.
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5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Average start to the new Riker lead series..., March 17, 2007
Taking place almost directly after the events of the motion picture movie " Star Trek - Nemesis (Two-Disc Special Collector's Edition)", the novel Titan: Taking Wing focuses on the now Captain William T Riker and his newly assembled crew aboard his very own Federation Luna Class ship, the Titan.
There is a lot of familiarity found in this go around. Anyone who has seen Nemesis should be familiar with the events that most of this book references. And the characters are a mixture of various Star Trek TV show personalities. From Riker, to his now wife Troi to the Vulcan Tuvok who was a part of Voyager and even some other lesser known Next Generation cast members make a return on the new crew in bigger roles. There are even nods to the Old Series and a cameo moment with Worf and LaForge.
Of course with the old comes a lot of new never before seen characters. Like a chief medical officer who looks more like something out of Jurassic Park (Widescreen Collector's Edition) and seems to scare everyone with his eating habits and apperance, but of course he is nothing more then a gentle and brilliant giant. We have another who must stay in water at all times so her room was filled with parts of the ocean. We have a Trill, a Ferangi and Bejorin to name a few of the various species we have met in our time watching Star Trek that are proudly a part of the ships crew and civilians. Of course all of this diversity will lead to a lot of interesting situations which is probably the authors thought process behind such a crew.
While it is great to see some of our old friends back together again, it also is a bit disapointing as the book is nothing more then average, predictable and lacking in that extra something that other books to carry the Star Trek name have had.
The authors seem to be missing the point at some areas. Often relying on resorting to Poker references throughout the book as if everything was just one big tournament going on on ESPN that every character in the book was dealing with. Also Troi seems to be able to now converse with Riker in the same way she does with her mother, which was weird and confusing to say the least. I found myself skipping through long parts of the book waiting to get to the meat of the situation at hand. We have a lot of character building but the story even when it reaches its climax never really gets anywhere eventful. What was almost all out war is easily resolved by some clever thinking on Riker's part, but still didn't come off as anything creative or new that we haven't seen before on an episode of the series.
Other weird out of place aspects that really took over a huge part of this book that also made me think "We aren't in Star Trek land anymore.." are the focus around racism that came up at many times. Due to the before mentioned diverse cast, we have some of the members of the ship not liking some of the others due to their differences and even moments of them being repromanded for their opinions on others. Just seemed too much like a lesson in a Sociology class at times rather then a realistic Star Trek situation going on with all of the racist views flying past the reader. A sensless spaceship fight towards the end that never goes anywhere also made one scratch their head while reading this. It just seemed like it was thrown in there as it was expected to be in a Star Trek situation but really seemed silly and forced for the most part.
The book serves as a good start to what will hopefully become a better series. For those sad to see the Next Generation come to an end with Nemesis, this is a great chance to see what maybe would have happend after those events. Riker and Troi's relationship will be a big part of the series and hopefully with all of the character introductions out of the way now (almost half the book is just character building .. be aware of that fact if you don't like long reads that just are developmental and nothing more) the future books will be more action and situational then this one was. The story was predictable but still fun enough to fit into something that you maybe would see in a typical episode. This book isn't bad, it just isn't great either. It seems a little more of a draft with a nice idea on how to tie things together from the end of the last movie, but seeming to miss out on really taking the chance to make this fun.
Overall its worth getting just to see what happens next, but don't expect it to be on par with some of the great Star Trek books that have come before this. It just doesn't rank up there as it is slow at points and really won't keep you at the edge of your seats as you would like. Worth checking out and the series is continued in the later books that will follow and those books are better at points. It's great to see Riker in the Captain's chair where he finally belongs but you will wish that he was given a better send off to his new life then this book did. It can only go up from here at least for Riker and his crew on the Titan.
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