Customer Reviews

A Time to Harvest (Star Trek The Next Generation)

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

 

 

Star Trek: The Next Generation "A Time to Harvest" written by Dayton Ward and Kevin Dilmore is a wonderfully written conclusion to "A Time to Sow" also written by this dynamic pair of writers. This book is written to tell us what happens between the events that took place after Star Trek: "Insurrection" and before Star Trek: "Nemesis."

I liked this book for the way the authors tell the story in a straight forward manner with enough retrospective introspection to recap the reader from " A Time to Sow" so you are upto speed on the events coming to you from this book. "A Time to Sow" left the reader up in the air as to some of the unresolved events but "A Time to Harvest" answers all of the reader questions in spades.

"A Time to Harvest" has mystery, intrigue, and subterfuge. Along with plenty of action-adventure that will pique the readers immagination. There is ample detail that makes the story flow well and keeps the reader reading into the story to see what happens next. I don't get to say this very often, but I must say this that this duo of authors knows how to tell a good well-thought-out story.

Captain Jean-Luc Picard is the main character in this book as he wrestles with his thoughts about what has transpired in the earlier books, "A Time to Be Born" and "A Time to Die." Also, there is retrospective from "A Time to Sow" as all of this gets filtered through Picard's thought process and makes for a well told and interesting story, which I really enjoyed reading.

There is crew interaction and of course the bad guys are clever interlopers trying to steal a planet terraforming operation from the mild mannered Dokaal. The characterizations of the main group of characters in this book are spot-on ie. Picard, Will Riker, Deanna Troi, Dr. Crusher, Christine Vale, Geordi LaForge and Data. I enjoyed reading the thought processes that each of these characters goes through to reach a conclusion to a problem.

If you are a fan of The Next Generation books this book series is your cup of tea(Earl Grey, Hot). As the U.S.S. Enterprise goes to the aid of the Dokaalan people the crew is met with a series of mishap and misfortunes, but through it all the crew solves these problems with some very clever innovating solutions.

I can give too much of the story away as it will ruin your read, but trust me this is a good action-adventure that keeps the Enterprise and her crew on her toes... you'll enjoy the read.

I gave this book a solid 5 stars for the reasons stated above. This story will move quickly and you'll be engrossed in a highly entertaining adventure.

"Harvest" is a fantastic conclusion to this two part story. It is full of the kind of excitment that those of us who love Trek expect. This novel takes off at breakneck speed and does a wonderful job at tying a TV episode to itself as well. It gives a great plot and offers yet another look at the "Next Generation" crew in the kind of fantastic action that fans have come to love. I highly recommend this novel along with its predecessor "A Time To Sow."

A Time to Harvest, the sequel to A Time to Sow, has most of the same strengths and weaknesses that the first one had. Dayton Ward and Kevin Dilmore do give us a rousing conclusion to the story, but they wallow even more in continuity and explanations, dragging the narrative to a halt way too often. Add a bit of angst (but not as much as the first book), and you've got a slow-moving plodder that can get quite interesting at times.

The Enterprise, having discovered survivors of the planet Dokaal's destruction, has been helping them deal with both internal and external strife. The Dokaalan are trying to make another planet in their system habitable for them, but it's not easy. Internal dissent and terrorist attacks have been preventing progress in the whole endeavour. Captain Picard has offered the Enterprise's expertise in the field and the Dokaalan have reluctantly accepted it, as long as there is no actual material help. But the program may be able to get any further as an outside force has its own agenda for the Dokaalans, one that doesn't have their well-being in mind. Once this is discovered, Picard and crew have an even tougher task on their hands as the external threat proves to be more ruthless than even Picard had realized. Old friends have come to visit, and they want to stay!

This review could almost be a carbon copy of A Time to Sow, as it has many of the same problems. The characters don't brood as much, though there is another horrible terrorist attack that gives Riker the opportunity to wallow in guilt over not having been able to do anything. He doesn't do it to the extent Picard did in the first book, though. He does move on, which is a good thing. No, the main problem with A Time to Harvest is once again the heavy continuity and the desire to explain every little bit of every reference. When the aliens are finally revealed for what they are (and there's really no clue unless you know every episode by heart, and then you may still not have guessed!), Dilmore and Ward spend two whole pages explaining what happened in the episode. Two pages! Talk about grinding a book to a halt.

In addition to the continuity drag on the book, Ward and Dilmore take great pains to explain what happened in the first book. And when I say great, I mean *mammoth* proportions. No, a "previously on Star Trek..." forward to the book would not do. Instead, every time an event from A Time to Sow is mentioned, it has to be thoroughly explained. Sometimes it takes more than two paragraphs. Once again, an interesting plot with cool aliens and some pretty decent action is marred by the molasses of overwriting. I understand that you need to allow for the reader who picks this book up without the first one, but I think they could have done this much better. A foreward would have been the way to go in this case.

Ward and Dilmore do some things right, however. Once again, they've nailed the regulars (when they're not getting overly introspective, anyway). Picard shows a sharp intelligence as he outwits his opponents. He shows his compassion as he does everything he can to help the Dokaalans and is willing to let them do as much as they wish to do by themselves. The horror when one of their experiments goes horribly wrong is quite effectively done, though the experiment backfiring is somewhat predictable even without knowing what the aliens' plot is. I didn't mention this in the first review, but the authors do add a few interesting characters in their own right. Especially fun is the Denobulan doctor, Tropp. He's similar enough to Phlox in the television show Enterprise (the best character on the show) to be familiar, but he has his own personality and he's quite a hoot. They also do a good job with the "new" old guard, like Lt. Vale and Perim, the new navigator. These are characters introduced for this series, but this is the fourth book they've been in.

Another strength in the novel is we get a lot of scenes from the aliens' point of view. This is probably more effective because we have no idea who they are, so they're not recognizable. The scenes of them infiltrating the Enterprise are quite well done, though they do get overwritten a bit. One of them spends a great deal of time thinking about the past and their plan and what he needs to do and how maybe the humans aren't as stupid as they look and boy to they smell and...well, you get the picture. For the most part, though, they are very effective and it actually adds to the tension as you see that their plan just might succeed.

It all comes down to a very tense sequence at the end that's all action and plotting and counter-plotting, giving us a break from all of the internal monologues. Picard comes up with a great plan and the bad guys aren't defeated because they're stupid. I like intelligent villains, and these guys are. When Ward and Dilmore decide to get the book moving, they can really do it! It makes me wonder why they can't soften their slow tendencies throughout the rest of the book. Sure, the book can't be all action, but a happy medium would definitely be nice.

A Time to Harvest is a step up from the last book, but just barely. While A Time to Sow is a low three-star book, this is definitely a high one. Hopefully, this trend can continue.

David Roy

I've read other Star Trek TNG books and by a host of other authors. However, in this book and "A Time to Sow" you'll read some of the best TNG trek out there.

I won't say anything here that will spoil your read, other than in this book, the plot tightens up. The action gets more intense. Here, almost every key TNG character is heavily involved with some facet of the plot. In the end, it all comes together like a nicely tailored suit.

It's clear that the authors clearly know the TNG characters as they are written extremely well. Unlike other authors (ahem..Vornholt?) who know very little about the TNG characters.

The "old adversary" will keep you guessing and will probably hit you (as it did me) like a ton of bricks once you put the peices together.

These two books (this and "A Time to Sow") are the best books of the "A Time to....." series. It's a must read.

I thought the A Time to Sow and A Time To Harvest books were much better than the first two in the series A Time to Be Born and A Time to Die. Dayton Ward and Kevin Dilmore did an excellent job of pulling together the story line that John Vornholt put out there in the first two books. I felt that the first two books didn't stay true to character and seemed a little childish and a little sappy. The story line was all over the map. As I said Ward and Dilmore did a good job of pulling that together. However, what I DID like about the first two books is that they really brought in a lot of the story lines that this series is claiming to fill in the blanks for. For instance Riker and Deanna's romance, Crusher's indesision for remaining on the Enterprise, and Wesley's leaving the Travelers. I wished that A Time to Sow and A Time to Harvest would have brought more of that story line into it. Instead it turned out to be just a good little stand alone story. The only ties to the rest of the series is the references to the plot introduced by John Vornholt. It could have easily come as a simple stand alone story.
Very good book, good story line, excellent writing. Thanks for the read.

I'm not a science fiction fan. The only reason I know about Star Trek is probably for the same reason the majority of Americans of my generation know about it - the TV show "The Next Generation" has been on for so long that it has become a cultural icon. Combine this with Patrick Stewarts' notoriety and Levar Burtons' recognition as 'That "Reading Rainbow" host', and you have a semi-recognizable set of characters.

I was surprised to pick up this book and get into it. To be honest, I never liked the weird looking aliens, so I just imagined the various species to be humans of different nationalities. Unimaginative, I know, but it got me into it.

Dayton War, perhaps from his experience as a Marine, breaks down the technological jargon and making the crew and their efforts seem interesting and laudible. There is a scene in the book where it seems that the crew has inadvertently caused catastrophic damage to an entire civilization, and the way it is handled makes it clear that the writer is using the fallout from the Dominion War very effectively to show a loss of confidence that all societies face at one or more times. The fact that it affects the crew of the Enterprise and how they are perceived makes one think of the fallout from the Vietnam War and how it affected the United States military and our State Department officers.

A very interesting book - I think you'll like this series.

Not a bad read at all; still, I have to dock it a star since it is not a complete story by itself, having no beginning, and it wasn't exceptional enough to rate five stars to start with. It is simply the conclusion of the story begun in "A Time To Sow". I would probably rate the two books together at four stars, but neither one by itself is that good.

Overall this is a good story dealing with a previously encountered hostile race who once again return to menace the Enterprise and the new species they are trying to help.

Basically disguised aliens (the Satarran) attempt to subvert and/or plan to destroy to Enterprise to stop them from uncovering the evil plan they have put in motion with regards to the new species the Enterprise is trying to help (the Dokaalan).

The Dokaalan are trying to terraform a neighboring planet in their system after their original one was destroyed by natural means. The hostile aliens are trying to covertly hijack the terraforming efforst of the Dokaalan to make the planet hospitable to their kind instead of the Dokaalan.

To make a long story short, the hostiles are caught, their plan stopped, and the Dokaalan can once again resume their hardworking efforts to create a new home for themselves.

But the flaw here, is what happens to the people (who tried to hijack the terraforming efforts, caused damage to the Enterprise, killed more than 700 Dokaalan--more if the Enterprise didn't help right away--killed several Enterprise crew members, and planned to blow up the Enterprise in the end. Picard seems to assume that after being transferred to a Federation Starbase, their prisoners will eventually be release back to their own government (basically letting the criminals go free) because...get this "there is no treaty or relations between their government and the Federation". Say what? Just because there's no treaty or relations between the Federation and the Satarran does not mean you just release people who planned to blow up your ship and killed a bunch of your crew. They committed offenses against the Federation (and the Dokaalan) and the Federation has every right to punish these people (by incarcerating them indefinitely) treaty or no treaty. It's quite simple, while the Federation has offered help to the beleaguered planet of these people, these alien spies, and the agency that oversees them are a treat to the Federation and other planets they might target and should not be simply released. The ending of this novel makes the Federation seem weaker than it is. And this is set after the Dominion war. I would assume after such a near defeat, the Federations would bone up on security and take any threats seriously. While the Satarran people deserve aid, these spies who committed these criminal acts and their agency do not deserve mercy.

As with the first book, the authors spend the first quarter of the book filling us in on recent Trek history, both the events of the previous books, the Dominion War, and activities at Starfleet. It could probably have been done in half the pages and combined with more interesting content. After that the book becomes much better. The characterisations are good and the action scenes are well done. The pacing of the story is generally effective. There is still a fair amount of historical material, but most of it is relevant and a lot of it is presented character to character, instead of essentially author to reader. There is even one occasion when a character starts giving historical examples and gets told to stop because they don't have the time. However, the book develops one major fault. A critical element of the plot is that undercover operatives are in action, some on the Enterprise. The authors keep jumping to them, telling us who they are impersonating, what they are doing and what their plans are. It would have been far more suspenseful simply not to tell us, and much more dramatic for us to find out who is a spy at the same time as the Enterprise crew. The book is still quite good, it just could have been much better and how is pretty obvious.

the book starts out slow but gathers lots of steam. the enterprise is still trying to help the dokaan people terraform a nearby planet when they discover lies and deceit from an old enemy who has grand plans of their own. the book is well written and the reader will not be disappointed in the end. i wish they would put wesley back in the story though because he made for interesting reading in the first 2 books of the series.