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The Train Store - Wagon Train to the Stars (Star Trek No 89, New Earth Book One of Six)
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List Price: $6.99
Our Price: $4.93
Your Save: $ 2.06 ( 29% )
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Manufacturer: Star Trek
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Average Customer Rating:  
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Binding: Mass Market Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.54
EAN: 9780671042967
ISBN: 0671042963
Label: Star Trek
Manufacturer: Star Trek
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 352
Publication Date: 2000-06-01
Publisher: Star Trek
Studio: Star Trek
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Spotlight customer reviews:
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Customer Rating:
Summary: Neither Diane Carey's best, nor her worst.
Comment: Diane Carey is somewhat restrained in her attempts to play "wordsmith" in this book, which is a good thing. (Frequently, she tries so hard at being a "wordsmith", coming up with so many novel and creative ways to use the language, that it's difficult to recognize the language as English. She isn't anywhere near as bad as that in this book, although she does still occasionally stretch the language until it screams in torment.) On the other hand, she is just plain sloppy in her word use; the typos and accidental wrong word use is much more frequent than it is in some of her other novels; in most cases, it's clear that these instances AREN'T intentional. In some others, it's less clear: Kirk telling Sulu to take "invasive" maneuvers, rather than "evasive" (off to a great start; that one was on page 2. But since he's telling Sulu to get the Enterprise BETWEEN an attacking ship and its target, I'm willing to believe that that usage was intentional, but it's stupid. In a combat situation, you don't give an order that needs to be translated, but that's exactly what happens here; the full command is: "Invasive maneuvers, Mr. Sulu, get between that drone and the Oregon Trail..." Similarly, we have Kirk reminiscing about the many years that the Enterprise has "serviced" the Federation. That's a common enough misuse of the language that I'm willing to believe that it's intentional, but I have a news flash for Ms. Carey (a professional writer who should know better): what the Enterprise has fdone is SERVED the Federation. SERVICING is what a whore does to a john. Or MAYBE, if you stretch the language a bit, what Scotty does to the Enterprise's engines. The words SERVING and SERVICING are ***NOT*** interchangeable. And we have a few instances in which I just can't tell whether what we're dealing with is misuse of the language or just sloppiness ("Reality was a picker bush.") I THINK what was meant there was that reality was a PRICKLIER bush, in which case what we have is just sloppiness. But I'm not certain; all I can say is that if that ISN'T what was intended, she's finally managed to do it: she's gotten so creative with the language that I can't decipher her at all. (ALL of these examples show up by page 7.) But then we have obvious cases of pure sloppiness: "even" when what is clearly meant is "every" (page 88), "breath" instead of "breathe" (page 95), "every" instead of "ever" (page 118), "make" instead of "mask" (page 189), "would've like" instead of "would've liked" (page 199) (okay, that one was in dialogue, so it's possible that it was an intentional attempt at capturing sloppy speech, but it really didn't come off well), "fairing" instead of "faring" (page 239), "reducted" instead of "reduced" (page 285). Mind you, there were other errors; these are just the most obvious ones that jumped off the page, grabbed me by the throat, and wrestled me to the floor. On the positive side, she actually used the word "niggling" correctly, for the first time in any novel of hers that I've seen. (Usually, she uses the word "sniggering" when she means "niggling"; at least 4 times in other books that I can remember.)
Also on the plus side, and the reason that I've given this incredibly sloppy collection of errors 3 stars, is that her plotting, characterization, and pacing are all good, sometimes very good to excellent. It's ironic: she wants so badly to be a wordsmith, but the single worst aspect of her writing, and really the ONLY bad one, is her ability to choose the correct word for the situation. She's not a terrible writer overall, but she is as far from a wordsmith as it's possible to get. She has no feel for the language, no skill at choosing words, and that both detracts and DISTRACTS from her otherwise excellent writing. So if you have no trace of the proofreader or English teacher in you, and don't care in the least about sloppy word use, you'll doubtless anjoy this book. But if such things as I've described here bother you at all, be warned: this book will leave a bad taste in your mouth, even if you DO enjoy the plot & characterizations.
Customer Rating:
Summary: And the series only goes down from here
Comment: I've read the first five of these. Carey sets up some really interesting premises and characters in the first book. The dynamics of the civilians vs Starfleet vs privateers vs bad guys has tons of potential that she makes use of. Plus she creates a couple of very interesting generals of warring alien forces, leaving us completely unsure of what it is they want, only knowing that the story lines that people could write from these in upcoming books could be fascinating.
The subsequent books throw all this away and turn into monster of the week books. OK, not exactly monsters. But each book has a planet threatening event and oh noes, we have to evacuate everyone from the planet for the fourth time in six months! But wait, Mr Spock has an idea that just might work! If only those grumpy colonists will agree!
Sorry for the sarcasm but you'd think everyone writing these would have asked the others what their plots were and refrained from writing basically the same boring book. Carey's writing may not have been stellar (no pun intended), but at least she was using people and characters to create tension in an interesting way, and not just hurling giant laser beams at a planet.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Not one of Diane Carey's Better Books
Comment: When Gene Roddenberry first proposed Star Trek to the networks he tried to get them to 'buy' into the series by saying it was going to be a type of space-western, a "Wagon Train to the Stars". And from this comes the title of Carey's book. Unfortunately, as one who likes many of her other titles, I have to say I was less impressed by this one.
The reason I like the old series of books is that I get popped into an adventure with characters I know. Those of you who know the context of this quote will know what I am talking about. "If I drop a hammer on a planet that has a positive gravity, I need not see the hammer fall to know that it has actually fallen." The characters I KNOW are not part of this book. Can you imagine a critical situation with just minutes to spare and where lives are at risk that Kirk would play a cat-and-mouse game that was irrelevant to the task at hand? Or that Chekov in a critical battle on his first command would begin roll playing the non-Enterprise crew as Spock, Scotty, etc? Highly unbelievable. Silly jokes that don't seem all that relavent (especially about the Clock). There are transitions I also can't quite follow (mind you I still have a 1/4 of the book to go).
Still, that said its an interesting book and I'll continue to read the series. I hope they are a bit better.
Customer Rating:
Summary: A lot of potential, but not so great.
Comment: I remember reading the cover of this book and thinking that I was really going to enjoy reading it. Then I did read it and was disappointed. The book had a great idea behind it, Kirk having to face one of the villains from his childhood that drove him to become the man he grew to be, but so many things about this book got on my nerves.
The dialogue, for one thing was just atrocious. So many of the characters started going off on speeches that were completely atypical of the characters we know. Spock's urging the captain to make a gamble, and Dr. McCoy being uncharacteristically logical are just two.
Also the terminology that was made up in this book was excruciating for me to read. The most irritating for me personally was the
Customer Rating:
Summary: One of my new faves
Comment: Diane Carey, Diane Duane and LA Graf are my fave ST writers, so I always enjoy their stores, and this is no exception. It must be difficult to do background information on well known characters from scratch, and this was done well. I enjoyed reading about early Kirk, before he realized what he truly wanted to be, before he became the legend, when he was just a punk kid who didn't appreciate what he had. I didn't see that many of the ST cartoons, so this was my first exposure to April, the first comander of the Enterprise and most of the time I'm not too interested in the pre OS stuff, in fact I'm only really interested in the OS stuff, have never gotten all that interested in the spin offs, to the exception of a little bit of STNG (I'm the same way with Star Wars, though I have gotten into the new Jedi Order stuff, will probably stop reading when they stop including Han/Luke/Leia and just focus on the kids)...I guess what I'm trying to say is my level of Fandom isn't high enough for me to want to delve into the pre-OS stuff, but this book has gotten me a bit curious. I enjoyed it and I think most other people will too, but don't take my word for it, go out and read it.
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Editorial Reviews:
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After saving Earth from the threat of V'Ger, James T. Kirk is called again to the final frontier. His new mission: to lead a valiant group of settlers to a distant world, to defend the struggling colony from alien threats, and to explore the diverse mysteries and dangers of a strange new Earth! Far from the Federation, a newly discovered M-class world has been eyed as a potential home by a group of hardy and determined colonists. StarĂƒÂ¾eet can spare only one starship to escort the would-be settlers on their perilous voyage, but that ship is none other than the legendary Starship Enterpriseâ„¢, commanded by the most well-known captain in the quadrant. Now Kirk finds himself responsible for the lives of 30,000 men, women, and children -- a task that grows all the more difficult when the expedition is caught in the middle of an ancient feud between two dangerous alien races!
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