Star Trek The Next Generation: Greater than the Sum Book

Spoiler/rant alert!

First off, the general action part of the plot wasn't too bad. That said, this book read like **terribly** written fan fiction. No joke. It was sort of embarrassing that this made it to print.

The character development of T'Ryssa Chen was moderatly good, and she was an entertaining character. However, she was NOT someone who could likely ever make her way onto the Enterprise.

The rest of the characters were only marginally in character. Everyone was incredibly brooding and depressed, except Worf. He was pracitcally Mary freaking Poppins complared to his usual self. Picard was all over the emotional map. Certainly that has happened in previous events, but generally it doesn't interfere with his command decisions. Particularly not to the extent they did in this book. Also, his little breakdown about his 2 kids from his memories as Kalen was laughable.

Which leads me to another issue I had. Picard and Beverly getting pregnant? Really? For fuck's sake, they are in their 60s and 70s. Even in the longer-lived world of Star Trek that is just a Very Bad Idea(TM). My little shipper heart was excited in the books that preceded this one that they finally got together. I didn't even mind that they got married. But having a baby? After all the years of building Picard's personality quirks that make him not amenable to children? Or families on his ship? And now that he got married he suddenly wants babies of his own? It's just not plausible to me. It is too much of a change to be believable.

All in all, I honestly think TPTB are trying to run the Trek franchise into the ground. They killed Data. They are marrying off the logical couples (Riker and Troi, Picard and Crusher). They killed Kathryn Janeway (sob!). They are closing down the Trek Experience in Las Vegas. They are tying everything up in a nice little package with a bow on top. If they want to do that, that's fine. It's just not a particularly well wrapped gift. They need to do a much better job of it than this. This book seriously could have been written by a teen or young person who doesn't have a realistic grasp on adult relationships or emotions. It was really sad that this is the apparent quality of Trek now. It would have been better just to stop production of any new Trek books than to let this one make it to print.

I also recognize the irony in that I will likely read the next book in this series since now I want to see how much worse it can get. It's like a train wreck. You want to look away and just can't.