Reviews for Star Trek The Next Generation: The Genesis Wave #3

The average rating for Star Trek The Next Generation: The Genesis Wave #3 based on 2 reviews is 3 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2020-10-11 00:00:00 Joseph Calabro Wasn't really needed. The story ended in the second book. But I listened to the Audiobook with Tim Russ so 4 stars.

Review # 2 was written on 2019-04-27 00:00:00 Amber Johns A rather perfunctory third wheel in a series which should have been confined to two books, "The Genesis Wave Book 3" has little to offer the continuity of the first two books. Investigating a series of incidents along the swathe cut out by the Genesis Wave, the Enterprise discovers a rift between universes which imperils any ships in the vicinity. Of more concern: the rift is in danger of widening thanks to a Bajoran ex-vedek's quest to replicate the Genesis Device in a portable form. I mistakenly thought that Book 3 of this saga would be dealing with the clean-up efforts necessary after the large scale destruction wrought by the Genesis Wave. On looking ahead, that seems to be the subject for the standalone novel "The Genesis Force", also written by John Vornholt. What I found in Book 3 was largely isolated from the story established in the first two books. Unfortunately, serious issues with pacing, poor character voicing, and a head-scratching Deus Ex Machina ending all left me lamenting the fact that I'm a completist and simply must finish the trilogy. Enter: Yorka; a somewhat narcissistic Bajoran clergyman who fancies himself as a man with a role to play in Bajor's spiritual future. When one of the surviving moss creatures who unleashed the Genesis Wave entrusts Yorka with a miniaturized Genesis device, he must escape the mining colony of Torga IV before Romulan agents seize the device. These scenes are all rather fun, and I enjoyed the early pacing and action of this strata of the novel. Sadly, I felt that after a promising start, the Yorka storyline was largely forgotten in the middle section of the novel, only to return in a rushed conclusion when Vornholt tried to clumsily dovetail it with the other main plotline concerning Nechayev, Picard and the Romulans. While a lot of the character writing is somewhat slapdash (Chellac the Ferengi is distinctly uninteresting, and Yorka's other associates are simple sketches rather than fleshed out personalities), I do feel that this plotline held more interest for me than what happened with the Enterprise and Nechayev. In a seemingly unrelated plot, the Enterprise is investigating a spatial anomaly which has resulted in the death of the majority of the crew of the U.S.S. Barcelona. I had real issues with this element of the story, as Vornholt doesn't seem to know where he wants to go with it and a lot of it smacks as random ideas glued together in an unconvincing end-product. The "monsters" the away team encounter on the Barcelona are never seen again, making the deaths of the crew somewhat meaningless. By the time the Romulans show up, the story becomes increasingly uneven, largely due to poorly written dialogue and out-of-character scenes which don't ring true to our heroes. Picard is quickly seduced by the Romulan commander (apparently due to some nifty cosmetic surgery and Elasian biochemical mind control), leading Crusher into a snarky jealousy-filled moodiness which permeates every scene she's in for the remainder of the book. Riker and the rest of the command crew come off as incompetent as they struggle to react to Picard's out of character behaviour. As a fan who is au fait with the series, it's painful to read novels when the author makes the primary characters act foolishly unintelligent and unprepared. The third strand of the book comes in the way of Nechayev's new command, the U.S.S. Sequoia. She has with her a Vulcan "priestess", Teska, and is on a mission to uncover the Romulans' true motives after the Genesis Wave incident. Nechayev is lots of fun as a character, and Vornholt does a pretty good job of writing for her. Her casual ethics are on full display in a great scene where she plays two Romulan prisoners against each other and then convinces Teska to talk one of them into a revealing mind-meld. There was a lot of potential in this aspect of the storyline, but every time things seemed to get interesting, Vornholt cut away to some stupidity on the Enterprise and squandered any momentum he had built. If I can communicate anything in this review it's a message of extreme unevenness and poor pacing. By the latter third of the book, the author is clearly struggling to tie plots together and as a result accelerates the pace in a progression of events which make less and less sense. We have scenes such as Troi heading out on a space walk to communicate with alien life forms in another universe, sensing they're in pain, starting to cry, and then heading back two minutes later. Just a little silly, in my opinion, and the breakneck speed at which these events happen really took me out of any believability I'd previously built up. Similarly, the character of Raynr Sleven (an Antosian survivor from the Barcelona who, after medical treatment, becomes a shapeshifter), is poorly written. He is seemingly infatuated with Beverly, lets her know it in increasingly cloying dialogue, and simultaneously creeps Alyssa Ogawa out by impersonating her lost-in-action husband to her six-year old daughter. It's a bizarre storyline which has no resolution, and clearly inserted simply so Vornholt can throw in a shapeshifter to the away-team in the final action sequence of the book. Other reviewers have already commented about the Deus Ex Machina "wave of purity" ending. Give me a break. At this point, a two-star rating started to feel generous. If Vornholt's prose is to be believed, by Data reversing the current in a Genesis Device, a rift between universes can be sealed and every single lifeform in the galaxy can undergo a moment of pure happiness and peace, leading to prisoners being freed and wars ending. Ugh. Lazy, horrible writing. Book 3 is a clear disappointment for me. With squandered opportunity in several storylines which should have been better developed.