Rudy Josephs

Picard and Crusher entered into a romantic relationship in Death in Winter and got married "off-screen" between Before Dishonor and Greater than the Sum. Q Are Cordially Uninvited... opens on their anniversary, where Picard and Crusher are forcing La Forge and Worf to watch a holo-recording of their ceremony. (They must be good friends indeed to suffer through such a thing.) This leads into a revelation that they did not have an uneventful little ceremony as we were told, but that Q showed show more up on the night of the wedding to whisk Picard away on an adventure.

But why? Why did there need to be an untold adventure on the eve of the wedding? After reading Q Are Cordially Uninvited..., I still don't know. This book doesn't really tell us anything about Picard, Crusher, or their relationship. Q brings Vash into the adventure; at first this seems to be because he wants to try to reignite the Picard/Vash thing, but instead it turns out that Q is the one who wants to be with Vash again. Most of the book is spent with Picard, Vash, and later Crusher searching for some ancient archaeological treasure on an alien planet, but the book doesn't exactly have the thrills of Indiana Jones. It's a pretty generic Star Trek ancient mystery, and it's hard to care about any scenario that is orchestrated by Q, where anything can happen, and does.

I did think Rudy Josephs had a good handle on the voice of Q; there were a couple lines in particular that really nailed John de Lancie. But Q is actually off-screen for big chunks of it all.

At the end, Q makes a special wedding for Picard and Crusher, the big one they won't "actually" get. This felt more like fannish wish fulfillment than anything anyone should have actually written. And then the book... just stops. I literally said "that's it?" when I turned the "page" on my Kindle, so abrupt was it (the frame story is not returned to), and so pointless did it all seem. This seems to mostly exist to plug a gap, but I'm not convinced anyone actually wanted this gap plugged. Even more weirdly, the writer of Greater than the Sum informs me that that book was purposefully written to seed a gap that a later book would go back and fill, but I wouldn't have guessed it, because there's nothing at all interesting in what Greater than the Sum says about the wedding. Not in a bad way; I mean, in GttS it just basically seems to be, "they went and got married," like normal people do. (As I recall, anyway; it's been over a decade, but I did skim some of the relevant bits to write this.) There's no hint that there's a gap to fill, yet here we are.

Notes on continuity and other issues on my blog. (originally written January 2021) show less

I am dying to read a YA series set at a school in space. DYING. I know, I know, [b:Ender's Game|375802|Ender's Game (Ender's Saga, #1)|Orson Scott Card|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1214413570s/375802.jpg|2422333] satisfies that wish...only it doesn't. I want it to be high school students and I want it to be like Stargate/Star Trek/Firefly meets every YA high school book ever made. Anyway, this book seems to be as close as I can get. *sigh* But it was rather fun!

I've never watched any show more Star Trek--gasp--but I did like the most recent movie and this book is based in the movie version of Starfleet. This turned out to be both a positive and a negative for me. I was happy that a lot of my favorite characters were there and it brought up several scenes from the movie that made me feel like I understood everyone's motivations for going to Starfleet. On the other hand, I felt that the references were too blatant and it made me feel like this book was published more to ride the wave of popularity from the movie than to publish a genuinely well-written book.

This book is described as following young Jim Kirk during his first few months at Starfleet. While it does do this, I'd say this book is actually about solving a mystery and romantic relationships between cadets. There was a lot of flirting going on and the relationship that I was most interested in was Spock and Uhura, for obvious reasons. I am a little disappointed there were no classroom scenes--it just felt a little hurried overall and, while I wanted to know more about each character, the narrative bounces back and forth between telling us about Kirk, Spock, Uhura, and Bones, and it got a little frustrating.

I'd recommend this one to people who might be dying for a space school story or people who really enjoyed the latest Star Trek movie. show less

Picked this up at a discount book place a while ago and finally got to read it. It's dross.

I spent most of the book wondering if there would have been any difference in the story if they were a ragtag group of fresh recruits from spy school instead of wrestlers I mean apart from the risk of being recognised by the general public and having to complete missions within three days, which I would have thought would have been reasons not to get them to work as spies. Really if this book were not show more released by WWE not much of the story would be different.

By the second last chapter though when John Cena, who is about to drop on to a goon whispers to himself "You can't see me" I had to facepalm.

Worse still when Austin is driving a car with Torrie, Batista and Eddie.... "Can I get a Hell Yeah?" he asks his passengers.. who reply by shouting "Hell Yeah!" because I'm sure they totally would in real life.

What's rather odd is that Booker T's picture is on the back of the book and he doesn't appear in the book at all... very strange.

Yeah, nah. show less

A fun romp with Q as he decides to "entertain" Jean-Luc Picard one more time before he marries Beverly Crusher.