Strike Zone

As usual, mixed feelings. Lots of nits to pick, lots to not like, but lots to love, too.

Jaan is an absolute jerk. He's a rapist ferpeetsake. He only is in the story to give the author a chance to try to humanize Wesley, I think. I also don't understand the title. Nor do I understand why I was brought to feeling like it's a lighter story, when so many redshirts (and others) were killed.

But I still have to give it four stars because of Kobry's wisdom.

"'For some acts there can be no forgiveness.' 'True. But lack of forgiveness does not necessarily go hand-in-hand with the need for revenge.'"

"That's the difference between us. To you, the night always follows day. To me, the day followss follows night."

"'Compassion can get you a knife in the show more back.' 'I said be compassionate. Not stupid. Anyone who turns his back on an enemy deserves what he gets.'" show less

I have a hard time assessing this book because I'm currently in the midst of watching Deep Space Nine and enjoying the ways that Klingons are characterized there. I don't know how I would feel about it otherwise. The Kreel I can confirm that I don't love: they are excruciatingly one dimensional, and I just don't believe that everybody would see a single alien race in exactly the same way. Or if they do, it seems like it ought to (in Trek fashion) be a way to teach us a ~lesson~ about how that which seems foulest can be fairest, right? And part of this story seemed to be going down that path - there's an "elven" character who initially seems great and then turns out to be awful - but it didn't, and I'm not sure whether it would have been show more too cliche if it had, or if it ought to have... ¯_(ツ)_/¯ show less

This book does not hold up as well as I'd hoped. On the surface, it's a breezy, fun read. But reading it now, the characters seem off-book, the jokes begin to get repetitious and some of the character beats at the end seem unearned.

This is a character development driven novel. Peter David does an excellent job of providing scenes that flesh out small gaps in the back-story of characters and gaps between television episodes. I thought the dialogue between Data and Dr. Pulaski were very good.

Reading this proves that Peter David has improved tremedously as a writer in the past 15 years. He's my favorite Star Trek writer (along with Diane Duane), but in this one there was little to set him apart from the rest of them. I'd say "nothing," but even in this early work you see traces of the humor that permeates even the darkest of his works.

The title has very little to do with the story.

Los kreel -una etnia muy primitiva y de costumbres guerreras- descubren en un misterioso planeta un depósito de armas tan poderosas y mortíferas como jamas hubieran soñado. El descubrimiento anima a los belicosos kreel a atacar a sus vecinos y rivales, los klingon. El casus belli será la posesión del planeta donde hallaron el deposito de armas. La Enterprise es enviada para hacer un esfuerzo de mediación entre los contendientes y, de paso, averiguar el origen de los artefactos bélicos. Para el comandante Picard y sus hombres se plantea un difícil reto: evitar que el fuego de la guerra devaste toda la galaxia...