Product Description

Few of Star Trek's recurring characters have made such an impact as the mercurial, capricious and frequently menacing Q. A seemingly all-powerful being who nevertheless came naked and vulnerable to Captain Jean-Luc Picard for help; cosmic joker, judge and arbiter of the universe; this is an entity to whom humanity apparently means nothing, yet who learns lessons in humility, tolerance and hope from his interactions with Captain Picard and his crew. Now top genre writer Keith R.A. DeCandido conjures him vividly to life as his path and that of the USS Enterprise cross once more, and, in typical Q fashion, he presents Picard and his crew with a deadly challenge to solve the secrets of an enigmatic planet. If they fail, the universe will end...

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #108533 in Books
• Published on: 2007-11-05
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Mass Market Paperback
• 320 pages

About the Author
Keith R.A. Decandido is a top genre author whose tie-in novels for Pocket include several Star Trek titles across all series as well as Buffy the Vampire Slayer novelizations. He is also known for his Star Trek: The Next Generation comicbook miniseries Perchance to Dream, and is the editor of several science-fiction and fantasy anthologies.

Customer Reviews

Enjoyable, solid Star Trek book, but could have gone more boldly....
In chronology terms this book comes after the events of the film Nemesis and the books Death In Winter and Resistance. It is advisable to read these first, but by no means essential. Watching Nemesis is certainly a neccesity.

It is easy to miss this book - the excerpt of Before Dishonour at the end of the Resistance paperback leaving you in little doubt as to what comes next, this led me to read this book out of chronological order.

But I encourage you not to miss this. This is a good book, because it is written by an author who can write characters, who knows his Star Trek and respects the efforts of all those people who have shaped what has come before.

So now we have the return of Q. Q is clearly the best antagonist of The Next Generation series, this is in part due to the terrific onscreen performances by John de Lancie, the quality of the storylines, but primarily because he teases out the best of Jean Luc Picard - an intellectual adversary that Picard can square off against.

We are treated to a brief history of Q that the author neatly packages as a series of interludes, these are short and quirky, not unlike Q's repeated interference with the Enterprise during the course of its five year mission. This gets your tongue wagging whilst the author prepares and positions the story. You are well into the book before the Omnipotent being turns up, but it is classic Q when he does: needling all the characters perfectly.

The characterization is the real strength of this book. The cathartic release of the characters talking about Data in the bar is important, delicately handled and deserving of its page space. The off-duty behaviour and interaction of the crew is often as important as the on-duty action in shaping a good Star Trek story. Existing and new characters are permitted room to breathe and develop here. Worf is building nicely in the first officer role, the new Head of Security is interesting, believable and not inclined to go chasing round a Borg cube to find a love interest. One of the characters who is frequently overlooked in Star Trek fiction is the Enterprise itself. Not so here - the scenes are well written. Indeed things we take for granted like the selection of an away team, the preparation for away missions, the security procedures around away missions are handled nicely. There is almost an "Original Series" feel about it at times with the elevation of importance of the away mission. How few Trek books these days contain the word tricorder.

The main criticism I would level here is that the story is not serving up anything new. It does not take any chances, it plays it safe. All Q appearances to date culminating in this one "save the universe" moment? It doesn't quite pull off for me. The expectation of a Q story fulfilled but no wow factor.

Whilst the events of Resistance and Before Dishonour will be more memorable than this storyline, the poor job the authors did with the characterization in these books will also be just as memorable.

Sometimes you have to experience the bad to appreciate the good, the post-Nemesis story arc needed this book.

dissapointing
after reading resistance i was looking forward to seeing what would happen next to a new set of characters but i was sadly dissapointed by the repititious nostalgia of earlier episodes played back like a series that had run out of ideas,
what better way to jolt some new adventure than by setting q on the new crew, but for me there was nothing new in this book,it was less about new life and new civilizations and more like were wed been before

Q's Quest is Quite (Qu)great
After the not especially memorable start to the new post-Nemesis TNG era in Death in Winter and Resistance Q&A gives the series the kick it needs and finally shows us what a great TNG novel can be. Q & A, a Q story, or indeed The Q story, as the book tries, and very much succeeds, in tying every Q story together. The Qish elements of this book are perfect, Q feels very much like Q, and the way all Q's appearances are tied together is brilliant. DeCandido does a great job making the Enterprise feel inhabited and introduces two new big characters; Second officer Miranda Kadohata and chief of security Zelik Leybenzon. These two were about the only parts of the novel I didn't enjoy, I found both quite annoying. While T'Lana was a pest to the Enterprise crew in Resistance, there was something endearing about her, and that continues to be in Q & A. Kadohata and Leybenzon on the other hand, despite all the best efforts to flesh out their characters and establish them as unique and interesting people just didn't have anything that made them stand out and say "look at me, I'm interesting".

DeCandido also manages to make the Trekverse feel much bigger (something really lacking in Resistance) with some brief appearances from characters from all over the galaxy. These short bits of story added a lot of interest and make use of DeCandido's (and others') previously established characters and settings without them seeming out of place or in need of more explanation. All in all Q & A is a very clever, witty and thoroughly enjoyable book.