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Do Comets Dream? (Star Trek: The Next Generation)

Do Comets Dream? (Star Trek: The Next Generation)

List Price: $6.99
Your Price: $6.99
Product Info Reviews

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Rating: 5 stars
Summary: A great SF novel that happens to invade some of ST's turf
Review: A comet on a deadly course to destroy the plane Thanet. A child bound to the comets interior. A hate for a people who forgotten about the war 5,000 years ago. A religion on the line. And a starship crew that must solve a 5,000 year old mystery before it's too late. "Do Comets Dream?" is one of the best Star Trek books I have ever read. The words on the page make you feel that you're right there, on Thanet. Right there, in Kio's mind. Right there, on the Enterprise.

If you want something good to read, something you can really get in to, something that can make you think, then I recommend this book to you. "Do Comets Dream?" is well worth your money.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Do Comets Dream? Excellent Book!
Review: A comet on a deadly course to destroy the plane Thanet. A child bound to the comets interior. A hate for a people who forgotten about the war 5,000 years ago. A religion on the line. And a starship crew that must solve a 5,000 year old mystery before it's too late. "Do Comets Dream?" is one of the best Star Trek books I have ever read. The words on the page make you feel that you're right there, on Thanet. Right there, in Kio's mind. Right there, on the Enterprise.

If you want something good to read, something you can really get in to, something that can make you think, then I recommend this book to you. "Do Comets Dream?" is well worth your money.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: Do Readers Sleep?
Review: A wonderful title. Unfortunately the prose did not stand up to the same expectations. The idea of an interstellar war carried out at sub-light speeds creates a lot of possible twists and turns. At the halfway point of the story, I knew the out come and solutions. No surprises.

The characters seemed flat, even the reoccurring ones. The plot showed no real motion. There seemed to be no action. As a novel about first contact, I felt S.P. Somtow never watched the episode focused on first contract. Picard and his crew interfered into a culture that never developed on their own.

I was truly disappointed in this walk around the park.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: Save your money.
Review: Don't be misled by the words "Star Trek" on the cover - other than being set in space, it has little to do with that universe. Your favorite characters meander in and out of the story uttering such absurd lines that you wonder if the author knows anything about "The Next Generation" or "Star Trek" generally. The story itself is clearly something that has been (badly) shoe-horned into "Star Trek" from some other genre. It could be an interesting premise of a story, but is just badly done. I would give this book zero stars if the option were available.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: Do Authors Research?
Review: I am mystified at the positive reviews for this book. If you want a "Star Trek" novel - this isn't one. The book starts out in some secret meeting where Starfleet admirals and Picard basically sit around tacitly agreeing "well, it's a Directive, not necessarily the PRIME Directive. Actually, it's more of a guideline than a rule." Cut to Picard in some ill-explained secret cubical reading the bizarre ramblings of a cultural observer who has gone native. Then cut to a "guest character" - some 13 year old student who gets to go on the Enterprise because he won an essay contest, but has never actually left some remote Nordic fishing village which appears to be untouched by 24th (let alone 18th) Century technology. (And whom you actually want to shoot out of a torpedo laucher MORE than Wesley Crusher.) Confused yet? That's just the first fifty pages ... I haven't even gotten to the strange, childlike voices that Deanna starts hearing from inside a comet....

I agree with Seattle, WA. Save your money. Save a tree. Skip this book and let Pocket Books know you'd like some resemblence to "Star Trek" in books claiming to be about the "Star Trek" universe.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: a genuinely literary star trek book
Review: I can't agree with the person who posted five (count 'em) five identical reviews lambasting this book! I'm a big star trek fan and I ran across the following review on a public star trek bbs. i'm quoting it here because i agree with pretty much every word of it. Here it is:

<<I just finished this novel late last night, and I must say that I'm very impressed with the book. Primarily I appreciated the presence of religion in the Trek universe. As a Theology major, Somtow's blending of Hindu/Indian cyclic religion with Christian Apocalyptic imagery was intriguing, and engagednterprise bridge crew, but rather new (or previously minor) people: the Hallidays, the various Thanetians, Simon Tarses, etc.
I wonder if Simon Tarses experiences, and perhaps his faith, will be followed up in any of the DS9 Relaunch books? That would be quite interesting.
In any event, I'll be reading this book again in the near future, and that's a first for me with a Trek novel. Do Comets Dream? is most definately a worthwhile read, and I'll be pleased to reccommend to my friends who are unfamiliar with Star Trek.
I just finished this novel late last night, and I must say that I'm very impressed with the book. Primarily I appreciated the presence of religion in the Trek universe. As a Theology major, Somtow's blending of Hindu/Indian cyclic religion with Christian Apocalyptic imagery was intriguing, and engaged me mentally in a way many science-fiction -- and indeed Trek -- books don't.

I'd recently said to a friend of mine who used to be an avid reader of Trek fiction that recently the quality of writing in Trek Novel-dom had increased substantially, that the books could actually be considered science-fiction literature in its own right and not simply an endless stream of cash-cow media tie-ins. Do Comets Dream? has given me strong support for this claim.
Despite its strong connections with religion in a largely materialistic and faithless Trek-verse (excepting the Bajorans and occasionally the Klingons), this novel is a fine example of Star Trek's ideals: learning to overcome years of hate and prejudice, exploring a richly drawn new culture (and being changed by that culture!). And in all of that, faith is integral.
S. P. Somtow has a very unique voice, and his (?) prose is almost lyrical at times. Does anyone have any information on the author? I was disappointed by the lack of any "About the Author" blurb in the book.
I'm not certain exactly what purpose Tormod Engvig served, however. I expected the acting ensign to contribute somehow to the mission, but instead he just sort of showed up randomly to appear star-struck at the Enterprise crew. Interestingly, the majority of primary characters in this novel weren't the Enterprise bridge crew, but rather new (or previously minor) people: the Hallidays, the various Thanetians, Simon Tarses, etc.
I wonder if Simon Tarses experiences, and perhaps his faith, will be followed up in any of the DS9 Relaunch books? That would be quite interesting.
In any event, I'll be reading this book again in the near future, and that's a first for me with a Trek novel. Do Comets Dream? is most definately a worthwhile read, and I'll be pleased to reccommend to my friends who are unfamiliar with Star Trek. >>>

No clue who said it, but I couldnt have said it better. I'm a covert to this author now and I wanna get all his (her?) books.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: Forget It!
Review: I feel bad rating this book so low because I hate to give anything "Star Trek" a bad rap. I can't honestly recommend it to anyone with a clear conscience. There's not much to say good about it except that it had a good concept which might have been delivered more aptly by someone like Peter David. Unless you feel you've just got to read every Star Trek novel - skip this one!

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: Forget It!
Review: I feel bad rating this book so low because I hate to give anything "Star Trek" a bad rap. I can't honestly recommend it to anyone with a clear conscience. There's not much to say good about it except that it had a good concept which might have been delivered more aptly by someone like Peter David. Unless you feel you've just got to read every Star Trek novel - skip this one!

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: Highly Disappointing
Review: I was very disappointed in this book. The whole thing just seemed "off", the characters, the narration. It's almost as if the author has no real understanding of Star Trek. This reads more like a standard SF fantasy rather than a ST story. The narration has this epic quality that seems way over the top, it's as if he's talking about a Norse adventure story. I find myself skimming the end because the plot is just so boring. There's no action, just some history that doesn't really make much sense.

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Split down the middle.
Review: I've noticed that most of the reviews for this album are either 5 stars or 1...it seems to be a love-it-or-hate-it thing for most. As for me, I may have a rather unique perspective because I was very much of two minds about it. Since ultimately I chose to purchase and keep it for future re-reading, I rounded my 2.5 rating up to 3 stars (2 and 1 are for items I do not keep). In order to prepare for this review, I found myself keeping a pros-and-cons list so that I could try to accurately report both. I found, though, that on some of the very same points, I would feel one way about it one second and the opposite a moment later!

Perhaps the best thing that Do Comets Dream? had going for it was the rich descriptive prose. I do not always get vivid sensory impressions as I read, but in this case I could certainly envision myself in this colorful world. Similarly, the richness of the culture he devised was quite enticing, and I vastly preferred the scenes that delved into the history of Thanet to those involving the Enterprise crew. The reason for the existence of the thanopstru was certainly an engaging tale, as well as a look into the political machinations of Thanet.

However, I had mixed feelings about the heavy allusions to Earth culture and languages. On one hand, it was rather fascinating to try to pick them all out, but on the other, I also started to see it as a cheap substitute for inventiveness on the author's part. I would have been even more impressed by his inventing his own mythology rather than a retelling (even such a vivid one) of our own histories. Certain parallels were simply TOO close to be believable. For instance, what are the odds of another world developing root words such as "mnemo-" for memory and "thanop-" for death, which are close to words in ancient Greek holding the *same* meaning? This is where it becomes hard to suspend disbelief.

As I alluded to before, the scenes with the Enterprise crew were nowhere near as convincing as the ones involving characters of Somtow's own creation (with the exception of Simon Tarses, whom Somtow was pretty much on his own to describe, anyway). Another problem that I had with this book was the extremely shoddy editing job. I find myself wondering if Somtow was uncertain of what he wanted to name the young Icelandic student who won a tour on the Enterprise for winning an essay contest (Speaking of unrealistic--after the failure of the Enterprise-D, did Starfleet not decide that it was too dangerous to have children on board ship?). This is because I found the following three spellings: "Engvig", "Envig", and even "Envgvig". The fact that neither Somtow nor the editors rectified this glaring inconsistency is truly pathetic.

Overall, this book merits only a 2.5, but because it can offer an engaging read at times, I kept it and gave it the 3-star rating.


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