Delve Into The Captains Daughter Developed By Peter David Released Through Bound Copy
hadn't picked up a ST book in a long time but after reading Peter David's Knight Life it was time to take this book off the shelf, The decision to read this one was easy since it was by David who also wrote a number of other Trek books, two of which I particularly enjoyed being A Rock and A Hard Place first chapter in that book is killer and the giant novel Vendetta.
I don't treat any of the Trek novels as canon, they are glorified fan fiction with some being better than others, That said, David does an excellent job of intertwining this story into the events we all know so well within the series and movies, This indeed is one of David's strong points, If you are looking for a Trek novel you could do a lot worse trust me on this than giving this novel a try, Another great place to start would be Yesterday's Son by AC Crispin which ties in directly with the original series episodes 'City on the Edge of Forever' and 'All Our Yesterdays.
" One last plug, if you are a Trek fan and have not checked out
what the folks at Star Trek Continues have been doing, go to their website and watch any of the three episodes they have produced.
It is a continuation of the original five year mission and it is fantastic! Read this and am currently reading Forged in Fire as some preambles to The Lost Era series of novels.
I enjoyed it fairly well, Story moves through time but is interesting, Never made sense that Sulu had a daughter and didn't talk about it and Spock having a sister, but I won't go there right now but since Generations already made the claim I think they made it work fairly well.
If I could give it,Stars I would. One of my favorite Star Trek novels, for a few reasons, and yes, I have read plenty of them, so I am fit to pass judgement
, it focuses on Sulufinally, one not concerned with the 'Big Three!'
, it has much more of a human element than many of the books, and really develops Sulu as a character, This is not the standard 'space cowboy' book like some of the series,
. part of it plays out as events from the films are going onnice touch!
, the confrontation between the captain and admiral in the end was excellentone of my favorite moments from the series, Hell, the whole ending was excellent!
If you like the series, put this one on your list, When Demora Sulu, an exemplary young Starfleet officer, suddenly attacks her commanding officer, who kills her in selfdefense, everyone is stunned, No one is more griefstricken than her father, Captain Hikaru Sulu of the U, S. S. Excelsior. Determined to learn the truth behind his daughter's bizarre death, Sulu goes to the planet where she was killed, and finds himself confronted by an old enemy eager to destroy Sulu's reputation and his life! Loved this one! Leave it to Peter David to produce a REAL postSTVI/Captain Sulu/Excelsior novel.
It's a book that knows it characters, expands on their strengths and weaknesses, and manages to give the reader not only a wonderful adventure, but a beautiful backstory to Demora Sulu.
. . to say nothing of enhancing Hikaru Sulu himself AND breathing new life into EnterpriseB Captain Harriman,
Apparently, this wasn't a great seller for Pocket Books, . . which tends to confirm my cynicism about human nature,
This book is almost entirely about Hikaru Sulu and his daughter Demora, The book is divided into sections, current day and then the time Sulu met Demora's mother, when he finally meets Demora and raises her, Now this is an interesting book it was nice to see some history on Sulu, It is sad that the only other original characters are Uhara and Chekov and Uhara only plays a very small part in the story, There is more of Chekov because Sulu and Chekov are friends and therefore spend more time together, I was a little disappointed that the other characters weren't involved, Most of the story is set after STAR TREK: GENERATIONS, Captain Kirk has died and everyone is still grieving his loss, Scotty has retired and McCoy is ill and awaiting a transplant of some sort,
The story is well written and I love the part were Captain John Harriman, now captain of the Enterprise, and his father go head to head over what to do about the Excelsior and her crew.
Harriman's portrayal in GENERATIONS was not an impressive one in fact he came off as weak and ineffective and inexperienced, While he has his moments of self doubt in this story he always rallies and does the right thing, I think his father needs a nice stay in a rehabilitation facility, The man completely loses his cool, It was sad actually.
I am not going to say more because it would give away too much of the plot and I think that you the reader should find out how the whole story plays out.
Yes there is a happy ending, Very good read. I liked the flashbacks reminding of the movies in a new way used for the characters of this particular book and showing development of some future characters in particular on academy grounds.
It was sometimes sappy, probably too romantic and depicting some characters probably a bit too harshly, but nevertheless, it was a good read, This section is combination of flashback and a frame story set after the prologue of Star Trek Generations, The frame was a little outlandish, so it loses a point for that, Bottom line, the story was great whenever Demora Sulu was the focus and dragged when she was away,
We discuss this further in a special episode of the All the Books Show: sitelink com/allthebooks/ep So I guess this is the way Peter David likes approaching Star Trek books: dividing it up into disparate eras, then jumping around them, Somewhat similar to his last effort, The Rift, in that sense that was the name, right Dammit, I just read it recently, There are some really good and really bad things about this,
The good:
It's Peter David, so you know it's going to read well overall, Though a little more on that later,
David found something to do in the postKirk's death era that is fairly original and interesting,
The antagonist was surprising, and I really liked the way he tied it into existing canon,
The first section is just amazing, the section that deals with Demora, Captain Sulu's titular daughter, and her experience on a planet that kicks the whole plot off.
It was nice seeing a fairly throwaway character Harriman from the movies become a pretty central character here,
The bad:
This has the hallmarks of David's earlier writing, where a lot of things are really overwritten, Sometimes his little tangents with characters nearly breaking the fourth wall with their navelgazing felt incredibly onpoint, and other times it felt tiresome, It really depended more on my own mood than the quality of the writing, I think,
There's a section where we see Sulu raising Demora, Because of what's been going on up to that point, this section felt INCREDIBLY pointless,
I love how David will often have characters just straightup spew their innermost fears, thoughts, feelings, with little to no provocation, For Star Trek, it mostly works, but it's disjointed at times,
Despite having one of the most original "evil plots" I've seen in genre fiction, it's relegated so far to the background that it loses most, if not all, of its punch, sadly.
Sulu didn't "sound" like Sulu to me, Usually not a big deal, but since he's the main character, . .
Overall, I enjoyed it, but it's not going to stick with me, A Really Enjoyable Story
I have to admit I've been curious about a backstory for Demora Sulu ever since she first popped up in Generations and this was very satisfying.
May not be canon but it was still really enjoyable, Sulu was always one of my favourite Star Trek characters so how could I resist reading a book about him Still bitter that we didn't get a Captain Sulu spin off! just read it man.
you gotta. A great adventure!
DEMORA IS WHAT!!!
Captain Hikaru Sulu, commanding officer of the USS Excelsior gets terrible news.
. .
Demora Sulu, her daughter and helmswoman of the USS EnterpriseB got violent without any apparent reason and she attacked her captain, John Harriman, and he was forced to defend himself and killed her.
. .
what!!!
And that's just the beginning of the adventure!
Captain Sulu is devasted and he revises the life of Demora since she was born until she graduated from Starfleet Academy, but he can't accept what happens, something must be behind of this and he takes the Excelsior against orders to the planet where the disastrous event happened.
Captain Sulu, against Starfleet, against orders, against all odds, he will be the last hope to save the crew of the EnterpriseB, . .
but what about her daughter
The human adventure is just beginning!
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