Seize Your Copy The Farther Shore (Star Trek: Voyager: Homecoming, #2) Articulated By Christie Golden Distributed In Booklet
I found this book only marginally better than the first in the series, but still found the story rather unbelievable even for the Star Trek universe.
I wouldn't recommend it unless you're a diehard Voyager fan which I am, and even then I'd give a warning, An excellent finale to the first story of Voyager's crew upon returning to Earth, Really loved this one. And it's plain to see why it's a so well regarded ST novel, Gives ST: Voyager fans everything they could want in a sequel to the widelybeloved TV series, The Farther Shore wraps up the story from the previous Voyager novel Homecoming, it's a decent story but not quite as good as Homecoming was, My main issue was how two of the major subplots don't add very much to the story and end up not going anywhere, B'Elanna's search for her mother ends on a quite disappointing note, while the Doctor's holographic revolution storyline never really catches on and heavily features the perspectives of some not very interesting secondary characters who don't add much to the actual narrative with the Borg virus.
As a wrapup to the storyline of Homecoming, The Farther Shore is fine but does feel like a somewhat missed opportunity,.stars.
I love Voyager more than your average fangirl, so I did enjoy reading this despite the major problems I had with it, The ending felt extremely rushed and while some parts of the B'Elanna story felt resolved, the conclusion was, . . out of character to me, Tom felt completely out of character in both books, As did most of the others except maybe Harry, Janeway, and the Doctor, Harry and Libby didn't really get the attention I had hoped for in the conclusion, especially since Libby was such a major player in both books.
The hologram revolt didn't really resolve, so I'm not even sure why she included that side story at all other than to have an excuse to imprison the Doctor.
I definitely preferred the Dark Matters series over this duo,
Star Trek Voyager Homecoming and The Farther Shore present What Happens After The Journey
The story did not end after seven years when they finally got back home.
We knew that because it was logical, and because we saw Admiral Janeway in Star Trek Nemesis,
But what about the rest of the story,
That is where Star Trek Voyager Homecoming and Star Trek Voyager The Farther Shore come in, Both are paperback books, published inandrespectively, and written by Christie Golden, a veteran novelist,
Now Star Trek is a television and movie franchise created in thes by the late Gene Roddenberry, about humans exploring space, Voyager was the fifth show created, and deals with ahip lost in space,
Homecoming starts right after the Voyager series finale, called Endgame, a name which might sound familiar to Geeks, The shock of their return hits Voyager and Earth hard, especially after the Dominion War that occurred on Star Trek Deep Space Nine, and Starfleet is half empathetic and half business.
At this point we have guest, and they all make sense, of Captain Picard and Counsellor Troi and Admiral Paris and Lieutenant Barclay, and some newbys as well.
The story shows the emotional and not always easy reunions of the Voyager crew and their loved ones, And we get surprises as well since seven years has happened to their family and friends, In some ways this first part of Homecoming also does some housecleaning on some of the subplots left over from the series,
For Voyager fans, this is probably the most favourite journey of the tale, Not everything is perfect and
happy, but at least we get some closure the show denied us,
Nice and pleasant all this is, their is still a subplot itching to become the main plot, because we have to continue the story with further books.
And very quickly this happens, as a new Borg threat hits the Earth, Before you get annoyed at it being the Borg yet again, this time it makes sense and is really scary,
Homecoming goes back and forth between the closure of their past and the threat in their future, Some of my favourite ongoing stories here is BElanna and Seven of Nine and The Doctor, with everything feeling dramatic and natural and touching, Meanwhile who the villain pulling the strings becomes fairly obvious fairly quickly, All this flows seamlessly together and really propels the story forward,
We of course get a cliffhanger at the end of Homecoming, and it is a darn good one, leading us right to the sequel The Farther Shore.
The Voyager crew are still in the midst of the Borg crisis, which started after they returned to Earth, which in stupid Starfleet logic means they are involved in a bad way.
Complicating matters is another subplot from the television show and Homecoming dealing with Hologram rights, one that you can tell is going to be around way beyond these twin books.
But besides the main threat of the Borg being concluded, for now because their is a thread that can be tugged one that can generate another story, we also get to the end of the excellent BElanna tale, that then evolves into the next stage of her journey.
One aspect of The Farther Shore goes very much into mature subject matter, but fans who really analyzed some of themes in Star Trek Voyager that were explored with Seven of Nine are already familiar with these difficult subjects.
Snippets of this comes up in Homecoming, and are fully revealed here, Seven gives her unique perspective when she understands the true nature of what is going on, one that shows how far she has come as well.
Everyone deals with PTSD in their own way, and it is interesting to see Seven espouse a human/Federation view of sympathy to a person who has committed a horrible crime because of pain.
My spideysense says Homecoming and The Farther Shore were meant to be a hardcover, but were split into these paperbacks, which is unfortunate, Multiple plot threads from the show, and several from these books, still linger at the end, which is why at the finale things are setup for more Voyager stories, with Spoilers foryears ago Captain Chakotay taking the ship back into the Delta Quadrant.
Which sounds good to me,
Scoopriches While Homecoming was an interesting, if rushed beginning to this story, I felt that The Farther Shore squandered a lot of the story's potential.
There are certainly a number of truly interesting ideas in this book, but none of them are taken in particularly satisfying directions, A lot of the actions of both the main characters and the antagonists feel like they don't follow up on the promise that the story initially had.
Full review: sitelink treklit. com/TFS. html This caps off Voyager's return to Earth and really gives the reader a sense of closure the show didn't provide,
There are three main plot points, the first being a secret attempt to create a new Borg Queen by some damaged individuals, the emergence of the fight for holographic rights and B'Elanna's quest to find her mother.
It's very Star Trekky to have multiple story threads that don't necessarily overlap, B'Elanna's quest is very much the kind of story you'd see in one of the episodes, so it's nice to give her character some development even if it doesn't connect with the rest of the plot threads.
The argument that holograms could be considered sentient beings is also something that takes its inspiration from several episodes of Voyager and The Next Generation, but the storyline kind of peters out as the book focuses on the threat of the Borg.
I wonder if it's a thread that will be picked up in later books,
I like the attempt at explaining why a human in theth Century would want to create their own collective of Borg on Earth, I'm not sure I entirely buy it.
I understand the person responsible was damaged due to abuse as a child, but it's still takes some suspension of disbelief, at least for me,
Overall these two novels are a nice reintroduction to Star Trek: Voyager and set up potential new adventures for the characters, I was pretty neutral about the first book and I was hoping that this one would improve, Sadly it went in the wrong direction, By the time I was done I was pretty disappointed in this entire series, Many of the crew hardly get any scenes, instead Libby Webber and a kidnapped starfleet officer get more time than they do, Again the multiple plot lines result in a lack of cohesion, Blannas storyline is not really resolved and I found myself thinking what was the point of this again and why was it so urgent For the other two major plotlines, the doctor and the borg plague, there were major developments that just fell out of the sky.
Instead of feeling like a clever idea it just felt cobbled together to make the story work, Well, I love everything Star Trek, but am so glad for the books following Voyager, after the series ended on TV, This book is a conclusion to the story line following Homecoming, I really enjoyed it, it stayed true to the characters of Voyager, and brought in other Star Trek characters, and kept my interest! The only negative, was some of the characters didn't have a complete closure, but that is perhaps for the next book!.