Book Review: Before Dishonor

Peter David has written a lot of very entertaining and well-crafted Star Trek novels. This, alas, is not one of them. 

Star Trek: The Next Generation – Before Dishonor by Peter David (2007)

Overall		Story
Re-Readability		Characters

Story: This book, part of the new Next Generation novels, is a sequel to Resistance. Unfortunately, that book was written by J.M. Dillard, and David tries, but can’t quite manage, to pick up the threads from the prequel and carry them along.

The Borg are back — but, of course, that’s old hat, so they have to be New, Improved Borg. Q is back — or a different Q, rather, which is a shame because David has proven himself quite adept at writing that character.

Things Happen. Lots of Assimilation takes place, and more. A Planet Dies. Lots of Big, Futile Space Battles Wherein Many Starships Get Trashed. Earth is Threatened. Picard Disobeys Orders. There is Self-Sacrifice, Hard Decisions, etc.

David, unfortunately, seems to be doing the book by the numbers. His sense of humor seems muted. His grasp of character is blunted. If told he was working from an Official Outline of where the book franchise owners wanted things to go, I could well believe it — it seems to grate on him, and ends up producing a far less interesting story, with far fewer twists (and those more clumsily handled) than usual.

Way too much “And then something unexpected happened …” ending chapters — and way too much deus ex machina (sometimes literally). 

Characters: The book touches heavily on both Voyager and Next Generation (with a smattering of David’s own New Voyages book series), but evolutions in the STU have left the characters largely adrift and out of familiar context, and it shows here. Katherine Janeway and Seven of Nine play lead roles, but largely in a vacuum. Picard is the third protagonist, but he’s surrounded by plenty of new officers and crew — and the new ones feel like cardboard cutouts (this one’s the Angry Shouting One, this one’s the Thoughtful Dedicated One, this one’s the Annoyingly Arrogant One), while the old ones are simply following old patterns without much insight or growth. I don’t expect much out of Geordi LaForge, but making both Worf and Spock dull is actually difficult to do.

I know, from earlier TNG novels, that David can do an excellent job with characters — there’s a reason he’s the only Star Trek novelist I’ll buy — but the drive toward Big Action and the new setting seem to have either impacted his interest or his feel for interpersonal chemistry, because nobody feels all that real or believable here. 

It doesn’t help that the Borg have been done to death (indeed, they’re the subject of the prequel). While their threat level here is ramped up a serious notch, it’s still, ultimately, the same ol’ same ol’ “Resistance is Futile.”

Oh — a Significant Name dies by the end of the book. That’s probably the most exciting aspect of the whole thing, which is kind of sad.

Re-Readability: There’s so little substance here, so little solid characterization or interesting story, that it’s only David’s name that makes me want to put it on the shelf and read it again some other time. Disappointing.

Overall: I don’t know if David was contractually obliged to do another book and resented it, got stuck writing a sequel he didn’t want to, or what, but this is as close to “phoned in” a novel from him as I’ve ever run across. Even though he tries to do work all the usual interesting bits — humorous exchanges, homage lines, coincidental character interactions, bits of old Star Trek trivia suddenly brought into the present and made significant — the overall effort falls quite flat.

Overall, only suggested for dedicated Star Trek fans. Peter David fans should probably skip it.