jdornoff's Full Review: David Mack - A Time to Heal
Background
This is the 8th of 9 books chronicling the events leading up to the movie Star Trek: Nemesis. This is the 2nd book of a 2 book subseries. Plot
Disaster has been averted and so has possible war between the Federation and the Klingon Empire. The planet-based weapons that were given to the Tezwa by the Federation were deactivated in the nick of time. However, after the successful actions by crewmembers from the Enterprise, Commander Riker has been taken hostage by forces loyal to the former Prime Minister.
Meanwhile the assistant to the President of the Federation is taking actions in order to make it look like the weapons used by the Tezwa were actually bought from the Tholians. He has made arrangements for the criminal Orion Syndicate to ship more parts to the planet that will found by Federation forces.
Meanwhile on the planet things are getting very bad. Forces loyal to the former Prime Minister have launched repeated attacks against the Federation forces and the losses have been heavy.
While the Federation forces are present on the planet, at the behest of the new government Geordi discovers some things that just don't make sense. It appears that the government is actually doing more harm than good and no one seems to know why.
My Impressions
This book is 340 pages. Once again it is written by David Mack who is a very experienced Star Trek writer.
The first thing I need to do is warn you that this is the most violent Star Trek book that I have ever read. There will be countless deaths from bombings and other attacks throughout the book. The book was written in 2004 so it appears that Mack was trying to relate what was happening in Iraq to this situation.
The author does do a good job in creating a fast moving novel with everything from political intrigue, scandals, conspiracy, bloody attacks, and everything else you would not expect from a Star Trek novel.
In addition you do have character development including some long time members of the crew such as Commander Riker and Troi.
Star Trek has always used current events to comment on the social problems facing us. But in this book it seems like it was trying to be too realistic. There is a fine line between building a realistic story and gratuitous violence and this book crossed the line to me.
Overall
While well written, I would only recommend this book to adult readers due to the violence contained in it. There is some character development and some important happenings that lead up to the events in Nemesis.
I would also only recommend this book to those reading the entire series since a lot of information is carried over from the previous books.
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