Challenger

After more or less trudging my way through the first novel in the New Earth series, "Wagon Train to the Stars" where, quite uncharacteristically, Diane Carey's writing just didn't mesh and had nothing but pacing problems, "Challenger" brought about a quite welcome relief. Back in form with her usual style of writing, "Challenger" is a true joy to read as the pacing is "dead on" and the story just flows. I particularly enjoyed the fact that she carried the main plot and two sub plots in this story and brought all three of them together for a somewhat anticlimactic, but highly intriguing conclusion.The cover art for "Challenger" is perfect, as was the cover art for the entire series.The premise:Shaking off the events of the previous novel "Thin Air," Captain Kirk and crew are quite expectant as their relief is on its way in the form of the USS Peleliu, who are expected to stand as the Starfleet authority in the Occult system for the next two years.As the USS Peleliu is headed for Belle Terre though, she is suddenly attacked by the All Kauld, during gamma night, and her captain, Roger Lake starts showing signs of mentally cracking after he'd been exposed to an undetectable virus, some time before this mission began. Weakened but not destroyed, the Peleliu comes limping into the Occult system. The first officer was also killed, leaving the second officer, Lieutenant Nick Keller, to deal with the problems set before him; a nearly destroyed Starship and a mentally unstable captain.At Belle Terre, Captain Kirk and Spock are dealing with a whole new issue; mysterious, inter-dimensional probes that are impervious to phaser fire are taking the quantum olivium and stuffing it back into the Quake moon.Billy Maidenshore, originally imprisoned earlier in the series has now freed himself and he's taken over an olivium runner known as the Pandora's Box, which had also been converted into a prison ship. Along with his control of the ship and olivium mining, he's taken Uhura and McCoy captive.Diane Carey beautifully rolls all of these events into a solid, well told, fast paced novel in which Captain Kirk must find a way of stopping these mysterious probes from stealing the olivium, Lt. Commander Nick Keller has to deal with the destruction of his ship and his crazed captain and Uhura and McCoy must find a way to stop Billy Maidenshore.I highly recommend this novel to any and all fans of Star Trek fiction! Even if you find it difficult or impossible to make it through the first few books of the New Earth series, I believe "Challenger" can be read on its own. {ssintrepid}

This was perhaps the best book of the series aside form the first book, The detail and description was excelent, also the new crew of the Challenger would be a great new series of books, as the auther implied that it might happen, I felt a connection with the new crew and see it as some thing fresh, I can't get enough of the Original series( as long as the auther gets the charchters right), but this book does what a lot of other star trek books fail to do, It inspires the imagination, something I've been missing since childhood, it also gets me fired up, reading endlessly untill I absolutly have to set the book down, to then be driven to madness from waiting untill I can read again. Great book, well writen, a must read for all star trek fans.

The "New Earth" series was bogging down over the course of six books, but this book brings just about everything so far to a head. Maybe this was just too long a series for the story idea involved--it was a big one, but maybe not this big. But in this book, Billy Maidenshore-a rogue who makes Harry Mudd pale by comparison (he's more like a composite of Angus Thermopyle and Nick Succorso from Stephen Donaldson's "Gap" series)-pushes the envelope a bit too far and discovers the hard way that Uhura is no one to be trifled with. There's the young first officer of a ship whose captain's instability gets the vessel destroyed, but team him with Scotty, plus an alien POW, and he reminds you of Kirk when he was that age. But Kirk never accomplished the scratch-building of a warship from salvaged parts, even with the redoubtable Scotsman. There's the conflict of the Blood and the Kauld, who have been at war so long that it's practically a secular religion to both cultures. The appearance through the course of the series of the Federation people, who don't seem to think it's important to wipe out other cultures as the only way to survive, has always puzzled the combatants-until both sides need the Feds to help them against a new enemy. Kin yew say "common cause"? I knew yew could. The Belle Terre colonists themselves transcend their xenophobia and their total absorption in their own problems to help the "captain because he needed to be" build his makeshift vessel. If this series could have been cut down to a trilogy, all three volumes could have been as strong as this one.

I read this book with two frames of mind. On the one hand, I wanted it to satisfy as a fun Star Trek adventure, and as the wrap-up to the New Earth story. On the other, I knew that Challenger was designed to set up a potential spin-off series featuring an all-new ship and crew, along the lines of Peter David's Star Trek New Frontier series (which I have just started reading and enjoying). So, with that in mind . . .Challenger seemed to get off to a real slow start. I was about a quarter of the way through the book before I got hooked. Once that happened, however, I was very hooked indeed. Diane Carey managed to take a number of seemingly unrelated elements from across the various New Earth books and brought them together in a fairly satisfying way. I don't think this makes the book the ideal jumping-on point, but enough is explained that readers who just want to see how the Challenger adventures start shouldn't feel too lost.If I hadn't known that this was a sort of pilot for Challenger, I would probably have been disappointed at the somewhat minimal role that Kirk, Spock, and the Enterprise take. However, once the future crew of the Challenger finally started taking center stage, those thoughts vanished. Ms. Carey has put together a collection of colorful, likeable characters. With a healthy mix of Starfleet officers, civilians, and aliens, things should be diverse and interesting enough for a long while. Here's hoping we see more of these folks in the future!

This is the sixth and last of the series. However, this one would not stand alone as well as the others as it ties a lot of unfinished lose ends together. We learn more about the Olivium and its thefts and again meet the big black energy absorbing cloud moving through space. This was a well written book and had more good interaction between the Start Trek crew. A definite read for all Star Trek fans.