Fortune's Light

It wandered all over in search of a plot - a seemingly hopeless endeavor.

This a detective style story: running down leads, sorting true from false clues, and getting shot at or otherwise threatened all along. I usually have various complaints about Friedman's writing style, but not for this one. There is a lot of action, mostly travel and questioning people, with some combat, and all of it is well told. The knife fight is especially good. The descriptions in general are very good, very clear. The characters are vivid and with plenty of depth. Riker's female Impriman partner is a strong, well developed character, not as devious but with more common sense. There is a fair amount of humour, and a couple of scenes are real gems. The plot of the story is interesting and turns out to be surprisingly intricate. The pacing at which the plot is revealed is well judged. In addition, we are given the back story of Riker's original visit to the planet at nicely judged key points in the development of the main plot. All in all, this is a very good and enjoyable story.

Michael Jan Friedman, Star Trek's most prolific author proffers up this early Star Trek The Next Generation tale in the form of a detective/mystery novel. At the core, most Star Trek novels and episodes are a mystery; here's the problem, Captain and crew "must" solve the mystery in order to bring everything back into order etc... The difference here is that the author has straight written a detective/mystery novel which is an unusual but welcomed change in the Star Trek novel universe.The premise:Dante Maxima Seven is a world to which the indigenous humanoids are known as the Imprima and they are controlled by a small but extraordinarily wealthy group known as the Madragi. Several years earlier, Riker was among the first delegation of Federation representatives that conducted first contact with the inhabitants of this world. This was also when he befriended Teller Conlon, who was also a member of that team. Now, years later, a priceless treasure known as Fortune's Light, which belonged to Madraga Criathis has been stolen and Riker's friend, Teller Conlon has been accused of this theft.What follows from there is interesting, but unfortunately not too terribly intriguing mystery novel in which Riker must discover the truth behind the theft of Fortune's Light and by doing so hopefully clear his friends name. At the same time there is an interesting sub plot in which Data has discovered baseball in the holodeck.I would recommend this early Star Trek The Next Generation novel to any and all fans of Star Trek novels more as a collectors/completists novelty than anything else. {ssintrepid}

Star Trek - The Next Generation: Forture's Light written by Michael Jan Friedman is a well-written book involving a detective stroy plot mixed with sports fiction as the Enterprise crew trys to solve a mystery and recover a theft of the Madraga Criathis family seal the Fortune's Light... that is supposedly stolen by Teller Conlon one of Commander William Riker's best friends. As this plot unfolds, William Riker is working on a baseball holodeck program and is called away to the surface of Dante Maxima Seven where the government is controlled by huge social/economic entites that control the general population, to find his friend Teller Conlon. Riker leaves the baseball program in the holodeck and Data tries it out. This plot gives Data a real workout with all of the baseball speak and the nuances of the game as Data tries to understand and play the game. Both plots were well-written as they kept the readers interest, for two unlikely plots to blend together and form the backbone of the book's plots, they melded quite well. This book is well-toughtout as well as well-written and you can tell it by the way the book flows. The only thing that I can't see is Riker being a detective... he's more like a bull in a chna store type who's rough and tumble antics get him out of a lot of tight spots, but Friedman used this quality to an advantage as Riker is teamed up with a local woman who's sole purpose is to help Riker investigate and they run into a lot of impediments along the way. Riker is no "Columbo" but he gets the job done with action-adventure following along with the mystery.I gave the book only four stars as the character development was a little shallow at times and the plot was rather predictable. Only for those reasons, otherwise the story flowed well and you were entertained as you read on it the book.

This book is a very good example of just how far good writing can take a mediocre concept. I was truly unimpressed with either of the plots in this book, yet found myself being drawn into it in spite of myself due to the excellence of the writing. I suppose it is unfair to actually say that the plots are BAD. They do not, however, resonate with me at all. The primary plot is a detective and mystery fiction plot in which Riker has to unravel a mystery on a planet where a friend of his has disappeared, allegedly after stealing a priceless artifact. I'm not universally opposed to detective fiction, but I generally find that they don't work overwell as Star Trek plots, and I certainly don't see Riker as a viable Sam Spade type. Further, this plot just seemed rather blase, and it truly required exceptionally adroit writing to get me to care about it. In a way, I never did, but in spite of that, I found it difficult to put the book down toward the end, so Friedman must have been doing something right. Furthermore, the secondary plot involved Data playing "major league" baseball on the holodeck, trying out a program that Riker had written for himself just before being called away on his mission. Again, I don't necessarily object to sports stories; one of my favorites is "If I Never Get Back", by Darryl Brock. But I don't much care for holdeck stories in general, even if they are merely subplots and not the major focus of the story, nor do I generally care for the "Data does something offbeat in an attempt to learn more about what it means to be human, and in the course of doing so, commits many amusingly silly faux-pas" type of story, of which this was certainly one. In fact, I generally don't believe that baseball and Star Trek mix well; it's one of the things that cause me to grit my teeth whenever it's brought into play in Deep Space Nine due to Ben Sisko's hobby. I certainly disliked the episode "Take Me Out To The Holodeck" about as much as I've disliked any Star Trek episode in any series. So imagine my confusion to discover that I was actually enjoying the scenes in that subplot also, in spite of the fact that Friedman's apparent knowledge of baseball is somewhat limited, and his claim that both Data and Geordi would have difficulty understanding the concept of a curveball somewhat dubious.(I realize that for years engineering types swore that it was an optical illusion, because it was physically impossible. But those days are ALREADY behind us; certainly, engineers from three or four hundred years in the future should have no difficulty with the concept. Nor do I believe that it would be all that difficult for Data to track the trajectory of a curveball and hit it soundly.) I find that I can't in good conscience give less that four stars to a book so well written as to be enjoyable and even captivating in spite of a basic concept that I simply can't see the point to, but neither can I give five stars to a book with such an unattractive conce

Micheal Freidman powers up another counter voyage of the enterpise and its crew as it battle a mysterious crew of the past with...guess who...the BORG!U can't guess the ending...till you are assimilating...better than X Planet.