STARGATE SG-1 Do No Harm

I go back to the early books in this series where the spelling, typos, confusion of the movie & the series and the non-American English dialogue were rampant. In this novel they have pretty much conquored all of that. The story was intriguing & plausible. I was hoping for a larger role for Janet Fraizer (she comes in only in the final chapters) My only complaint is that they don't write & publish them fast enough!

The back cover says "Stargate Command is in crisis -- too many teams wounded, too many dead. Tensions are running high and, with the pressure to deliver tangible results never greater, General Hammond is forced to call in the Pentagon strike team to plug the holes. But help has its price. When the team's leader, Colonel Dave Dixon, arrives at Stargate Command he brings with him loyalties that tangle dangerously with a past Colonel Jack O'Neill would prefer to forget. Assigned as an observer on SG-1, hostility between the two men escalates as the team's vital mission to secure lucrative mining rights descends into a nightmare. Only Dr. Jane Fraiser can hope to save the lives of SG-1 -- that is, if Dave Dixon and Jack O'Neill don't kill each other first..." This is Karen Miller's second Stargate SG-1 book, the first being "Alliances." At 438 pages, this book is quite a bit longer than Alliances and frankly could have been tightened up just a bit in the late middle. Characters from the TV show who appear in the book are General Hammond, Dr. Janet Fraiser, Cassandra, Dr. Warner, Sam Carter, Jack O'Neill, Teal'c, Daniel Jackson, Walter Harriman, and Jacob Carter. The story has great pacing overall, and I found the characters to be pretty well written in speech and mannerisms. There's plenty of medical gore due to the main story line being the yearly plague that hits the planet that SG-1 is trying to negotiate with. Dr Fraiser thus has a nice role and even gets to go off-world. Daniel has a big role throughout the story, while Sam gets comatose pretty quick (very disappointing), followed by Jack. In the mean time, there's plenty of angst over the death of Col. Frank Cromwell from the Season Two episode "A Matter of Time." This novel takes place immediately before the Season Three finale and includes how Daniel gets his appendix removed. The angst in this storyline is that Col. Dave Dixon was Col Frank Cromwell's best friend and wants to hear from O'Neill about Cromwell's death and whether they patched up their relationship before Cromwell died. But Jack's not talking. We get some flashbacks to Jack's time being tortured in Iraq, and Jack's efforts to deal with Cromwell's death. Overall, a good read that I found hard to put down.

I spent the past 4 months waiting for this one to come out, and I can say that it did not disappoint. I knew that sooner or later that they were going to give center stage to Frasier after removing her from the show since she was one of my favorite characters. In some areas this gave a few explanations as to how Daniel ended up on the side-lines in the season finale that year, and how Dixon ended up in the series in the first place as well as the relationship between Frasier and the rest of the team. I can't wait to see what the next one dishes out, but right now I hope it doesn't bring back the SG-1 robots after they had been destroyed at the end of Season 4, then again, with this tv show series you never know what going to happen next. For those who have read the previous books in the series, buy this one you won't be disappointed.

I knew I would enjoy this book as soon as I read the title and brief blurb, since Dr. Janet Fraiser is my favorite character. I just hoped I wouldn't have to force myself to enjoy it. That wasn't the case. The story is tight, the characterizations work very well, and the plot is very well thought-out. A few people sometimes slip in and out of character, but it's not enough to make you cringe. The characters felt like real people, with real emotions. This might have been the longest book in the Stargate series, but it certainly didn't waste any room. The beginning, which can feel a bit slow in places, was a necessary set-up for the rest of the book. I thoroughly enjoyed the look at life on this side of the Gate while SG-1 was away on a mission. My main complaint of this book would be that Colonel Dixon came off a little TOO perfectly. (Almost) everyone liked him, he was Superman, he never seemed to do any wrong (even if he was being stubborn). But it was interesting to see him cast as he was, rather than as a hard-headed "new Colonel" trying to muscle his way into the team. All in all, I would definitely recommend this book to anyone who wants to read a good SG-1 adventure. Sam gets a bit of a short shift in this one, but, once again, necessary for the overall plot. Here's hoping the author writes another one with a big focus on Sam. ;-D