Spoilers Shatnerverse (TOS/TNG): Avenger by William Shatner (and the Reeves-Stevenses) Review Thread
- Thread starter youngtrek
- Start date
(Copy of post made to GoodReads and to my personal Facebook page.)
Summer reading entry 1: Star Trek: Avenger (1997) by William Shatner (co-writers: Judith & Garfield Reeves-Stevens).
The third of the ten "Shatnerverse" novels spearheaded and co-written by William Shatner that were released from 1995 to 2007.
The third of the first trilogy with that series (later dubbed the "Odyssey" trilogy): The Ashes of Eden (1995), The Return (1996), and Avenger (1997); all three books also collected in a Star Trek: Odyssey omnibus edition (1998).
The second of the "Shatnerverse" novels that takes place in the "Star Trek: The Next Generation" era.
This is another re-read for me as I know I read the first three William Shatner Star Trek novels back when they first came out. I'm rereading them now (and moving on to the ones I bought but did not get around to reading back then) as part of my reading of the "Next Generation" novels starting post-Star Trek Generations.
I don't really recall what my reaction to reading Avenger was back in 1997 but on this re-read I found that I did not recall much of the plot after all of these years so it largely felt like one I was reading for the first time.
My memories were much stronger of The Return, but I found, on this re-reading, that I actually enjoyed Avenger more. Unlike The Return (which--SPOILERS for that book--dealt entirely with a plot by renegade Romulans to join forces with the Borg, resurrecting James T. Kirk from his recent death on Veridian III (Star Trek Generations film) and brainwashing him into seeking out Jean-Luc Picard in order to kill him), Avenger on the surface feels like it has much more going on (although, in reality is has a similar plot structure to The Return in that there are three parallel stories going on at the start which then converge by the end of the book).
(Now, SPOILER warning for Avenger.) We learn early in Avenger (which takes place two years after the events of The Return) that a virogen has spread throughout Federation space, passing from people to the plant ecologies on the various worlds and then destroying the latter. Starfleet (including Picard and the crew of the U.S.S. Enterprise-E) must enforce blockades around quarantined worlds to prevent further spread. The story opens with them pursuing a vessel that has escaped from a quarantined planet, the confrontation with which sends Picard and company into seeking out answers as to what originally created the virogen and why.
Meanwhile, James Kirk, seemingly killed on the Borg home world at the end of The Return (although intentionally teased to the reader as probably having survived), shows up on Chal, a planet introduced in Shatner's first novel, The Ashes of Eden, where Kirk nearly a century earlier (just after the events of Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country) met and fell in love with a woman named Teilani. Chal has been decimated by the virogen. Telilani, it turns out, is also still alive (although just barely, due to the virogen). Kirk knows how to save her. He intends of living out his days with Teilani on Chal but also ends up becoming involved in solving the mystery of virogen (along with the crew of a Starfleet science vessel assigned to the recovery effort on Chal, the U.S.S. Tobias).
The third plot thread at the start of Avenger deals with Ambassador Spock learning startling new information regarding his father, Sarek, and how he died (Bendaii Symdrome, as seen on episodes of "Next Generation"). Now, Spock learns, his father may have instead have been murdered, and that his father and his mother had ties to an underground movement on Vulcan called the Symetrists. Spock is driven to seek out the truth behind his father's death and, if he was murdered, find out who was behind it.
These three plots, as one would expect, gradually dovetail together, so that first Kirk and Spock reunite. Then, working together, they initially come up against Picard, Riker, and the Enterprise-E crew, who don't know what Kirk and Spock's involvement is but that there is some sort of conspiracy within the Federation regarding the virogen (and that they must stop it and discover the cure).
That's all I'll say, plot wise. Writing wise, I generally found this to be better written than The Return as the characters (both the original series characters like Kirk and Spock, and the TNG characters like Picard, Riker, Troi, Dr. Crusher, Data, and La Forge) all seem more "in character" here than they did in The Return (although there is still a scene where Kirk and Picard are forced to confront each other in a way that's "off" for both of the characters, especially Picard). But, aside from that, I felt that the Next Generation characters were handled better here than they had been in The Return. They are, however, less of a presence overall in Avenger as the primary focus of the novel (as one would expect from a William Shatner written book) is on Kirk and Spock.
Which brings me to the one thing that made this not quite an excellent Star Trek novel in my opinion, which is the Sarek (Spock's father) connection to both the Symetrists (that revelation, which also involved Amanda, Spock's mother), and also to an early traumatic experience in Kirk's life (long before Kirk first "met" Sarek aboard the Enterprise in the original series episode, "Journey to Babel"). There is quite a bit of "retconning" going on here in the way of characters learning secrets that supposedly happened much earlier on in the Star Trek original series "canon" of the television series and movies, and it came off to me as forced and unnecessary. The rest of the Star Trek novels don't recognize the "Shatnerverse" series with its resurrection of James Kirk in the TNG era and these revelations about Sarek here in Avenger are ones that make be, quite frankly, glad they don't.
It didn't make me not enjoy Avenger overall, however. I still found it to be a fun Star Trek novel and well worth the read. I rated it four out of five stars on GoodReads. (The next Shatner Star Trek novel after this is Spectre (1998), the first of the "Mirror Universe" trilogy. I may take a little break between Avenger and Spectre though to read some other things in between.)
—David Young
Summer reading entry 1: Star Trek: Avenger (1997) by William Shatner (co-writers: Judith & Garfield Reeves-Stevens).
The third of the ten "Shatnerverse" novels spearheaded and co-written by William Shatner that were released from 1995 to 2007.
The third of the first trilogy with that series (later dubbed the "Odyssey" trilogy): The Ashes of Eden (1995), The Return (1996), and Avenger (1997); all three books also collected in a Star Trek: Odyssey omnibus edition (1998).
The second of the "Shatnerverse" novels that takes place in the "Star Trek: The Next Generation" era.
This is another re-read for me as I know I read the first three William Shatner Star Trek novels back when they first came out. I'm rereading them now (and moving on to the ones I bought but did not get around to reading back then) as part of my reading of the "Next Generation" novels starting post-Star Trek Generations.
I don't really recall what my reaction to reading Avenger was back in 1997 but on this re-read I found that I did not recall much of the plot after all of these years so it largely felt like one I was reading for the first time.
My memories were much stronger of The Return, but I found, on this re-reading, that I actually enjoyed Avenger more. Unlike The Return (which--SPOILERS for that book--dealt entirely with a plot by renegade Romulans to join forces with the Borg, resurrecting James T. Kirk from his recent death on Veridian III (Star Trek Generations film) and brainwashing him into seeking out Jean-Luc Picard in order to kill him), Avenger on the surface feels like it has much more going on (although, in reality is has a similar plot structure to The Return in that there are three parallel stories going on at the start which then converge by the end of the book).
(Now, SPOILER warning for Avenger.) We learn early in Avenger (which takes place two years after the events of The Return) that a virogen has spread throughout Federation space, passing from people to the plant ecologies on the various worlds and then destroying the latter. Starfleet (including Picard and the crew of the U.S.S. Enterprise-E) must enforce blockades around quarantined worlds to prevent further spread. The story opens with them pursuing a vessel that has escaped from a quarantined planet, the confrontation with which sends Picard and company into seeking out answers as to what originally created the virogen and why.
Meanwhile, James Kirk, seemingly killed on the Borg home world at the end of The Return (although intentionally teased to the reader as probably having survived), shows up on Chal, a planet introduced in Shatner's first novel, The Ashes of Eden, where Kirk nearly a century earlier (just after the events of Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country) met and fell in love with a woman named Teilani. Chal has been decimated by the virogen. Telilani, it turns out, is also still alive (although just barely, due to the virogen). Kirk knows how to save her. He intends of living out his days with Teilani on Chal but also ends up becoming involved in solving the mystery of virogen (along with the crew of a Starfleet science vessel assigned to the recovery effort on Chal, the U.S.S. Tobias).
The third plot thread at the start of Avenger deals with Ambassador Spock learning startling new information regarding his father, Sarek, and how he died (Bendaii Symdrome, as seen on episodes of "Next Generation"). Now, Spock learns, his father may have instead have been murdered, and that his father and his mother had ties to an underground movement on Vulcan called the Symetrists. Spock is driven to seek out the truth behind his father's death and, if he was murdered, find out who was behind it.
These three plots, as one would expect, gradually dovetail together, so that first Kirk and Spock reunite. Then, working together, they initially come up against Picard, Riker, and the Enterprise-E crew, who don't know what Kirk and Spock's involvement is but that there is some sort of conspiracy within the Federation regarding the virogen (and that they must stop it and discover the cure).
That's all I'll say, plot wise. Writing wise, I generally found this to be better written than The Return as the characters (both the original series characters like Kirk and Spock, and the TNG characters like Picard, Riker, Troi, Dr. Crusher, Data, and La Forge) all seem more "in character" here than they did in The Return (although there is still a scene where Kirk and Picard are forced to confront each other in a way that's "off" for both of the characters, especially Picard). But, aside from that, I felt that the Next Generation characters were handled better here than they had been in The Return. They are, however, less of a presence overall in Avenger as the primary focus of the novel (as one would expect from a William Shatner written book) is on Kirk and Spock.
Which brings me to the one thing that made this not quite an excellent Star Trek novel in my opinion, which is the Sarek (Spock's father) connection to both the Symetrists (that revelation, which also involved Amanda, Spock's mother), and also to an early traumatic experience in Kirk's life (long before Kirk first "met" Sarek aboard the Enterprise in the original series episode, "Journey to Babel"). There is quite a bit of "retconning" going on here in the way of characters learning secrets that supposedly happened much earlier on in the Star Trek original series "canon" of the television series and movies, and it came off to me as forced and unnecessary. The rest of the Star Trek novels don't recognize the "Shatnerverse" series with its resurrection of James Kirk in the TNG era and these revelations about Sarek here in Avenger are ones that make be, quite frankly, glad they don't.
It didn't make me not enjoy Avenger overall, however. I still found it to be a fun Star Trek novel and well worth the read. I rated it four out of five stars on GoodReads. (The next Shatner Star Trek novel after this is Spectre (1998), the first of the "Mirror Universe" trilogy. I may take a little break between Avenger and Spectre though to read some other things in between.)
—David Young
Isn't this the one where Kirk keeps asking how the moneyless society of the 24th century works, but every time Spock or Data or someone is about to explain, they're interrupted by something?
Because that was an amazing running gag.
Because that was an amazing running gag.
Not really. I only remember one reference to money/economies, and that was a reference to a Vulcan whose teachings were said to be a guiding influence on the other worlds of the Federation’s moving away from the use of money in their own systems. I’m guessing you are talking about one of the novels after Avenger that I haven’t gotten to yet.
—David Young