Spoilers TNG: Slings & Arrows Bk 1: A Sea of Troubles Review Thread
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Summer Reading Entry #4. A Sea of Troubles (Star Trek: The Next Generation: Slings and Arrows, Book 1: A Sea of Troubles) by J. Steven York and Christina F. York (2007). The first of a six-book series of ebooks (still not available in print form as of this time) released in 2007 as part of Pocket Books' commemoration of the twentieth anniversary of the "Star Trek: The Next Generation" television series.
Each of the books in this series is written by a different author (or team of authors), and they all take place in the first year of service of the U.S.S. Enterprise-E (so, following the film Star Trek Generations, in which the Enterprise from the tv series, NCC-1701-D, was destroyed, and prior to the following film, Star Trek: First Contact, in which its replacement, the Enterprise NCC-1701-E, was introduced).
This first, well, short novel or novella--all of the books in this series are very short; A Sea of Troubles is listed at 149 pages long; four of the others in the series vary from as few as 44 pages to just under 100 pages long; Book II: The Oppressor's Wrong is the only other book in the series that has a page count over over 100 pages, that being 141 pages long--presents the setting for the overall series, taking place soon after the Enterprise-E's shake down cruise. Picard and company are in the midst of a ship-versus-ship exercise with another Starfleet vessel near a dangerous stellar nebula. The chase takes them into the nebula, causing problems for both ships.
Without going into too much detail, a Changeling spy (one of the Dominion "Founders" as seen on "Star Trek: Deep Space Nine") ends up on board the Enterprise-E, it's apparent mission to steal vital technical information about this new class of Starfleet ship, the Sovereign-Class. Picard at first thinks he sees something different in this Changeling, in how it acts, and tries to negotiate with it, but at the same time realizes that it must be stopped from achieving its goal.
In addition to Picard, the primary focus in this book is on Lt. Hawk, the Enterprise-E helmsman, who was introduced in Star Trek: First Contact. Here, we learn that Hawk has been assigned to the new Enterprise-E longer than anyone else, seeing it from it's construction all the way through its shakedown cruise to serving on it under Captain Picard. We find out a bit about Hawk in this book, but his primary connection here is that he had been close friends with, well, I don't know how to say it, so (SPOILERS!!!) the officer the Changeling takes the shape of to get aboard the Enterprise-E.
There really isn't much mystery to it, though. Hawk immediately suspects that there is something off about her (his friend) the moment she steps aboard. The short length of this book prevents the authors from giving much time to the process of solving the mystery. The crew figures out pretty quickly that they must have a Changeling spy on board and Hawk's suspicions that his friend is the spy turn out to be correct.
I won't go into any more specifics about the plot. Overall, it was a pretty average "Star Trek: The Next Generation" story. (Note: I don't mean bad when I say "average", just not one of the especially good or exciting ones.) As I said, it sets the setting for the rest of the series. Besides being the first year aboard the Enterprise-E for the "Next Generation" crew, it also parallels the build up on "Star Trek: Deep Space Nine" to the full fledged "Dominion War" story arc of that tv series' final two seasons. "Slings and Arrows" appears that it will be a version of what Picard and his crew were doing during this period and their involvement in preparing for the seemingly inevitable war to come. (There was another series of four novels released in 1998 under the title The Dominion War, in which two of the four novels focus on war time activities of the USS Enterprise-E. These books take place about a year after the events of the "Slings and Arrows", during the actual war itself. I read these two novels back when they first came out and will be rereading them as part of my current "Star Trek: The Next Generation" post-Generations novels reading.)
Again, A Sea of Troubles was a decent start of this six-part series. I have a feeling that each subsequent book will focus on a different character or two (the covers seem to bear that theory out) in some story where they are the focus while at the same time furthering an overall threat "A plot" regarding the Dominion. I gave this first book in the series three out of five stars on GoodReads.
I have to reiterate that these are all very short books in this series and therefore I cannot give too strong a recommendation for anyone to go out and buy these ebooks at the full $6.99 price each as, especially with the later books in the series that get as low as forty-four to eighty and ninety something pages long, it may not seem worth the price to some. Again, I'm talking purely on a page count basis, not in regards to the quality of writing. I (thankfully) just got the opportunity to read these books at this time because my local public library system added then to their OverDrive ebooks collection at my request. I would recommend trying this, seeing if your public library already has then or if you can request that they add them, before buying them, at least to try the first couple books out. (Hopefully Simon and Schuster will also offer them as part of their monthly $0.99 Star Trek ebooks promotion that they've been doing for awhile now, where they offer around nine or so ebooks marked down to only $0.99 each for a month. They've only offered "Slings and Arrows" marked down once before, I believe, and that was several years ago.)
(Previous 2022 Summer Reading Entries: #1: Star Trek: Avenger by William Shatner (1997; novel); #2: Batman vs. Ra's Al Ghul by Neal Adams (2019-2021, six-issue comic book limited-series; 2021 collected hardcover edition); #3: Superman: Birthright by Mark Waid, Leinil Francis Wu, and Gerry Alanguilan (twelve-issue comic book limited series; 2003 to 2004; read on DC Universe Infinite, also available in hardcover and softcover editions).
—David Young
Each of the books in this series is written by a different author (or team of authors), and they all take place in the first year of service of the U.S.S. Enterprise-E (so, following the film Star Trek Generations, in which the Enterprise from the tv series, NCC-1701-D, was destroyed, and prior to the following film, Star Trek: First Contact, in which its replacement, the Enterprise NCC-1701-E, was introduced).
This first, well, short novel or novella--all of the books in this series are very short; A Sea of Troubles is listed at 149 pages long; four of the others in the series vary from as few as 44 pages to just under 100 pages long; Book II: The Oppressor's Wrong is the only other book in the series that has a page count over over 100 pages, that being 141 pages long--presents the setting for the overall series, taking place soon after the Enterprise-E's shake down cruise. Picard and company are in the midst of a ship-versus-ship exercise with another Starfleet vessel near a dangerous stellar nebula. The chase takes them into the nebula, causing problems for both ships.
Without going into too much detail, a Changeling spy (one of the Dominion "Founders" as seen on "Star Trek: Deep Space Nine") ends up on board the Enterprise-E, it's apparent mission to steal vital technical information about this new class of Starfleet ship, the Sovereign-Class. Picard at first thinks he sees something different in this Changeling, in how it acts, and tries to negotiate with it, but at the same time realizes that it must be stopped from achieving its goal.
In addition to Picard, the primary focus in this book is on Lt. Hawk, the Enterprise-E helmsman, who was introduced in Star Trek: First Contact. Here, we learn that Hawk has been assigned to the new Enterprise-E longer than anyone else, seeing it from it's construction all the way through its shakedown cruise to serving on it under Captain Picard. We find out a bit about Hawk in this book, but his primary connection here is that he had been close friends with, well, I don't know how to say it, so (SPOILERS!!!) the officer the Changeling takes the shape of to get aboard the Enterprise-E.
There really isn't much mystery to it, though. Hawk immediately suspects that there is something off about her (his friend) the moment she steps aboard. The short length of this book prevents the authors from giving much time to the process of solving the mystery. The crew figures out pretty quickly that they must have a Changeling spy on board and Hawk's suspicions that his friend is the spy turn out to be correct.
I won't go into any more specifics about the plot. Overall, it was a pretty average "Star Trek: The Next Generation" story. (Note: I don't mean bad when I say "average", just not one of the especially good or exciting ones.) As I said, it sets the setting for the rest of the series. Besides being the first year aboard the Enterprise-E for the "Next Generation" crew, it also parallels the build up on "Star Trek: Deep Space Nine" to the full fledged "Dominion War" story arc of that tv series' final two seasons. "Slings and Arrows" appears that it will be a version of what Picard and his crew were doing during this period and their involvement in preparing for the seemingly inevitable war to come. (There was another series of four novels released in 1998 under the title The Dominion War, in which two of the four novels focus on war time activities of the USS Enterprise-E. These books take place about a year after the events of the "Slings and Arrows", during the actual war itself. I read these two novels back when they first came out and will be rereading them as part of my current "Star Trek: The Next Generation" post-Generations novels reading.)
Again, A Sea of Troubles was a decent start of this six-part series. I have a feeling that each subsequent book will focus on a different character or two (the covers seem to bear that theory out) in some story where they are the focus while at the same time furthering an overall threat "A plot" regarding the Dominion. I gave this first book in the series three out of five stars on GoodReads.
I have to reiterate that these are all very short books in this series and therefore I cannot give too strong a recommendation for anyone to go out and buy these ebooks at the full $6.99 price each as, especially with the later books in the series that get as low as forty-four to eighty and ninety something pages long, it may not seem worth the price to some. Again, I'm talking purely on a page count basis, not in regards to the quality of writing. I (thankfully) just got the opportunity to read these books at this time because my local public library system added then to their OverDrive ebooks collection at my request. I would recommend trying this, seeing if your public library already has then or if you can request that they add them, before buying them, at least to try the first couple books out. (Hopefully Simon and Schuster will also offer them as part of their monthly $0.99 Star Trek ebooks promotion that they've been doing for awhile now, where they offer around nine or so ebooks marked down to only $0.99 each for a month. They've only offered "Slings and Arrows" marked down once before, I believe, and that was several years ago.)
(Previous 2022 Summer Reading Entries: #1: Star Trek: Avenger by William Shatner (1997; novel); #2: Batman vs. Ra's Al Ghul by Neal Adams (2019-2021, six-issue comic book limited-series; 2021 collected hardcover edition); #3: Superman: Birthright by Mark Waid, Leinil Francis Wu, and Gerry Alanguilan (twelve-issue comic book limited series; 2003 to 2004; read on DC Universe Infinite, also available in hardcover and softcover editions).
—David Young
Okay, I just started reading Rogue, the TNG Section 31 novel that takes place between books four and five of “Slings and Arrows” and I seem to have found a discrepancy between how Lt. Hawk is described here and in Rogue. Here in A Sea of Troubles, it is said several times that Hawk had been with the new ship as far as back when it was being constructed. There was a seaman sounding term for it, but I’ve forgotten it.
In the prologue to Rogue (the part that takes place after First Contact), Picard notes that Hawk had transferred to the Enterprise-E along with several other officers. As Rogue came out first (in 2001), it would seem to me that A Sea of Troubles (which came out in 2007) is the one that’s contradicting previous information (although, honestly, I liked the idea that he had been with the ship prior to everyone else; I liked that bit where Picard notes that’s a rarity, that he himself had come aboard both the Stargazer and both of the Enterprises after their shakedown cruises, and that he envied Hawk that a bit).
—David Young
In the prologue to Rogue (the part that takes place after First Contact), Picard notes that Hawk had transferred to the Enterprise-E along with several other officers. As Rogue came out first (in 2001), it would seem to me that A Sea of Troubles (which came out in 2007) is the one that’s contradicting previous information (although, honestly, I liked the idea that he had been with the ship prior to everyone else; I liked that bit where Picard notes that’s a rarity, that he himself had come aboard both the Stargazer and both of the Enterprises after their shakedown cruises, and that he envied Hawk that a bit).
—David Young
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