Star Trek: Gods of Night

Wow, this was more of a chore than I thought it would be. I checked out all three books in the trilogy from the library and renewed them twice. They are due on Saturday and I just finally finished the first book. Also while reading this volume, I read two other books and started three more. That doesn't give me much confidence for the series. To be honest, I don't think I've ever read much of Mr. Mack's work nor have I strayed far from Peter David's Star Trek novels. (In fact I can think of only three that I've read that weren't by PAD.) It's not that the writing was bad, but more that I just couldn't get into the flow of things. It shouldn't take a full novel to pull the reader into a story.

GODS OF NIGHT follows the story of four Federation crews - Columbia, Enterprise, Aventine and Titan. Columbia is a vessel lost to time and its story is told in flashback. The other three split time in the book and follow the after effects of the Borg conflict laid out in BEFORE DISHONOR (written by Peter David) as well as the events of the TITAN books. Also it wasn't very friendly to the casual Trek reader. If I hadn't read some other books, I would not have understood huge chunks of the storyline.

The tale takes a while to build, but just as it reached the end of part 1, it was gelling into a decent story. I'll get to the second and third books once I finish these other three that I started, but I will finish it. I just hope that the middle book is more than just a 400-page place holder like a couple other trilogies I read.