The Final Reflection is a Star Trek novel written by John M. Ford. Its the first Star Trek novel I've ever read, and from my understanding its pretty atypical. Ford, like the Enterprise liked to go where no man has gone before. Even himself. He actually wrote a second Star Trek novel, How Much for Just the Planet, which is a musical if you can believe it.The main twist in this book, is it doesn't follow the adventures of Kirk, Spock, and McCoy, but rather it has a Klingon as the main protagonist. Vrenn, is a houseless orphan who was trained to play the live version of the game klin zha, a much more complicated form of chess. During a match he gains the notice of a prominent Klingon admiral, and ends up being adopted into his line. Vrenn is now able to fulfill his dreams of becoming a naval officer. Vrenn eventually is forced to take the name of Krenn, as a political expediency, and is made captain of his own ship. Part of the price of this is he must travel to Earth to bring back a delegate from the Federation. Kreen becomes a key figure in a plot to bring about a war between the Klingon Empire and the Federation. He must determine who he can trust in order to prevent a needless, honorless war.
Ford does masterful work in representing the Klingons as noble , honorable characters, not the hated barbarians they had always been portrayed as. Keep in mind this was written in 1984, well before The Next Generation introduced us to Worf, and the concept that Klingons were anything other than "the enemy". Ford takes a universe all of us are familiar with, and makes it his own. The trouble with so many tie-in novels is that the authors have little room for original creation, but Ford never seems constrained by those limits.
I really enjoyed this book. Any fan of either Star Trek books, or Ford's work should definitely pick this up. I will be moving his other Star Trek book up in my to be read pile.
8.5 out of 10
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3 comments:
I've never read a Star Trek novel either, but I have read some Star Wars ones. Dull...like you said; Lack of a creative imagination.
They read like watching any action movie that comes on TNT on Friday night.
I don't even know that there is a lack of imagination as much as, that with Tie -Ins the authors dont own the intellectual property of the worlds they are writing in, they are bound by say what WotC, or Lucas, or whomever controls things will allow them to do. I've taken shots at Salvatore in the past, but he cant do anything he want's with Drizz't. Those novels sell, and WotC tells him to keep cranking them out in the same format.
"I don't even know that there is a lack of imagination as much as, "
Well said, It was a lack of wording on my part.
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