Daedalus

There isn`t much I can say about the book. It is an entertaining,
straight forward adventure story but it hasn`t much depth I could
analyse. That isn`t necessarily a bad thing. Sometimes I also enjoy a
light read.

The book is dealing with a lot of new characters. That can be a
disadvantage, but it wasn`t in this case. Dave Stern succeeded to show
the members of the Guild in a very likeable way. He gave some of them an
interesting background and turned them quickly into three dimensional
characters. Maybe Sadir, the dictator, was a bit too much the typical
bad guy but this is the feeling I got from what I learned because of his
victims and nasty dictators like Sadir do exist. On the other hand, as
entertaining as this black and white story is, I find grey areas much
more interesting.

From very early on, the book becomes a Trip and Hoshi story. I have no
problem with that, I like them both. My only criticism is the decision
of the author to turn the Trip and Hoshi story later into a Trip story.
Hoshi served her purpose but it becomes obvious that Dave Stern wants
Trip to be the lead character. Later I had the feeling Hoshi got in the
way and he was looking for ways to get rid of her without killing her.
It annoyed me a bit because it was too obvious and I think it would have
made the book more interesting to continue having them as a team. I
enjoy a good male/female team up, this would have been the ideal chance
to do so.

What I could read about Hoshi was in character. The same applies to
Trip, although I think Dave Stern turned him a bit too much into a
womanizer. His relationship with Trant was on the one hand touching, on
the other so wrong that it cancelled out the "touching" feeling for me.

After I finished the book I could see that "Daedalus`s Children" must be
the direct continuation of this book. In essence, I got one half of the
story and will get the other half in a few months. I would have
preferred it to get the satisfaction that I have a cliffhanger but
otherwise a complete novel. But that is not the case.

It is a good story so far but I can wait. At the very least, so far it
is the best Enterprise novel I have read.


Baerbel Haddrell