Review: Brave & the Bold (Book 2)

The first book in the Brave and the Bold 2-part series introduced a
very intriguing concept, but the second book doesn't carry it through.
The book has two stories, the first of which is pretty good and almost
holds up the quality of the first book. However, the second falls to
pieces, bringing the entire series down with it.

The first book in this series was so well written and exciting, that I
was really looking forward to a riveting conclusion. One of the minor
gripes with the entire series, like all of the Star Trek book series
that incorporate all of the television crews, is that it became a
little bit too much of a coincidence that the same things would happen
to all of our familiar crew members. Candido alleviated that a little
bit by having other crews involved as well: in the first book, it was
Decker and his ship and then the crew of the Odyssey. Further along
those lines, Candido provides even more distance by making Tuvok and
Chakotay the only two familiar characters in the Voyager story. I
found that this helped considerably.

The first story is really well-told, as DeCandido does a good job of
fleshing out some characters that we saw only briefly in the TV series
(Cal Hudson) as well as creating some very interesting characters for
the Hood. The Hood doesn't have as much to do as the ships did in the
previous book, but the characters that DeCandido creates for it,
especially Captain DeSoto, are vivid. DeSoto is a champion at the game
of Go, and he has created a monster by teaching his first officer the
game (and now she constantly beats him). It becomes a running gag
throughout the story. It seems a bit superfluous, but it adds greatly
to the character, as we feel we know him. DeCandido doesn't do as good
of a job with the villain of the piece, though. The Andorian is very
two-dimensional, going crazy because of the death of his family. He
becomes very boring after awhile, and it's good that the story is
short. The Maquis characters that DeCandido creates fulfill their
roles well, but are rather basic otherwise. The distrust of Tuvok is
understandable, but that's pretty much all there is.

While the Voyager story is pretty good, the Next Generation story that
ends the book just completely falls apart. One of the problems with it
is that it seems to be a showcase for DeCandido's new series of books
about the IKS Gorkon and less a Next Generation story. That's fine in
and of itself, but that's not really the way the book was sold. They
do seem like an interesting crew, and DeCandido makes them intriguing
to read about, but Picard and the rest of the Enterprise crew are bit
players in their own story.

The second problem, and the one that made me almost want to put this
book down in frustration many times in its short 140 page duration,
was the constant explanation of continuity references. In many Star
Trek books, there are so many references to past episodes that it can
strangle a story. Others handle this very deftly, by either not
including many references or by the author being very capable of
explaining just enough of the references to not leave the new reader
confused without bogging down the story. Throughout the first three
stories in this series, DeCandido did a really good job of this. They
were not intrusive, but they also weren't mystifying. Even better, a
lot of these "references" were actually references to things that we
haven't seen before, because they dealt with the new characters that
DeCandido had created. That made them interesting. Unfortunately, in
this final story, the continuity references come at the reader fast
and furious, and DeCandido uses paragraph after paragraph to explain
them. Most of them only need one paragraph, but when there are
multiple references on each page, it starts to add up and get very
messy. Not only are there references to television episodes, but there
are multiple references to other books, as well (especially concerning
the Gorkon, which has appeared on one of DeCandido's previous books).

The story also feels very staged and ends up being anti-climactic.
DeCandido moves all of the pieces around, has them do their assigned
jobs, and then has the book end within one page in a very boring way.
Finally, there is fifteen pages of story after the ending, which makes
the rest of the story seem very inconsequential. I understand that
this is the conclusion to the two-book series, and thus needs to be
there, but when the story itself is only 140 pages, it doesn't add
much to the final story. I wouldn't mind so much if the story itself
were actually good, but this really needed a bit more to it.

On a positive note, though, the crew of the Gorkon is very
interesting, and I'm looking forward to their series. DeCandido is a
good writer (this story not-withstanding) and I think he'll do a good
job with it. It highlights the differences between Klingon ships and
the Federation ships that we're all familiar with, as well as
containing good characters to boot. I have to admit I was surprised by
one of the deaths, because I thought that this character was one of
the more interesting ones and I was looking forward to seeing the
character in the new series. I was touched by the character, and
really sorry to see the death. In such a short story that contains so
much, that's a rare feat.

Overall, the series is very good, but it the final story is a big let
down. Speaking specifically about this book, it contains a 4-star
story and a 2-star story. Thus, I'll split the difference and make it
3-stars. It's too bad.

Dave Roy

Responding here to both reviews: glad you liked 3/4 of it, and I'm
sorry you didn't enjoy Part 4. (Ironic, given that I had the most fun
writing that part. Maybe that was the problem. Ah, well...)

I'm particularly gratified that you enjoyed what I considered the most
important thing: seeing the crews we're all familiar with through the
lens of other characters.


Keith R.A. DeCandido
keith RemoveThis @decandido.net
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