What a shame that a writer with lots of elan and a Mary Sue style protagonist who's actually a lot if fun, would be an Objectivist and full of really awful political takes.

One of my early favorites. ( )

I don't have much that's useful or interesting to say. ?áI do want to reply to some of the reviews on GR, though. ?áFirst, I did not see Piper as a Mary Sue. ?áShe was too flawed, in fact, she was so flawed, so much of twit, that I don't know how she managed to avoid getting flunked off the captaincy track. ?áBut by the end she learned a lot, so that's good character development. ?áSecond, the Objectivism that some see in the middle seems more like Libertarianism, to me; but I do agree that it's over-simplified to the point where it doesn't fit in to the Universe that Roddenberry created. ?áThird, there were mistakes that an editor should have caught; perhaps the most disturbing was when Piper admitted that she was stunned by something, but the word printed was stunning."

Overall, if the book falls into your hands, and you like pulp ST:TOG, and have a few hours to kill, read it. ?áOtherwise, don't bother." ( )

Frankly, I have read better stories in online fan-fiction archives. The plot is paper-thin and full of holes, with twists and turns that come completely out of left field and result in a cobbled-together mess. Writing in first person is difficult; it requires a good balance of inner-monologue with action, but instead we get pages of cringe-worthy indecision and self-hatred alternated with action scenes in which Carey thinks that telling us Piper's actions were brilliant is enough to make them so. Piper (who might as well have been christened Mary Sue) is the only character who shows any traces of character development, but even she remains firmly one-dimensional. All of the new characters feel like the familiar characters wearing false noses: in addition to the so-stubborn-she-never-gives-up Lt. Piper, we have Sarda, a Vulcan caught in a painful cultural struggle between his home planet and Starfleet, and Judd "Scanner" Sandage, a cheerful comic-relief character with a Southern drawl. I was waiting for the token racial minorities to pop out of the woodwork.

For all that, the thin plot is saved somewhat by the relentless pace, and Carey redeems herself a couple of times with a surprising knack for funny one-liners and other humorous moments. In the end I have to grudgingly admit that it's a fun read, as long as you read it quickly without much thought. Perhaps its telling that I liked this book a lot better when I originally read it, at the age of eleven or so, than I do now. ( )

Lame. Told from the point of view of a whiny, self-centered cadet with little interaction with the main crew. Not my favorite. ( )