Adequately Entertaining.. I Guess

..but save the Credit. This is a strikingly weak second part of an obviously planned Duology extended somehow into four books. The action sequences are well-paced, but throughout the book character motivations are absent, there are enormous plot holes, and dialogue is often straight-up cheesy. It is, in fact, amazing that the author of the first book wrote this mess. Additionally, several plotlines feel like they were added "post-production"..not really fitting into the story arc (which is effectively resolved by the end of this book). Thus, a fairly insulting obvious money grab is added to a haphazard, lazy effort. I wonder if the paper copy of this John Vornholt book does a better job of making the "new" threads fit than in this underwhelming adaptation.. although I somehow doubt it.

Tim Russ's performance is professional (his Picard is excellent, for example), but he reads in a monotone and way too quickly (I had to slow the playback speed to 0.90X to make it tolerable).
Simon & Schuster Audio compounds the offense with too-aggressive sound effects and music. They overwhelm the text in this one.

If you have a couple of hours and nothing better to do (or are a Diehard Star Trek fan), this audiobook is possibly a reasonable investment. Furthermore, if you read the first book, this one provides some satisfying conclusions to the main plotline. You would certainly be forgiven for continuing on in the series - the TNG crew are well-loved for a reason and worth any effort to know them better - but I will be stopping after this 2.5/10 effort.
(Note: These are entertaining recordings - I didn't hate them - but Books 3+4 are pretty obviously superfluous and the relatively poor writing and low production quality doesn't bode well)

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!