I have not seen the television series this book is based on so, my comments are confined to the electronic version of the book. The book portion is shorter than even the multiple book series that I have read for other Star Trek tales. This is the first I have read of the Enterprise series, and while I will not stop based on this first exposure, the next best be much improved. The more interesting part of this E-Book was the additional material about the creation of the Enterprise as a series, and then the more specific design of various elements. This is included at the end of the book, and accounts for about 15% of all the reading.

The most frustrating information I learned is that time travel is not only a part of this specific book but will be a part of the series for as long as it may remain on television. The phrasing is a bit different, but "temporal alteration room" and "temporal cold war", sound all too familiar. This series is placed fairly close to the film, "First Contact", 100 years after, and 100 years prior to the first Star Trek series. It would seem this would once again allow for all manner of special appearances by familiar faces from other series if that decision is made. It has been done before, and with time travel a cornerstone of the entire Enterprise concept, it seems reasonable to expect such events.

The body of the book contains writing that is painful to read, "came face to face with a - a face", yes, written just like that. What is worse is that the first third of the book is not only littered with typos, there are question marks and other forms of punctuation that take the place of letters. Familiar species cannot even be given one name, for we start with Kling-on, and then move to Klingon, and then back and forth again. I don't understand why spell-checking should be such a task.

What was more interesting were the areas that explained the development of the show as a concept, the ship's design, the engineering section modeled after a submarine, shuttlecrafts designed like the current NASA X-33 concept vehicle, and creating costumes and familiar items like hand-held weapons, and communication devices that would interest an audience that already are walking around with 3 ounce phones in their pockets. The technology of some gadgets from the original series now is very much like what people use today. Some laptop computers have amazing capabilities, and even phones can be activated using only voice.

I hope the show is better than the book. There are countless Star Trek books out there to be read, and I would suggest starting some place other then with this early Enterprise in written form.

The episode/s that this book is based on were better than average episodes, so the story is pretty good (except for the ending, which utilizes a very trite and overused plot device which I probably can't describe further without giving away too much of the ending.) But what Diane Carey did to this reasonably good story when it was entrusted to her ought to be a criminal offense, as should entrusting a novelization of a Star Trek episode to the worst Star Trek writer currently published, bar none.

Ms. Carey has always had a tendancy to try too hard to reach for "clever and creative" in her use of language, and generally succeeds only in achieving "wrong, distracting, and silly". But she's much worse in this book than she has been in most of her previous efforts, which is a shame because she actually has a good feel for characterization, pacing, and (when the story's her own, which it isn't here) plot. If she could ever grow up and stop trying to be clever, she might actually be a competent writer. But when the book is filled with lines like "'This isn't a racial issue, Odo,' Sisko surfeited," and "Sisko swashed back and forth before the office viewing monitors," and "...the Romulan woman inflected back to him..." and "Feeling the Jem'Hadar ships gloss over the skin of his cheeks and forehead, Sisko stared at the screen." and "He bent over Kira, who had the presence of being to hold still..." and "everyone else sat on the edge of their work..." and "he turned to her, anger pleating his eyes" and "he gazed off into the surmountable future" (when overcoming that future was NOT what he had in mind) and....

Do I really need to continue? These are just a FEW of the examples I could list, and there are others just as bad on almost every third page or so. Is it possible that both Diane Carey AND her editors really feel that this constitutes competent (dare we say "clever" writing? I wish I could believe that it was more likely that both the writing and the editing were done while under the influence of powerful mood-altering chemicals, but I suppose that it is much more likely that they are really that incompetent without the aid of artificial incompetence-enhancing drugs. That, or Ms. Carey has decided that now that she's a multiply-published writer, she's big enough that she doesn't need to be ruled by petty little things like the actual meanings of words. Like Humpty Dumpty in "Through The Looking Glass", words mean what she intends them to mean, neither more nor less.

If you're desperate for a Deep Space Nine story with good plot and action, and don't care how badly it's written, this book will fill the bill. Otherwise, avoid it most emphatically.

The final episode of DS9's second season, "The Jem Hadar," was simply incredible, ranking up there with TNG's "The Best of Both Worlds Part I" for sheer action, drama, suspense, and overall thrills. Who didn't get a shiver down their spine when the Odyssey was destroyed? Who didn't laugh when Quark complained about bugs in his jambalaya?

The problem with tremendous finales, of course, is that it builds up huge expectations for the follow-up. And "The Search" failed miserably to live up to the promise of "The Jem Hadar." Sure, it was cool to see the Defiant's rapid-fire blowing up an enemy ship and to see Sisko literally go down fighting, but the rest of the two-parter was a dud. Watching Odo constantly mope was painful, as was seeing Kira's "I'm worried about Odo" face. And the "surprise" resolution was trite, hackneyed, anti-climactic, and unconvincing.

Along comes Diane Carey, whose only other Star Trek novel I'd read, Best Destiny, ranks among the worst books ever put to paper - so awful I couldn't make it through even a third. Yet, surprisingly, and to her credit, Carey turned a bad episode into a decent read. She succeeds in several different ways. She fully fleshes out the change in Sisko's attitude toward Bajor (represented in the episode by Sisko's query to Jake, "When did this Cardassian monstrosity become home to me?"), making it both convincing and moving. She adds scenes not seen in the episode, including Dax's and O'Brien's adventures on the relay station (in the episode, they are captured immediately). Of course, Carey's not a miracle worker. Kira is as painful to read as she was to see, and not even a J.K. Rowling could have saved the ending. In the end, Carey brings us a serviceable Trek novel, neither better nor worse than the vast majority of them.

The Search, the novelization of the two-part episode which launched DS9's third season, is a better novelization than as an episode. Diane Carey, the author of several Star Trek novels (both novelizations and originals), offers her opinion on what characters are thinking and feeling, whereas the episode offers no hint of this. Maybe her opinion is right, maybe not, but it works.

The story opens with Sisko bringing a new warship to DS9 in hopes that it will help the Federation in their eventual battle with the Dominion. When they take it for a trial run after exiting the other side of the wormhole, they get a chance to test its firepower. Eventually the crew is split into three groups.

Odo's portion is the most intriguing as he learns a little about his past/origin. The ultimate resolution to this revelation is a bit weak, but the build-up is entertaining. There are a few minor surprises with the ending, but nothing earth-shattering. Overall the novelization warrants a four star rating, whereas the episode itself is only average and would warrant a three star rating.

Here's a question: Why, unlike the first book in the New Earth series, is BELLE TERRE written as if the target reader is a 9-year-old? The vocabulary and sentence structure are barely up to the standards of a YA (young adult) novel, and the story itself is a simple-minded meet-the-deadline crisis that ends exactly the way one thinks it will.

The book is needlessly divided into four arbitrary "parts"; the natural assumption here is that it was done for padding, a fair conclusion when one sees a countdown ("Four. Three. Two....") divided into separate paragraphs. The dialogue is straight from the cliche encyclopedia, with enough "one-quarter impulse, Mr. Sulu"s and "course plotted and laid in sir"s to fill three or four bad novels. And the author's idea of a scare? "Skeletons." That's right: skeletons.

My advice: skip directly to Part Three and a different author, where there should be enough background to discern the essentials of this piece of hackwork.

This novel picks up after the wagon train has arrived at Belle Terre, the new home planet of the colonists. Kirk and the colonists are faced with the possibility of the planet now being destroyed due to an exploding moon within the system. Kirk and the crew must race against time to find a way to keep the moon from exploding or find a way to evacuate the colonists. Additionally, Kirk must deal with the fact that the moon contains a rare and valuable element which will "change the face of the galaxy." With four more books in the series, the ending was predictable.

Besides the end being predictable, I was disappointed in the fact that many of the characters introduced in the first book were missing in this story, especially the two warring alien factions of the Blood and the Kauld. It was as if many of the colonists introduced in the first book never existed. Also, many of the characters seemed flat. Definitely not as good as the first. Hopefully the third in the series will make up for it.

Finally, the wagon train to the stars got there. They're established in their new planet and out of nowhere comes a new menace to the colonists, which the Enterprise must try to avert. Taking into account that this is a TOS book, I'd say they do OK. It's true that many clichés pop up, but I guess that's the way some of us fans like it. I found this book entertaining and the story line kept me hooked. Taking into account that this is the second book of the series and that further developments will come to pass, my recommendation is "keep on reading"

The series Book 1-6 was promising, if annoying for having a cliffhanger ending that forced you to buy the next book, or specificially the Book 7 which contains all the endings.

Well after being built-up by books 1-6, wondering if the inconsistencies between those books would be tied together in ST Gateways Book 7, wondering if Book 7 "the grand conclusion of what lay beyond" would put forth a good explanation for the Iconian mystery, tie all the loose ends together and provide good conclusions for the cliffhanger endings of books 1-6...............it was most most most disappointing to see that this was not the case.

Book 7 creates more inconsistencies and the endings are [bad]. Oh some of the endings were ok, but the final ending...for the TNG book in the series...which was SUPPOSED to tie everything together, totally messed it up and failed, completely failed to deliver! I mean...first in books 1-6 they established that once activated a gateway cannot be destroyed no matter what they threw at it because it will simply absorb the energy. THEN in Book 7...suddenly Gateways CAN be destroyed by explosive force...no explanation given!!! Just a lazy author who didn't even read the previous book he wrote and ignored all stuff he established in the previous book! Once again, this is a MAJOR LETDOWN!

The editors of Star Trek novels have, once again, come up with a way to entice readers into buying another book. This book is a collection of endings to the first six books in the mini-series! Cute, but no cigar.

Well, they conned me into buying the book. The other Gateways books were well-enough written and I did want to read the endings, but I got the book from the library first and then decided to invest the extra money. Notice that this book came out in hardback whereas the others were published as paperbacks. Of course, the mass market paperback version was finally issued, but impatient souls such a myself just wouldn't wait.

Remember when they published Star Trek Year One as a trailer to other Star Trek novels? And then finally brought it out as a separate novel. The current ploy of delaying the endings had the same feel of a serial novel, but compounded by waiting for SIX finales.

Buy the paperback. Don't be like me and fork out the money for the hardback. Unless, of course, you really think it is worth the money.

I'm not too fond of the Trek editors' current penchant for crossovers, but so far, they've managed to keep things from getting too irritating. This book ends the six stories started in the previous volumes of the series, but doesn't connect them; each adventure is a separate novella.
All of the stories were interesting enough to keep my attention, but the Kirk story dragged on for a while, and provided absolutely no backstory beyond the jacket type. Since this story opens the volume, it may cause readers who didn't pick up all the previous books (like myself; I only bought the TNG and New Frontier volumes) to turn away.
The other stories lacked both these faults, so the enjoyment you take from them is pretty much proportionate to your preference for each series. I knew nothing about Voyager, DS9, or Challenger but the basic concepts, but since each story followed only the captain (or Kira, in the DS9 case), it worked out. In fact, the Challenger story was interesting enough to convince me to pick up the original volume. A warning: the Voyager story involves a somewhat gratuitous cameo from a famous guest star, and the ending is irritating, as we watch Janeway say goodbye to every friggin' ship in the caravan. And, of course, there's the unconvincing explanation to why they didn't use the gateways to get home.
I worship Peter David as a god, so I'll leave the New Frontier review to someone less biased.
The TNG story comes last, and serves as an ending. I won't give away any details, but suffice it to say we do get a definite resolution to the crisis, as well as an explanation to just where the Iconians went, along with a really neat Picard story. One problem: there is a painful TMI moment between Troi and Riker in the last chapter; thankfully, it's brief.
I gave the book 4 stars because all the stories but one were above average, and Burgoyne's one-liner justified the hardback price (you'll now it when you see it).