Star Trek-The Next Generation: THe Devil's Heart written by Carmen Carter is a book when read carefully gives you an impression the "Lord of the Rings" but with a Star Trek twist.

I've read this book for a second time and realize that it was one of the books used for the "Gateways" series of books that has transended to whole of the Star Trek genre. As this book tells of a Gateway chamber in the prologue, and the demise of Iconia through a nova of its sun.

Yes, Iconia was dead, but her legacy will remain as the Federation and its resources are always finding relics that relate to the once glorious Iconian culture. This book uses one of those found relics as the basis for a story of mystery, intrigue, morality, bloodlust, and truth. Could the dispairy in technologies trigger an unsettling of other races, just by the knowledge of Iconian superiority, could it foster fear and distrust?

This book fills all of these themes as Jean-Luc Picard is going to go through a true test of his own morality as "The Devil's Heart" a left over icon of the Iconian culture, a legendary object of unsurpassed power and mystery, is found.

This book moves quickly and is extremely engrossing as the Devil's Heart enables its possessor to control minds and amass countless wealth and can control the passage of time as well.

Romulans, Ferengi, and Klingons bring a spice of the TREK universe to this book as our hero Jean-Luc Picard trys to deal with the power and consequenses that are the Devil's Heart gifts. I must say I really enjoyed this book and it lays a foundation to other TREK books that will follow.

This is a very powerful novel, well-written and well-plotted. At first, I thought that it was going to bear too much resemblance to Original Series Novel #30, J.M. Dillard's "Demons" (Vulcan archaologist finds relic that proves dangerous, and leads to much death and devastation) but that is the extent of the similarities between the two; this book is much better written, and has a much more evolved plot. Then I thought that it was too close in concept to "The Lord of the Rings" (mystical item possesses its bearer, making him reluctant to let anyone else touch it, or to put it down, and becoming his "precious" to the detriment of his health, both physical and mental.) But there are enough differences to pass the "original concept" test, although if the book were not so well-written, I might be less tolerant on this score.

Definitely one of the better Star Trek books, good enough to be worth a look from non-Trek fans.

Devil's Heart, in my opinion, is clearly one of the best Star Trek novels written to date! Throughout the book, the reader is taken all over history in delightful and intriguing ways. The author truly captured Picard's spirit and his love for archaeology. This novel has everything a Star Trek fan is looking for in a book, action, intrigue, mythology and a little mystery. The author set's an extremely well thought out plot and put's it in place extraordinarily well. This is one of the few books that I've actually read a couple times. It is easy to immerse yourself in this story. In reference to the audio tape read by Gates McFadden, she truly brings the story alive. I've listened to it countless times on the highway. The only unfortunate thing about the audio tape is that it's abridged. If there's ever a Star Trek book to recommend to somebody, this is the one. If you've not read this one, pick it up in any format you can. Thank you very much to the author for this one.

This book is rather poorly written; the plot devices introducing the characters to the uninitiated are rather transparent and add nothing to the story, the plot itself (the allegedly main plot involving conflict with a hostile alien race) is trite and artificial, the scene-shifts are choppy and amateurish, and the characterizations are rather two-dimensional for the most part (the exceptions being McCoy and Dr. Dyson, the romantic interest). The only thing that saved it from a one-star rating is that the subplot of McCoy losing his memory (as near as I can tell, the REAL main plot) is moderately intriguing in concept, and handled surprisingly well other than the fact that the cause of the amnesia is trite beyond words (the old bonk on the head trick) and the cure for it so heavily foreshadowed that by the time we finally get to it, it's seriously anticlimactic. This is not the worst Star Trek novel I've read; it's better (by far) than "Triangle" or "Spock Must Die", and a bit better than "Killing Time" or "Black Fire". But overall, I'd have to say that it's in the bottom 10% of all the Star Trek novels I've read.

This is one of the better classic Trek novels from a period where it was extremely hit or miss. What I liked most about the work and think that Carter worked out very well is McCoy's emotions at being a young man, trapped in an old body in his future. Definietly a must have if you are a collector of the series of books and a great read for the more casual buyer.

WOW! This is a very exciting book! It uses the classic early Star Trek world with a little mystery! Dr. McCoy loses 25 years of memories when his head his the floor. Now an unknow alien race attacked a merchant ship, a Klingon Warbird and is heading for a station. Kirk must defeat them without his trusted Chief Medical officer. But McCoy does remember an old pilot who spoke of these aliens...

...the Ravens.

Carter's first Trek novel, Dreams of the Raven, was an outstanding effort. The Children of Hamlin, however, doesn't rise above the level of an average Trek book - a pleasant diversion, but nothing more. Like so many Next Gen episodes, Children of Hamlin is saddled with both an inane subplot (involving the ever-popular technology-impaired wandering farmers; fortunately, these don't talk with Irish accents!)and too much Wesley. Its main story, though, about efforts to reclaim children abducted by aliens fifty years before, raises interesting philosophical, moral, and ethical issues that are only given lip service by Picard and the crew. But, then, if you're looking for insights into philosphical, moral, and ethical issues you're not likely to be reading a Star Trek book, are you?

While the Wesley subplot IS distracting, the story has some good elements, surprising for one of the early TNG novels. The aliens ships are very alien (and the aliens themselves so mysterious we never see them), and Yar's preparation more realistic than what the show would have offered. Not very fast-paced, The Children of Hamlin is nonetheless a thoughtful moral play, like many Star Trek efforts.

This story is good for the interesting ideas it addresses in a science-fiction format, not as an action-adventure story. Ideas such as: if someone is the victim of a kidnapping, and has remained in the custody of their kidnappers for many years before an opportunity comes to free them, is it more appropriate to free them or not to free them if they have been brainwashed by their captors to the point where they do not desire freedom, and wish to remain where they are? Clearly, they are incapable of making an informed decision, but then, isn't freeing them against their will rather a contradiction in terms? Fascinating concept, and one that never is definitively answered in this story, for the obvious reason that there is no definitive answer. Still, it is addressed evenhandedly and in a very interesting manner. Further, the characters are handled well, the established characters ring true and the new characters are interesting (if in some cases not very pleasant). All in all, a well-written story, and worth reading.

Doomsday World is by no means a bad Trek novel. Ordinarily, it would be entitled to the standard three stars that decent Trek novels are awarded. Unfortunately, the promise of having some of Trek's greatest novelists (Carter, David, and Friedman) teaming together falls way short of the mark. With few exceptions, each of their individual Trek novels have been several cuts above the norm; that Doomsday World never rises above the average makes the result all the more disappointing.

There are some good moments, including Worf saving the day with a barrage of phaser fire (then griping that if he'd been allowed to blast away when he'd wanted to they could have avoided a host of problems) and an amusing, if out of place, Monty Python reference ("What's the average air speed of an unladen swallow?" Geordi asks a bartender).

If you are going to read this one, do it because it's a Trek novel, not because of who the authors are . . . .

This book was written by Carmen Carter, Peter David, Michael Jan Friedman, and Robert Greenberger in concert. I expected a book written by committee to be sincerely bad. The four authors in question are all good enough to rescue this book from that fate, but almost any book by any one of them is better than this one.

Frankly, I thought that the concept was weak; I've read and enjoyed other "shared world" books, notably the "Thieves' World" series and the "Wild Cards" series, but in this case, ALL writing in the Star Trek universe already has all the advantages of such a concept, and I think that, left to themselves, we'd probably have gotten a novel at least as good as this one from EACH of these writers in the time it took us to get this one from the four of them.

The one possible reason for writing a novel this way is that it is potentially more fun for the authors than writing solo. I can see no other reason for the concept. Hopefully, having gotten this out of their systems, they'll go back to doing what they do best: writing solo.

Other reviews have focused on the fact that it took four writer to write this book. So what? It's no giant novel, but it's still a goo story with interesting bit players. The planet's many secrets have fun conclusions, and the characters are well written. I would expect this one would have made a better episode than novel, so try to imagine the visuals. I, for one, would like to see the dueling ambassadors again.