I am in thrid grade and just turned nine. I picked this book for a mystery book report. I choose it because I had never read a Wishbone mystery before and I thought it would be fun. It was a fun an exciting book! I was surprised because there were two mysteries in the one book. My attention was held right to the end. With all the clues I could not guess who stole the trophy. I would highly recommend this book.

Why do all of these Star Trek author keep coming up with new races of the Federation. In this book they just look like Deltans with lines on their heads. How cheesy!

I LIKED THIS BOOK VERY MUCH, IT SHOWS THAT PEOPLE ARE NOT WHATTHEY SEEM TO BE, AND THERE IS NOTHING WRONG WITH BEINGAFRAID. POSSITIVE THINKING, AND GOOD DETECTIVE WORK LEADS THIS STORY TO MAKING NEW FRIENDS, AND DISCOVERING A DANGEROUS AREA OF SPACE, AND PEOPLE WHO REALLY WANT TO BE ALONE. DATA DOES A GREAT JOB OF FIGUIRING OUT EVERYTHING, AND TAKES ANOTHER STEP TOWARDS HUMANITY.

This is the final in the series of six books dealing with an assault with biological weapons on the Federation. In the fifth book, we found out that it is a result of Picard being responsible for the death of someone, and that it is all about vengeance. A little tired but workable as a plot point.

This book takes the reader back to the time of Picard as Captain of the Stargazer and adds Tuvok and Jack Crusher to the series. Picard is assigned diplomatic duties for a system on the verge of war. Working together with Tuvok and Crusher, they quickly realize that the war is being primed by someone, but they're just not sure who. Tuvok and Crusher go undercover and they form the majority of the story. Their undercover antics are interesting reading, and represent a solid addition to Tuvok's background. However, Crusher's character is only superficially developed, as is the character of the man who eventually becomes the assailant for the other five books. A little disappointing, but still interesting reading.

This story is another wonderful tale in the Star Trek: The Next Generation tradition. It is based in the same wonderful universe as all other star trek books where faster than light travel and communications make galactic journeys possible. Unlike most other Next Generation books, this story does not take place aboard the U.S.S. Enterprise. Instead it is based a few years before the Next Generation series began on the U.S.S. Stargazer, Captain Picard's former ship. There are a few familiar characters though, obviously Captain Picard, and the often spoken of but seldom seen husband of Dr. Beverly Crusher, Lieutenant Commander Jack Crusher. Also joining these two characters is one Vulcan, Ensign Tuvok. If the name sounds familiar to Star Trek: Voyager fans, it is the same as your Lieutenant Tuvok but a few years before his Voyager years. The story is of a mission to the Kellasian sector to try and help defuse the war cries of two races on different worlds brought on by old hatred and recent terrorist attacks. While Picard tries to solve the problem diplomatically, he assigns Crusher and Tuvok to investigate the attacks because he believes they are coming from an outside source. This is the final tale in the series of the plot of a mad man to destroy the entire Federation. Interestingly, this last story is the first chronologically and answers the questions posed by the first five novels about why this mad man has been sending virtually incurable diseases to seemingly random places in the galaxy over a period of nearly a decade. Some of the most interesting parts of the story come when a carefree and impulsive Jack Crusher teams up with the completely logical and reserved Vulcan, Ensign Tuvok. The clash of their personalities is nearly audible to the reader in the early stages of the book.

"The ease with which they found a place to land and hide their small craft, all within a few kilometers of a main city, was actually rather unsettling. 'Any disreputable type can sneak onto this planet,' Crusher said. 'But then,' Tuvok told him as they concealed their ship with loose foliage, 'so can a team of Starfleet officers.' The commander looked at him. 'In other words, I shouldn't look a gift horse in the mouth.' The Vulcan appeared perplexed--and maybe a little annoyed as well. 'The reference escapes me,' he said. 'What it means,' Crusher explained, 'is that you shouldn't question good luck. You should just run with it.' Tuvok sighed a little. 'I see.' 'Don't you have any colorful Vulcan expressions?' asked the human. The ensign glanced at him. 'No,' he said flatly. And he dragged a few last branches full of leaves up against their vessel. Crusher brushed off his hands. 'Looks like we're done.' 'Indeed,' said Tuvok. he gestured. 'The city is that way.' and he began to walk toward it. The human had no trouble catching up with him. 'Impatient, aren't we?' he asked his companion. Tuvok stopped and turned to him, obviously a little surprised. 'Not really. I simply saw no reason to delay.' Crusher smiled at the ensign's expression. 'My fault. You're absolutely right-- there isn't.' And as he started walking again, he reminded himself that he couldn't joke with the Vulcan as he might [with other people he knew]."

However, as they work together, they realize that their differences do not need to stand in the way of forming a friendship, not that Tuvok would ever admit to needing friendship. Friedman and Golden use dialogue very well to show what is happening, not only around the characters but also to show how the characters are feeling. When Tuvok is explaining how he talked an adversary out of killing Crusher and himself.

"'When he attempted to sense my emotions, our minds were linked. it was not difficult to examine his thoughts and extract something useful for them. and the rest--' He hesitated. 'The rest . . . ?' Crusher prodded. Again, Tuvok's dark eyes seemed to glimmer with the faintest hint of mischief. 'The rest,' said the Vulcan, 'I made up.' Crusher grinned at him. 'Tuvok, you son of a mugato. I didn't know you had it in you.' The ensign's brow wrinkled ever so slightly. 'There is much you do not know about me, Commander. Perhaps we will have the chance to rectify that at a later time.'"

Although he remains constantly icy to Crusher, Tuvok does change and begin to show a bit of affection for his illogical and slightly annoying partner. Friedman & Golden do a wonderful job of tying together a series of six novels into one chronologically spaced out story. This book is not for everyone. I will be the first to admit that Star Trek or Science-Fiction in general really turn some people off. But if you are a Trekkie, or are someone who is willing to open his mind to a tale based in the far distant future but not far enough that you can not relate to the story. And if you've got a lot of extra time on your hands, read the whole series, it's worth your time.

The First Virtue is an excellent conclusion. It pretty much wraps up the reasoning to everything we learned in "Double or Nothing." In the First Virtue, we learn why Gerrid Thul wanted to create the Double Helix virus and why he wanted so much revenge for the loss of his only child. Both authors did a great job with their portions. The plot is well thought out, especially the portions of the book with Commander Jack Crusher and Lieutenant Tuvok. I felt that they captured Tuvok's personality quite well and gave a precursor to some of the decisions and general personality we saw on screen in Voyager. Overall, I would recommend the whole series, or the Omnibus that's due out in November to any and all Star Trek fans. Thank you to the author's for their excellent work.

The tale told by Captain Picard in this second "Captain's Table" novel is, in and of itself, amusing but not engrossing. Almost all of the pleasure one could get from it is sapped by the ever-increasing interruptions that return us to the far-too hokey Captain's Table bar. The interruptions do not, as one reviewer suggested, lend a sense of realism. Rather, they continually remind us how contrived the whole set up is. As with War Dragons, the tale itself is *not* written in the way one would expect a story to be told at a bar, and Picard's voice is not always captured. My advice to those who are about to read this one: read only the chapters captioned "Tale." Skip all of the others.

Michael Jan Friedman is ordinarily among the best of the Trek writers; it is unfortunate that he allowed himself to get roped into the Captain's Table idea. A fine talent, an interesting challenge (a first-person Picard tale), but a wasted effort.

In this second book of "The Captain's Table" series, it is Jean-Luc Picard's turn to find himself in the strange watering hole that transcends time and space where he must spin his own tale of adventure. Michael Jan Friedman offers what is essentially a swashbuckling tale, set in deep space instead of on the high sea. Picard and Worf go off in search of the fabled treasure, Dujonian's Hoard, jewels that are not only worth an untold fortune but which are perhaps more powerful than dilithium as a power source. The pair join the crew of a ship captained by Red Abby, who claims to know where the treasure is, but who turns out to have more secrets than "Hill," Picard's alias for this adventure. Just to make things fun there are Cardassians, Romulans and the overly-rule governed Abinarri on the trail of the treasure, our heroes, or both. "Dujonian's Hoard" is a rather mundane "pirate" story, with the change in setting or addition of Picard adding little new or substantive to the tale with the possible exception of how often Picard gets beat up in this story. This novel is diverting but not a memorable Star Trek novel. Because these tales are told in the first person, Friedman jumps back and forth almost incessantly between the bar on Madigoor and the tale Picard is telling. While I appreciate the attempt at verisimilitude with the audience that keeps interrupting and asking questions that are always a step or two ahead of the tale being told, it just become too much after a while. The book also contains Friedman's biography of Jean-Luc Picard, which does a nice job of sorting out the major themes in the character's career. Again, because of the nature of these stories there is no compelling need to read all of the books in this series or to read them in any particular order. Finally: what's up with the lizard?

The Captain's Table is a place that transcends time and space. Only Captain's may enter. A wonderful concept that is carried to fruition quite exceptionally by Michael Jan Friedman in "Dujonian's Hoard." I approached this one with a little trepidation after trudging through "War Dragons." Of course, knowing the author, I knew this one would be a lot better. I was not disappointed.
"Dujonian's Hoard" is a wonderful tale with Captain Picard and Lieutenant Worf going undercover. They intend to find a missing Starfleet officer, Richard Brant who was searching for the hoard and return him to the Federation.
This is a really well done tale. While others might have thought the interruptions from the other bar patrons distracting, I rather enjoyed the character interactions.
Overall an excellent story by one of the best authors in the Trek series. Thank you to the author for this one!

When it was first announced, this book seemed to me (a Trek and a X-Men fan) a terrible idea... dreamed up by the two corporations to pull in the millions of fans (and dollars) of both mega-pop-culture phenomena. Well, sure, it may be that, but it's also a lot of fun. Friedman isn't my favorite Trek writer, but his enthusiasm for both teams shows, and there's some solid character work: an intriguing spotlight on Archangel (never one of my favorite X-Men, but portrayed here with an interesting and original twist), Wolverine and Worf bonding in the holodeck, and a scene every fan has been waiting for: Picard and Xavier noting just how much the other looks like him (Patrick Stewart *should* be the frontrunner to play Professor X in any proposed X-Men movie, if there's justice in the universe!). The plot --the emergence of alien mutants-- seems almost tacked on as an excuse to get the two teams together, but that's forgiveable, the team-up is so much fun. Not one of the classic Trek books, not even an all-time great X-Men story, but a fun evening's read and a solid contribution to a genre previously only seen in fan fiction.

Friedman's novel brings together two pop-culture icons (the universes of Star Trek and the X-Men) seamlessly in this action-packed novel. While I think Friedman is one of the best Trek authors around (in both the comics and fiction world) this is not up there with his best work. Still, it's a fun, well-paced read, and he stays true to the characters of both universes. For fans, the Epilogue is a special treat! Perfect summer reading for Star Trek and X-Men fans. And though this is a sequel to Marvel Comics Star Trek/X-Men crossover entitled "Second Contact" you don't need to have read that to enjoy this.

At a glance, this seems like a weird and stupid idea. It isn't. Friedman has taken two very different and very popular ideas and blended them into one. My bigest problem with this book is the characters chosen from the X-Men. Wolverine and Storm are definate must-haves and Archangel is a good pick. Shadowcat, Nightcrawler, and Colossus were some bad picks, mostly because they aren't even in X-Men anymore. Also, there are a few places where the X-Men's powers don't seem to quite be correct. The X-Men choosen makes it seem like this is Classic X-Men, down to the costumes, yet they keep refering to events that happened recenly, like Archangel getting his real wings back. Overall, this is a well written book with plenty of originality, though the seen with Storm and Captain Picard seemed rather unlikely.

If you like Star Trek and/or X-Men, give this book a try.

Star Trek-The Next Generation: A Call to Darkness written by Michael Jan Friedman is a book where Captain Jean-Luc Picard of the U.S.S. Enterprise is taken and Commander William Riker has to figure out how to get him back book.

This book is early TNG and the rolls of Worf and Data still need direction and real purpose. This book pays more attention to the rolls of Riker, Dr. Pulaski, and Geordi LaForge as they try to find a way to get Captain Picard back after he is trapped on a brutal world. A world that for entertainment of the masses they have war games for real... made for TV. Of course, the combatants are all kidnapped from spacefaring races that happen to come close to the planet.

War being the only entertainment for these people they require more and more players(combatants), as such, more and more crews become MIA's. At least 18,000 people are alive and doing combat war games for entertainment. But, that is not the only plot in this book. Soon after Picard's disappearance, Commander Riker has a strange mysterious disease begins to ravage the crew of the Enterprise.

I found this book to be a fast read, engaging till the ending. What I liked about this book in particular, was Riker working independent from Picard as it shows Riker's character and fleshes him out. Friedman tells a good tale and you will be throughly entertained

Micheal Jan Friedman shows why he is one of the better Trek writers in Call to Darkness. It is standard Trek fare, not likely to linger in the memory for very long, but written in an engaging way. There are some flaws, of course, including a holodeck scene with Homer reciting the story of Cassandra (absent from the Odyssey; Virgil or Aeschylus would have been more accurate). However, it was good to see Pulaski again. Unlike every other character in Trek, we all know and have worked with a Pulaski-type; she was the most "real" of all Trek characters, and Friedman does a fine job of capturing her orneriness. Overall, A Call to Darkness is worth any Trek fan's time.

This is a well-written book, but one built around a highly implausible plot device. The antagonists for the book use highly advanced transporter technology to kidnap the crews of passing Starships to use in made-for-tv entertainment as palliatives for their masses, but only weak or injured ships, not a full-fledged, healthy starship like the Enterprise, presumably because they couldn't have gotten enough of the crew of such a ship before it either struck back or got a distress message out.

Yet there are over 18000 surviving captives, not counting the untold thousands who've died. Are there REALLY that many disabled starships that just HAPPEN to pass within range of a given planet, and if there were that many ship disappearances in a given area, don't you think SOMEBODY would have noticed? I can't suppress disbelief THAT far. A shame, because the characterizations and plot are otherwise quite good.

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.

I had to read this book because I love Seaquest. But beware, this may be one of the worst books ever. It actually is two small stories that have nothing in common, combined into one. This author needs some writing lessons; the entire novel is written in about 3 paragraph segments, jumping between anywhere from 3 to 5 sets of characters throughout the story. Only read this if you need a Seaquest fix and are truly desperate!

this book was excellent. Although like most novels it starts out slowly, the action quickly starts and carries you through the rest of the book. It inspired me to write a fanfic based on the storyline. A must-read for seaQuest fans.

I usually rate ST: DS9 books pretty highly, but this one is an exception. The only reason I gave this book any stars at all is because I cannot submit this review without starring it. Here's why I feel this way:

You would think that Mr. Friedman had never seen any episodes of Deep Space Nine. The characterizations of characters I feel I know personally are bloody awful. You would not recognize Jadzia Dax, Captain Benjamin Sisko, Major Kira, or any of the other characters from his characterizations of them. For example, Mr. Friedman has turned Jadzia Dax into a giggling, immature, bubble-gum-snapping, almost Valley-Girl speaking high-school chick. His portrayal of Captain Sisko is even worse. It makes me wonder if he hates the show.

The actual story is very thin/flimsy. If you can get past the rotten depictions of the main characters, the story grabs your interest for about half of the book then fizzles out. And that, fellow readers, is generous.

Speaking of thin, this book is very short and the lines of text are spaced far apart, no doubt to make the book appear have more pages than it would if the book was printed like all the other DS9/ST books I've read and own, and to make it appear to be longer than it actually is...or maybe that's just the copy I bought, I don't know.

I have never, ever said this in any review I have ever written on Amazon.com (but there is a first time for everything): This book [is bad]! ...

Again the books were trying to find themselves. Though the Defiant gave the characters more mobility in a plot sense, this revisiting of Sisko's past didn't necessarily suggest perfection. It takes time to develop a new concept for characters that are being fixed in the public consciousness. This book tried to bring in some of Sisko's past, the past being an area thatthe book writer's can explore without fear of destroying some precious future episode. And though theres a heavy feeling of mourning, it's also nice to see how Sisko interacts with another crew.

This is one of my favorite Star Trek: Deep Space Nine books. I liked this book because it continues with events that were first seen in the pilot episode of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. The subject of the book made for a good story. It was suspenseful and exciting and it kept me interested throught the whole story. I like these Star Trek books because they acccurately describe the characters and events in these books with great detail. I think that the author of this book wrote a very exciting and suspenseful story. It was also very entertaining. I really enjoyed reading this book. I think that it's really worth reading.

Sorry. I despise the new JLA ... because the absence of the real Green Lantern. Kyle Raynor is a favorite character in comics and they ditched him for a different, confident and boring, Green Lantern. Shame on Bruce Timm and everyone else who made this stupid change. Its sad really.

While a fan of the Justice League cartoon and a long time follower of the John Stewart character in the comics, I didn't like this book as much as others in the series. I had hoped for more ooomph in this tale about GL being stuck on an alien world. The villain was not all that engaging, and the story seemed to just plod along and then end. Yawn.