"Exiles" is based on a truly "Roddenberrian" concept. It deals with environmental issues and the preservation of animal species, both subjects still relevant.

Alaj is a Federation member world, that faces a disaster as it's overly industrial culture renderes the planet uninhabitable.

Etolos is a world populated by a people exiled from Etolos centuries earlier. They are the experts on the preservation of nature with high technology. It just happens that their planet faces it's natural end just as the situation on Alaj escalates beyond apparent savation.

The formerly bitter enemies must find a common tone as the people of Etolos offer to save Alaj in exhange of them getting to live there. The deal includes a few individuals of an animal species called Nefittifi, vich is a highly rare sacred animal to both the Alajians and Etolosians.

The result is an uneventfull and cliché filled story, with nothing new to offer.

Howard Weinstein starts off promisingly as he describes the diplomatic situation between the two worlds, but soon the story looses all originality and reverts into a predictable and badly paced sience fiction cliché.

There are only a few twist in the ploand they can be predicted from miles away. The situation is made worse by horrible scenes about Wesley Crusher and his discustingly cute Britney-Spears-clone girlfriend that make vomit crawl up the reader's throat. And it doesn't help one bit to have a bad sub-plot about Troi dealing with a Nefittifi expert in his twenties having a crush on her. A horrible waste of a character, say I.

The characterization is pretty accurate in most parts, though, exept for Data, who's been portrayed as he was in the beginning of the show: a truly failed attempt at forsfully writing an original character. At the point of the series "Exiles" takes place, it should no more be the case.

The ending of the book is as predictable as the rest of it and makes the reader want to finish reading as quickly as possible.

Not worth bying.

But it's more than a bit preachy and overly simplistic.

The plot is good, (except for the deus ex machina toward the end) the characterizations well-handled, the dialogue good if unspectacular. But this is a book with a message, and its message is the same one as in Dr. Seuss's "The Lorax", and this book's presentation of that message ("pollution bad") is every bit as detailed and nuanced as the presentation was in that children's story. There is no discussion of HOW one would go about reducing the pollution and overuse of natural resources in a society, or what level is acceptable, or what sacrifices it might be appropriate to expect people to make to save the world, or any of the other difficult questions that such an issue deserves or any acknowledgement that the issue is a difficult one at all; as in Dr. Seuss, it is simply assumed that if people are poisoning their world, it is because they're too stupid to figure out that they need to stop, or to see the obvious things they need to do to stop. If they'd merely listen to wise people of good will, the problem would go away.

Now, obviously, I have nothing against "The Lorax". It's a marvellous children's story and conveys the danger of pollution very well for its intended target audience. As a children's story, it isn't EXPECTED to have nuance or balance. And while I'm sure that there are people out there saying, "This is a mass-market Star Trek novel; why would you hold it to a higher standard than you do Dr. Seuss?", my response is, that's true of Star Trek stories that are intended to be no more than entertaining action/adventure stories. This (again) is a book with a message. But its message conveys little or nothing; I'm reasonably sure that all us Star Trek fans are already well aware that pollution is bad. The question is, "what do we do about it?" That question isn't even addressed, much less answered, in this book.

It is amazing that a supposed authority on accents, Dr. Stern, would be associated with this book (and especially the cassette that goes with it.). He is - allegedly - a dialect coach to the Stars. It may explain some of the atempts at foreign accents that have recently come out of Hollywood. The accents on the cassette are nothing short of embarrassing - A cringe a minute. I asked a fellow actor to listen to the French accent and guess what it was: He guessed Spanish! If you want a first rate book on accents, buy Robert Blumenfeld's "Accents - A Manual for Actors". Now where do I go to get my money back?...

I recently bought the CD version of this, and I am compelled to warn people who are thinking of buying this. If you are at a;; serious about learning dialects, do NOT buy this CD. ... A high school drama student would have done a superior job. You would be better off learning dialects from the Simpsons or Saturday Night Live. This is not an exaggeration, this is a flat out warning. Don't waste your money. ... Pygmalion is old school cockney. Not modern. You want authentic Cockney? Try "Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels" and "Love, Honor and Obey." They're the best. "Scum" and "The Krays" are also pretty good. And that's on the authority of a real cockney girl (my girlfriend).

I own nearly all of Dr. Stern's Accent/Dialog books and tapes, including "Dialolect Monologues" I and II and over 20 of his individual accent/dialect tapes (example: Acting With an Accent/Norwegian & Swedish). While I do feel that it is worthwhile to own Dr. Stern's tapes in order to complete one's libary of accent/dialogue books and tapes, I do not feel that Dr. Stern's tapes are the best of the bunch. If I could only choose one author's accent/dialogue tapes I would not choose Dr. Stern's. Dr. Stern's system has several flaws. The first flaw is that Dr. Stern is a "one man band", meaning the only voice you will ever hear is Dr. Stern's. By contrast, two of the three other accent/dialect systems I own include lots of recordings of actual natives speaking the dialects. The second flaw is that Dr. Stern chooses dialects that bias towards educated middle class. For example, his tape on New York City accent does not teach the normal Brooklyn/Bronx dialect of the "Dese and doze, toity toid street" variety, but instead uses as his standard a sort of mildly Jewish middle class Manhattan accent as the single dialect he teaches on the tape. Similarly, his tape on the Polish dialect sounds so sanitized and educated that its really hard to tell what accent it is other than being mildly European and educated. Similarly, his Italian tape is of a European, educated person instead of the lower class Italian that one would expect to hear included on a tape devoted to Italian. A third and severe flaw in Dr. Stern's single-dialect tapes is that he repeats every exercize first in standard American and pauses for the student to repeat it, and then says the word or sentence in the dialect and pauses for the student to repeat it in the dialect. This effectively wastes about a quarter of the tape, as it doesn't teach anything to hear and repeat the words/sentences in standard american. A forth flaw is that Dr. Stern is obsessed with his pet theory that each dialect must resonate from a unique portion of the mouth cavity. Dr. Stern wastes from ten to twenty minutes of each of his hour long single-dialect tapes going on and on about the point of resonance of the dlalect. This is mind-numbingly boring to hear more than once, so one ends up fast forwading through it when listening on subsequent ocasions. The two accent/dialect systems that I recommend are not currently offered by Amazon so I will not give their names. Hopefully at some point Amazon will expand their selection of accent/dialect tapes. It would also be extremely useful if Amazon had a cross reference system in place so that one could show all video tapes or recordings that, say, give examples of a Cockney accent, an Irish accent, etc. For example, the 1938 video of Shaw's Pygmalian is an excellent example of Cockney, but one must figure this out on one's own as Amazon does not list videos by the accent/dialects they use.

This is a review on "Volume I". It is a warning for those contemplating buying Volume II".

It is amazing that a supposed authority on accents, Dr. Stern, would be associated with this book (and especially the cassette that goes with it.). He is - allegedly - a dialect coach to the Stars. It may explain some of the pathetic atempts at foreign accents that have recently come out of Hollywood. The accents on the cassette are nothing short of embarrassing - A cringe a minute. I asked a fellow actor to listen to the French accent and guess what it was: He guessed Spanish! If you want a first rate book on accents, buy Robert Blumenfeld's "Accents - A Manual for Actors". Now where do I go to get my money back?...

I bought volume 1 of this series and I just wanted to warn people who are considering buying this. If you are serious about learning dialects, do NOT buy this. If you think it would be fun to learn some different dialects and want to have a remote chance of fooling anyone, do NOT buy this. A high school drama student would have done a superior job. You would be better off learning dialects from the Simpsons or Saturday Night Live. This is not an exaggeration, this is a flat out warning. Don't waste your money.

While the actor who read each instructive monologue was talented, he has some weak points, (White South African was too close to Australian). The only "authentic" voice was russian. Also, each dialect could have been applied to the same text, rather than applying to culturally specific topics. Then, differences in pronunciation, emphasis, would be more evident.

I have to agree with the other review. I bought this at a bookstore, hoping to brush up on some accents. I can do a better southern accent than this guy, and I've never even lived in the south! His NY accent is hilariously bad. I'd rather rent "Shrek" than listen to his Irish monologue. The whole thing is dopey and phoney-sounding.

If you are serious about learning dialects, do NOT buy this CD. If you think it would be fun to learn some different dialects to try and want to have a remote chance of fooling anyone, do NOT buy this CD. A high school drama student would have done a superior job. You would be better off learning dialects from the Simpsons or Saturday Night Live. This is not an exaggeration, this is a flat out warning. Don't waste your money.