Do Comets Dream? (Star Trek: The Next Generation Unnumbed) by S.P. Somtow

Do Comets Dream? (Star Trek: The Next Generation Unnumbed) Reviews

• 
  Jerry

  Different than usual for this series...but that isn't always a good thing.
• 
  Rosemarie

  I think I would, more accurately, give this one something in between 3 and 4 stars.
  
  In this Star Trek: The Next Generation novel a planet named Thanet believes their world is about to end. Their culture and religion has taught them to celebrate this fact, and they do. However, the Enterprise crew knows that the comet on a collision course with Thanet can be easily destroyed and the planet saved. This news is received by the Thanetian Ambassador as if it is heresy in the highest degree.
  
  There are some echoes of TNG episode, "The Masterpiece Society" in this book. I also thought for a time it was going be be like "Tin Man" with the comet being a living creature, but it's not as simple as that. The comet actually houses a child from a rival planet that was sent on a journey years ago to destroy Thanet. To be honest, the plot gets a little complicated. The time frame that we are dealing with is crazy long - 5 thousand years - and that was a little distracting for me.
  
  But overall it's not a bad story. It brings back a minor character that I do remember from TNG -the part Romulan ensign Simon Tarses who was accused of being a traitor in one episode. And, overall, there was a nice range of characters used in this one. I try to avoid books that focus solely on one or two characters - usually Data, Worf or Picard. I like when the whole crew is involved and that was pretty much the case here.
  
  The ending was good, but not the one that I saw coming. What happened not only saved the Thanetian world physically but also their worldview. That seemed a bit corny to me. Why couldn't these people know the truth about what was going on? I guess, the older I get the more I question if the Almighty Prime Directive is as necessary as they say it is. If it was me, I would want to know the truth about my world, but that's just my humble opinion.
  
  This is my favorite ST crew - long live ST:TNG! :)
• 
  Jennifer

  Imaginative and romantic story--I read it in one sitting! Wanted to find out what happened to Simon Tarses after "The Drumhead."
  
  I would say it was most similar to the TNG episode, "The Inner Light."
• 
  Carmen

  I liked this book, it was quite interesting to read about the weird culture of Thanet, with the fatalistic mindset that I could never in a million years bring myself to grasp. Interesting linguistic and mythological references. Yarut, the god of love? That's music to my wannabe Slavic Polytheist self.
  
  However, I can't help but be puzzled about the Thanet-Tanith situation. In the pre-speed of light travel, how did they even know about each other, let alone become enemies? And how can one planet believe that there are no other planets in the Universe but the enemy planet 5000 light years away? Weird.
• 
  Jen

  The only things in the Star Trek universe that I were the same in this book as the show is that a red short died. Oh, and Dianna Troi was all emotional while not doing much, if any, good. It wasn't written very convincingly of the Star Trek NG, but it has been a while since I've seen the show. Still and all, not my favorite STTNG book.
• 
  Angela

  The Enterprise is sent to save a planet from a comet collision. Only problem is that the planets religion states that they are all going to die anyway. The plot is quite straightforward, what makes this an interesting read is the society on the planet. It has castes, rules and a real sense of fatality. A good read.
• 
  James

  It was a great book. I like that it included a character from one of the star trek episodes.
• 
  Greg Lindsay

  I was more impressed with the story idea than the story it's self.
• 
  Daniel Kukwa

  This is very different from most Trek novels: it's high romanticism mashed together with an SF-edged fantasy premise. I'm not a big fan of straight-up fantasy, but this does make for unique storytelling...and I'm always happy to experience something new. It doesn't press all my buttons -- I found the crew characterization to be occasionally off, to say nothing of feeling peripheral to most of the action, compared to the guest cast -- but it intrigued me enough to keep going. I can definitely see a segment of fandom that will eat this up, even though I'm not personally part of that company.
• 
  SnowGator

  The only character I liked was Artas, the little boy who was turned into a sentient comet. It was nice that one of the main characters was Simon Tarses, from The Drumhead, but he wasn't interesting and his instaromance was annoying. Prostitution is mentioned multiple times and Artas's mom is called a whore because she was born into "the pleasure caste". Overall a strangely dark read by Star Trek standards.
• 
  Judith Paterson

  A good solid Star trek read. Interesting plot.
• 
  Eggith

  A serviceable read. Not great.
• 
  Jason Vargo

  Do Comets Dream? is part "Devil's Due," part "Masks" with a little Season One TNG thrown in for good measure. For starters, we have a planet seemingly in the throes of anarchy because of an ancient prophecy (sound like "Devil's Due"?). This prophecy-the end of their world-has brought the Enterprise into orbit, trying to obey the Prime Directive and save a billion people at the same time. There is then a part of the story where our characters inhabit long-dead aliens, seeing events of 5,000 years ago through their eyes (this is the "Masks" part). And then there's a fair amount of Troi's empathic babble to save the day, just like happened in early TNG episodes.
  
  All that is to say Do Comets Dream? is an okay read. The beginning meanders and plods along, setting up the situation in short chapters. It's fairly uninteresting until the halfway point, when the story makes no sense for roughly 20% of the book. I found myself having to go back and see what I missed...how the crew gets into a mechanical monstrosity and what was actually happening. And then, finally, mercifully, the book gets good. It's the ramp up to the finale (sure, it's a bit too pat and easy, but what do you really want from TNG).
  
  Again, a decent enough read if you can stomach most of the TNG main characters being shunted to the side (Crusher and Worf get almost nothing to do...and the latter is written terribly).
• 
  Dan

  Do Comets Dream? was an interesting read, but ultimately in my mind, a little unmemorable. The problem and the eventual solution were interesting, but at the same time the plot ended up feeling a little bit "paint-by-numbers." I can't exactly explain the reason why I came away from this book feeling this sort of ambivalence. I can recommend the book if you're interested in eating up an afternoon reading about some classic TNG era exploits, but Do Comets Dream? is far outside the realm of "must-reads" in my opinion.
  
  Full review:
  treklit.blogspot.com/2012/08/do-comet...
• 
  SFReader

  
  http://www.sfreader.com/read_review.a...
• 
  deenee

  Nicht überall, wo Star Trek draufsteht, ist auch Star Trek drin...
• 
  Stephen

  A decent book - it read more like an episode of the show than it did one of the books. However, it was engrossing and it was tied up in a neat bow.
• 
  Ryan Wilson

  This surely would be a good Star Trek film. There are parts of unpredictability that outweigh some of the predictability. It was a good story overall. The author has a phenomenal vocabulary.
• 
  Jarrod

  Decent enough story. Strange for Simon Tarses to be as involved as he was.