Synopsis: This book is set between the film Generations and leading into the next film First contact and deals with what could have been after the TNG episode Cause and Effect and what happened to the USS Bozeman and her crew. Review: If you are the type of person who likes spin of stories from previous episods of Star Trek, then you might be interested in this novel. The story takes you back to when the USS Bozeman set out on her tour of duty and encountered the Klingon ship that set them hurtling into a temporal causality loop that brought them into the future collision course with the enterprise D. Then the story then brings us up to the future just shortly after the Enterprise D is destroyed in the film Generations and we find the Enterprise crew scattered, and seeming uncertain about their future. At this point we meet up with Captain Bateson from the USS Bozeman to find out that he has had a lot to do with the making of the New Enterprise E, and is very influential in Starfleet. So there is much speculation amongst Starfleet about who will captain the new ship; Bozeman, Picard or Riker? When Starfleet sends Picard on a mission to retrieve certain Federation prisoners held by Picard's old Cardassian Torturer Gul Madred, it turns out that Captain Bateson is left in charge of the new Enterprise E, and wants Riker as his first officer. This turns into a battle of wills and antagonisms as they find themselves dealing with Captain Bateson's old Klingon adversary. Though the base of the story itself is interesting, I found Picard's pondering and uncertainty about his future a bit uncharacteristic. In the TV series he seems always certain of what he wants and what he is doing. Of course this could be the writers way of explaining this same such behaviour in the film Generations when I found his anguish over his future totally unbelievable. But despite these drawbacks, there is plenty of action and plenty of twists and turns in the story to keep the reader interested and enough to want to finish the book. I give the this book 3 out of 5 pips.
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Title: Ship of the Line
Author: Diane Carey
Review by: CL5 Leeta
2-17-05
