User:AdmYates/reviews/A Time To... Series Review

Overview
The back of each book in the series summarises thusly: ''On the cusp of their epic battle with Shinzon, many of Captain Jean-Luc Picard's long-time crew were heading for new assignments and new challenges. Among the changes were William Riker's promotion to captain and his new command, Riker's marriage to Counselor Deanna Troi, and Dr. Beverly Crusher's new career at Starfleet Medical. But the story of what set them on a path away from the Starship Enterprise has never been told. Until now.''

The series consists of four duologies each telling a standalone story, while the entire series continues the story arcs of the Enterprise crew, concluding with one final novel. The series as a whole leads into the film Star Trek Nemesis, and sets the stage for the continuing stories after the film in Articles of the Federation, the  series and the continuing TNG series.

Beginning
Well here is my personal review of the series. It started off slow with the Rashanar incident, where Captain Picard fired upon a ship that was not a real ship but a AntiMatter creature that feeds off of a starships antimatter. At the time the ship was mimicking a Ontailian ship, when the Ontailians see this ship get destroyed they fire upon another federation ship that is in the area and destroy it. Due to the series being just after the Dominion war, the Federation is threatened by its own people and internal politics that may very well splinter the Federation. To prevent the Ontailians from succeeding from the Federation, the Admirality set the blame on Captain Picard and send him to a Mental institution.

To be honest A Time to be Born was slow to start off, and had me putting it down multiple times. What can i say, it got boring. At the end is where things really started to pick up. It left off with Picard in the mental hospital and Riker being given command of the enterprise. This book did have one suprise though. Wesley Crusher made a return and started to assist with Captain Picard's predicament.

A Time to Die actually got me more interested in the series. More politics came into play but the book its self lacked alot of body to say the least. Wesley had a larger part in this book... Actually i would have to say it was more focused around him than anything else. I was hoping that he would play a bigger role in the conclusion of this series, but i guess only time will tell as i have yet to finish all of the books. Only three left so far, Currently reading A Time to Heal. To conclude the ending was anti-climatic and predictable.

A time to Sow and Harvest dealt with the fallout of Ontailian Affair, The Enterprise appears to be black listed and is given a bad rep. This duology had the ship sent out to see what happened to the Dokaalan society after sitting on a Dokaalan probe that Starfleet/Vulcan had encountered nearly 200 years before. Again slow starter, but it did pick up. The ending was a kicker that left you wanting more at the end of the first bock. The second book picked up where the first left off and ended with a pretty good climax. Internal strife and politics became more prominent as well as introduced us to a grittier insurgency never before seen in any other Star Trek books.