The Romulan War to Brave the Storm (Star Trek: Enterprise) [Mass Market Paperback]

It is with a heavy heart I have to say this was probably one of the worst and most disappointing novels I have ever read, and this is from someone who will occasionally by a book because the cover is shiny. There's is very little to recommend it on other than to say that it didn't take me long to read and at least it completes the story arc begun in the previous books of this series.

The main reason for the `worst' opinion is I'm not entirely sure one could class it as a novel in the conventional sense. It's structured like the storyboard to a novel, the notes an author might leave for his more talented co-writer to flesh out. I have a strong suspicion this series was meant to be far larger, as nothing else would justify the release was is essentially the cliff notes for potential books one would send to an editor or at least stick to an 'ideas' board in an office. There's nothing one normally associates with a novel, no character development, few action sequences, no overriding central plot (apart a vague "we're at war") and indeed no real feeling of the context (a gritty interstellar war) within whith the book is set. There are hints of such things, Archer dealing with his reputation following the events of "Kobayashi Maru", loss of various colonies and battles etc, but these are not elaborated on in-text. Any development happens `off screen' as it were, with the reader being rather clumsily informed about them through pieces of dialogue. I was disappointed with the previous books as Martin seems to avoid writing action sequences; for this book he has included coherent plots and character development to his aversions.

The book is also perhaps even more disappointing as a piece of Star Trek canon. It goes without saying I bought this as I am a Star Trek fan and anyone reading this review has, I'd imagine, searched for this book for the same reason. The Romulan War and the birth of the Federation have been massive parts of ST history that until now have been left untouched and... That's it?. For example, The Battle of Cheron (oft mentioned, never elaborated) should have been an epic confrontation that explains Romulan animosity even 200 years later, and that's the best Martin could do? To say why would give away spoilers but, while I know all fans have their own vision of "how things should have been done", I don't think I've been more disappointed since Darth Vader was revealed to be a whiney emo kid with mother issues.

Again, much of this stems from the structure. I doubt it will give anything away to say the Federation is founded at the end of the book, but this sentence is about as many words as Martin devotes to explaining how it came about. Given the "earth stands alone" nature of the past few novels, a little more detail would have been nice. As for the war itself, the Romulans we know are careful and manipulative, but such Machiavellian plans are impossible to develop with such a disjointed narrative. Martin therefore relies on increasingly insane super villain-esque events to inject the story with a bit of drama and tension, yet given all these threats are introduced and resolved in a half dozen pages, they fail to do even this. While it is no doubt hard to write a compelling story that can fit seamlessly into a detailed existing universe, many authors have done so without resorting to events so extreme others (in universe that is) would definitely have mentioned at some point when referencing the war.

To Brave the Storm is disappointing as both a Star Trek book and a general piece of science fiction. I would advise buying this only if you think that vague sense of closure that comes from seeing something to the end is worth the £4 price tag.

I have to admit that this book wasn't quite what I was expecting, but nonetheless earns its place in the Star Trek continuity. It's the second part of a duology about the war between Earth and Romulus that has been established in Trek lore for some decades as happening prior to the foundation of the Federation, and something that the Enterprise series was long thought to be planned to be about.

Previous reading is required for this - the other Enterprise continuation novels are vital if you're going to understand where the characters are, and this novel wraps all of these up. The plot in this 'episode' starts a bit slowly. It's quite a disjointed storyline, focussing on several key parts of the war rather than being a single narrative within the war, and as such manages to cover a lot more than I was expecting.

Once the first few parts are out of the way though the speed and the action pick up to an exciting pace, and this continues through to the end. It becomes an enjoyable read and I almost wish that there was some more of this to come. The focus is very much on Archer, Trip and T'Pol, with some of the others getting barely more than a brief mention, which is where the TV series evolved to, and I was a little disappointed to not get a bit more on the others.

I still feel that Martin's output has suffered since he stopped writing with Andy Mangels, and the narrative feels a little rougher and less friendly than some of the earlier stories in the series.

This feels like a good place for Enterprise's story to come to an end. I don't think that there's going to be any more novels that continue Star Trek's 2150s storyline, and this novel certainly serves as a much better close than the final episode of the TV series did six years ago.

What have Those Who Make The Decisions got against Star Trek: Enterprise? As a general fan of all things Trek I, like many others I suspect, felt that the TV series, having started off rather slowly, was just building up nicely to its obvious climax, namely the war with The Romulans and the subsequent founding of The Federation. Then the TV execs pulled the plug resulting in the deeply unsatisfactory mess that were the last episodes, leaving us thinking "Was that it?"

So I was heartened when the subsequent novels came out and once we got past the need to somehow reincarnate one of the central characters, the storyline picked itself up again, existing characters were re-fleshed out and new ones introduced. The Trek universe of the early 22nd century was enlarged and I looked forward to an on-going series of novels providing much more detail about the various "historical" facts that we already knew about. To be fair to Michael Martin, I realise that unlike pretty much every other Trek storyline (Titan, Typhon Pact, "New" Voyager etc..) which are open ended both in timescale and scope, Enterprise has a clearly defined end point which must be a bit restricting from the writers perspective. A good author should be able to adapt their narrative however and still provide exciting, believable stories about a period of Trek history that has a fundamental impact on all that came after it. Regrettably this is not the case with this novel.

Overall the impression left is of a hasty hotch-potch of a story, far below the standard of the other Enterprise novels and Mr Martin's other works in the Trek genre. There are just too many loose ends to tie up, too many characters whose individual stories warranted a fuller treatment and too many leaps in circumstance from the previous novel Beneath the Raptor's Wing that are barely explained. Assuming for a moment that you agree with the decision to bring this storyline to a close (which I lament) at the very least it seems to me that the whole Romulan War storyline should have warranted a trilogy by itself (rather like the climactic conflict with The Borg in the Destiny trilogy) with then perhaps a final story describing the birth of the United Federation of Planets. This would have given the author space to bring all the stories and characters together in a much more satisfactory manner. As it is, apart from Archer, T'Pol and Trip who feature throughout (and even they are moved around in a rather disjointed manner) some of the supporting characters barely warrant a scant paragraph in this novel, despite having played quite substantial roles in either the TV series, the previous stories, or even both!

Why buy this book? Like other reviewers have said, I suppose to get some sort of closure, however unsatisfactory. There is a lack of detail in some areas that really irritates and the need to cover a timescale of around thirty years means there are jumps in the narrative that leave you thinking "hold on- did I miss a page there?" I don't know if the decision to end it was made by Michael Martin, or by some other anonymous third party- if the former then sorry, it's a poor effort. If the latter you can have some sympathy Mr Martin- asking any author to wrap the previous multiple storylines up in one book is just unrealistic and I doubt anyone could have done much better. Some people have said that Enterprise was always the poor relation by comparison to the other TV series (I'm not sure I entirely agree with that either), but I feel the previous novels held their own and the storyline did not deserve to be axed in quite such a brutal manner, for a second time. Like I said before... History repeating itself.