Stargate Archives

Sunday 3 April 2016

Web of the Romulans by M.S. Murdock

Web of the RomulansWeb of the Romulans by M.S. Murdock
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Web of the Romulans takes a crack at expanding the Romulan side of Star Trek, there is certainly plenty of options given how little this race has been explored on the original tv series and how so far wrong they went in TNG onwards. The Romulan Empire is dying, a plague has spread throughout their worlds and only one source of a potential cure exists but it's not in their nature to go through diplomatic channels, the Praetor can not show weakness so the fleet is massed on a mission that will determine the future of the empire.
This wasn't a bad story at all but there were issues mainly with the scope of the monitoring of Starfleet and the activities of the Intelligence community which doesn't quite sync with what we know from the original series. The Romulan characters however were spot on and I liked them all and I have to admit to a fondness for the more tradition Romulans from TOS and the novels which added to their portrayal before TNG. It also didn't hurt that the novel takes the best from Balance of Terror with Kirk and S'Talon replying the stand off and battle of wills and tactics between two masters of command. It was gratifying to see an "enemy" given depth and when you get right down to it Trek is all about having worthy adversaries for our captain and ship to deal with.


View all my reviews

No comments: