Shannon C. (Shannatram) reviewed on 9/3/2009 + 33 more book reviews

Helpful Score: 8

My boyfriend and I spotted this at a used bookstore and picked it up more for novelty value than anything, but hey, we already had the book. Why not read it? I was hoping it would be an unexpected gem, but it really wasn't. Michael Jan Friedman's writing was very, very dry. A lot of the time it felt like he was writing about emotions he'd only ever experienced through movies and TV. The plot was interesting but he actually spent very little time exploring it! The first half of the book bounced back and forth between the transformed trying to escape a form of concentration camp (which was interesting), and the X-Men finding themselves on the enterprise (which was not).

We're told that the X-Men had visited the Enterprise before, but many of the characters act as if it were their fist time meeting or being there. It also felt like the characters were mainly out of character. Their behaviors and motivations were shadows of the real characters. Speaking of which, it also felt like there were way too many characters. The author tried to make it so everyone had equal story time and no one person was the focus, which is great when executed well, but there was just so much going on, and Freidman spent so little time actually talking about what was going on that it ended up feeling like everyone was hardly there.

The dialog was really hard. A lot of it was cheesy and cliche' and I found myself rolling my eyes when a character would speak. Again, Freidman tried to capture the character's personality which I saw, but it was very, very basic. We saw that Shadowcat was good at computers, Wolverine was gruff and tough and used contractions, Deanne Troi reacted strongly to creatures with only negative hateful emotions. All the standards of the characters was there, but not much else.

All in all it wasn't the worst book ever. I'm certainn that the writing style is suitable for another kind of person, but it was hard to get into and enjoy. The characters did some silly things and came up with silly ideas often (I'd elaborate but I don't want to give spoilers to those who have yet to read it!). I'm definitely glad I read it, just so I can say that I have read it, but beyond that it's not something I'd get into.

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