Pounding out the Anvil

Well I finished Stone and Anvil by Peter David Friday. That’s probably the fastest I’ve read a book in quite a while. Then I decided to try to pull the other books in the series together. It wasn’t until after I started looking that I realized how prolific a writer he is. If you’re interested, I’ll ramble on about it.

In my previous post I mentioned a few of the books I had read by PD. I read the two Star Trek books years ago, so I thought I might mention them. Both books are similar in that they combine ST:TNG and ST:TOS plots and characters. PD uses a lot of previously created characters and items in his ST books, but he usually expands on them or uses them in new interesting ways. I read Imzadi about the time it first came out. It uses ST:TNG characters from the future of the ST:TNG timeline, the Guardian of Forever from The City on the Edge of Forever episode in ST:TOS, and ST:TNG characters from the TV timeline of ST:TNG. I don’t remember much about the quality of the writing, but the use of characters and tGoF was a nice tie in to ST:TOS. I read Q-Squared some years back. It uses Q and characters from ST:TNG and the character Trelane from ST:TOS The Squire of Gothos. Trelane was in one episode of TOS and was an incredibly powerful being, but ended up being a child. In this book Trelane turns out to be a childlike member of the Q, and he decides to destroy the universe. Q-Squared is actually really disorienting, because it jumps back and forth in time and space and between alternate timelines without really telling you where you are right now. It’s told from the point of view of Q, and it takes a while to wrap you brain around it. Anyway I thought that was useful as a background for PD’s ST books.

Stone and Anvil is the 14^th book in the Star Trek New Frontier series. Peter David created the series using some of the lesser characters from ST:TNG and some new creations of his own, and as far as I know he has written or edited all of the books in the series. It takes place during the ST:TNG timeframe in a previously unexplored sector of the galaxy previously controlled by the recently collapsed Thallonian Empire. This means that the books are of a consistent style, universe, and aren’t really affected by other series much.

Basically this is about what I expected in the book. It has PD’s sense of humor, irony, and good character development. The story is engaging and has a very natural conversation style. It’s basically like reading a good episode of a ST series. Luckily you don’t have to have read the previous books in the series to enjoy this one. However, I would recommend having watched a good portion of ST:TNG just to familiarize yourself with the time period of the series, technology, and TNG characters. So if you are a ST fan and like reading this is a good fast book. I think it would make an excellent car or plane book.

Now on to my next conquest.