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crankyoldnerd's review against another edition
4.0
At first I thought this book had bitten off more than it could chew.
We have appearances from story lines in TOS, TNG, and DS9 plus the extended universe.
And they pulled it off brilliantly. Great novel
We have appearances from story lines in TOS, TNG, and DS9 plus the extended universe.
And they pulled it off brilliantly. Great novel
shereadsshedrinks's review against another edition
3.0
It's Star Trek, so on one hand yay! always yay! but really? Harry Mudd and Moriarty again? In the same story with resurrected Lal and Data? Really?
frakalot's review against another edition
5.0
Just fantastic. Yeah cheesy pun, but also true. The story is very good and brings in a host of unexpected familiars. I was obviously not the only one to consider Moriarty's fate when the Enterprise D was destroyed.
I'm sure that the disjointed timeline approach is a useful storytelling tool but I generally hate it and the use of it in this was my only qualm with The Light Fantastic.
I'm sure that the disjointed timeline approach is a useful storytelling tool but I generally hate it and the use of it in this was my only qualm with The Light Fantastic.
judenoseinabook's review against another edition
3.0
Enjoyable development of Data and Lal storyline. Moriaty re-surfaces, Geordie gets together with Leah Brahms plus what happened to the despicable Harry Mudd.
scarlettletters's review against another edition
4.0
I received this in a reddit exchange. Trek books are all over the map in terms of quality; I liked this one quite a bit. It had Geordi, Moriarty, a little bit of Barclay, the hologram doctor from Voyager... characters kept popping up. But what I really liked about it were the themes of parenthood. The main storyline involves Data and his daughter, but several other characters also make observations about it that I found very apt.
dreamwanderer's review
4.0
While not totally necessary it is helpful to read the STNG books 'Mortal Coil' and the 'Cold Equations' Trilogy before picking this up. Almost all of Star Trek re-launch books are interconnected these days.
A well-written story dealing with Data's quasi-return to life. Science Fiction characters never stay dead but they aren't really 'resurrected' either. He's not the Data we knew of old but he is changed but there is enough left of the familiar character to make us care. He has managed to bring back his daughter Lal which gives us an interesting look into their family dynamics.
The plot revolves around Moriarity. Remember him from the TNG episodes? He's back and in a big way. Other characters are here, Geordie, of course, Barclay. and even the Doctor from Voyager shows up.
The books leading up to this have been heavy dealing with serious subjects. While there is real peril in this story it is a nice change from the intrigue and darkness that we saw in The Typhon Pact and The Fall series.
Overall a good book.
A well-written story dealing with Data's quasi-return to life. Science Fiction characters never stay dead but they aren't really 'resurrected' either. He's not the Data we knew of old but he is changed but there is enough left of the familiar character to make us care. He has managed to bring back his daughter Lal which gives us an interesting look into their family dynamics.
The plot revolves around Moriarity. Remember him from the TNG episodes? He's back and in a big way. Other characters are here, Geordie, of course, Barclay. and even the Doctor from Voyager shows up.
The books leading up to this have been heavy dealing with serious subjects. While there is real peril in this story it is a nice change from the intrigue and darkness that we saw in The Typhon Pact and The Fall series.
Overall a good book.
brettt's review
1.0
Gene Roddenberry's different Star Trek series featured at least one character who sharpened the show's frequent pondering of the question, "What does it mean to be human?" In the original series, Leonard Nimoy's half-alien Spock was often the focal point of that kind of narrative, and in Star Trek: The Next Generation, the android Data took the role. This situation placed him at the center of many of the series' storylines, which was unfortunate because next to blunderkind Wesley Crusher, Data was the most annoying character on the show. The only positive development of the awful Star Trek: Nemesis movie was his death.
The different Trek novels, though, proved that in space no one can keep you dead, to riff off another franchise's tagline, and so a 2012 novel brought him back and allowed him to try to also resurrect his constructed daughter Lal. Data no longer serves with Starfleet, but instead tries to keep himself hidden so he can continue to explore his humanity and raise Lal. In The Light Fantastic, his secret is discovered by the hologram of Dr. James Moriarty, who had been tucked safely away inside a memory module since TNG's sixth season episode "Ship in a Bottle." Unfortunately, the destruction of the Enterprise-D in Star Trek Generations wiped out part of the memory cube and erased the daughters he and the Countess had, and he is now desperate to escape the data-storage reality for real reality so they can make real lives for themselves -- including, apparently, real children. Being as he is a villain, Moriarty has managed with tricks of technology and plot contrivance to kidnap Lal until Data provides him and his computer-generated paramour Countess Regina Bartholomew with real bodies.
Got all that? And we haven't even mentioned the appearance of original series character Harry Mudd and references to at least one other episode, as well as some one-and-done characters from TNG. The overwhelming level of continuity familiarity required is one of Light's major problems, although it brought several friends. Also troubling is that Lal's development presumes the adolescent illogic, tantrum-throwing and immaturity of 21st century suburban American youth to be a universal pattern. All of that continuity isn't put to any actual use beyond name-checking almost every artificial life-form Star Trek episode of note. And all of Lang's sympathetic descriptions of Moriarty and of his noble character overlook the fact that his original creator wrote him as an evil person. Sure, he's fictional, but he stepped onstage as a villain and not a Charming Misunderstood Anti-hero Awaiting the Right Circumstances to Show His Innate Nobility.
Light is a great example of a Trek novel written not simply as fan service, but as deep-weeds high-learning-curve meandering in the minutia in order to try to gin up some kind of point about something -- in this case, the precarious status of artificial life forms in the Federation universe -- and connect it to something in the real world. Though made and not born, they have been invested by the narrative with real feelings and dreams (and so are pretty much like every other character in every fictional narrative) and so they stand nobly awaiting the recognition of their agency and right to exist by their makers. We readers are meant to understand how important it is that we accept People We Don't Understand as well, in spite of how different they are.
But TNG had a whole series run to toss this question around with the character of Data, and it did so now and again despite his regularly exceeding the maximum allowed level of dilithium-powered annoyance. Lang's conglomeration of a bunch of the series' other artificial life forms adds nothing to that discussion, and it does so very confusingly. There isn't really a lot of light in this story at all, nor is it fantastic so much as it's, "Huh?" "Wha?" and "Meh."
Original may be found here.
The different Trek novels, though, proved that in space no one can keep you dead, to riff off another franchise's tagline, and so a 2012 novel brought him back and allowed him to try to also resurrect his constructed daughter Lal. Data no longer serves with Starfleet, but instead tries to keep himself hidden so he can continue to explore his humanity and raise Lal. In The Light Fantastic, his secret is discovered by the hologram of Dr. James Moriarty, who had been tucked safely away inside a memory module since TNG's sixth season episode "Ship in a Bottle." Unfortunately, the destruction of the Enterprise-D in Star Trek Generations wiped out part of the memory cube and erased the daughters he and the Countess had, and he is now desperate to escape the data-storage reality for real reality so they can make real lives for themselves -- including, apparently, real children. Being as he is a villain, Moriarty has managed with tricks of technology and plot contrivance to kidnap Lal until Data provides him and his computer-generated paramour Countess Regina Bartholomew with real bodies.
Got all that? And we haven't even mentioned the appearance of original series character Harry Mudd and references to at least one other episode, as well as some one-and-done characters from TNG. The overwhelming level of continuity familiarity required is one of Light's major problems, although it brought several friends. Also troubling is that Lal's development presumes the adolescent illogic, tantrum-throwing and immaturity of 21st century suburban American youth to be a universal pattern. All of that continuity isn't put to any actual use beyond name-checking almost every artificial life-form Star Trek episode of note. And all of Lang's sympathetic descriptions of Moriarty and of his noble character overlook the fact that his original creator wrote him as an evil person. Sure, he's fictional, but he stepped onstage as a villain and not a Charming Misunderstood Anti-hero Awaiting the Right Circumstances to Show His Innate Nobility.
Light is a great example of a Trek novel written not simply as fan service, but as deep-weeds high-learning-curve meandering in the minutia in order to try to gin up some kind of point about something -- in this case, the precarious status of artificial life forms in the Federation universe -- and connect it to something in the real world. Though made and not born, they have been invested by the narrative with real feelings and dreams (and so are pretty much like every other character in every fictional narrative) and so they stand nobly awaiting the recognition of their agency and right to exist by their makers. We readers are meant to understand how important it is that we accept People We Don't Understand as well, in spite of how different they are.
But TNG had a whole series run to toss this question around with the character of Data, and it did so now and again despite his regularly exceeding the maximum allowed level of dilithium-powered annoyance. Lang's conglomeration of a bunch of the series' other artificial life forms adds nothing to that discussion, and it does so very confusingly. There isn't really a lot of light in this story at all, nor is it fantastic so much as it's, "Huh?" "Wha?" and "Meh."
Original may be found here.
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