It’s been nearly two decades since the last Star Trek: The Next Generation novel set during the seven-season run of the television series hit bookshelves — 2003’s Do Comets Dream? — and this month, we finally return to the voyages of the Enterprise-D with a brand new name to the Trek literary lineup.
Author Cassandra Rose Clarke makes her Star Trek debut in this month’s Shadows Have Offended, a story set during the final season of the television voyages.
Structured like a classic Next Generation episode, with clear A-plot and B-plot storylines focusing on different members of the crew, Shadows Have Offended has a little bit of everything between its covers: mystery, science, action, adventure… and Lwaxana Troi.
The release timing of this book could not have been better as vacation season arrives, as Shadows Have Offended makes a great beach read.
Is it particularly dense? No. Is it particularly profound? Not really. But is it an engaging, episodic novel that lets you revisit some of your favorite characters at the height of when you loved them? Yes, it absolutely is.
While an away team consisting of Commander Riker, Dr. Crusher, and Lt. Commander Data surveys an uninhabited M-class world for potential colonization, Captain Picard, Counselor Troi, and Lt. Worf find themselves participating in an arts festival on Betazed. Neither routine mission goes as planned, requiring both Crusher and Troi to step forward and assume a prominent role in each groups’ storyline.
The release materials for Shadows Have Offended have focused on the book being a Crusher and Troi-focused novel — even though Worf takes up the novel’s cover — and while it is certainly true that those two characters get the most attention from the story, nearly all of the Next Generation regulars get a decent part to play.
Crusher’s side of the story is an intriguing medical mystery, as members of the planetary survey team (Data included) begin experiencing unexplained symptoms indicating some kind of infection. The resolution to this story is suitably Star Trek, though the final twist occurred to me long before it did to the characters — making the narrative a bit frustrating as they struggled to catch up to what I’d already figured out.
To say more on the Crusher storyline would get into spoiler territory, but I did enjoy the characterization of Crusher in this book, even if her involvement in the novel helped move the plot forward, rather than do much to explore her relationships with the rest of the crew or provide much room for character growth.
Meanwhile, the Betazed story is a fun one, which includes some nice exploration of the telepathic species’ culture and history. The race has been somewhat neglected outside of novels like Imzadi and The Battle of Betazed (the latter of which takes place in the post-TNG Dominion War era), so it was a nice change of pace to spend some time with the telepathic species.
Clarke does a nice job of extrapolating from what we’ve seen on screen of Betazoid culture, and even comes up with an interesting explanation for why Lwaxana’s Sacred Chalice of Riix can also be charitably referred to by Deanna Troi as a “moldy old pot.”
There are also some nice scenes between Picard and Lwaxana Troi, which go a little deeper than the surface relationship we see depicted in the show — the starship captain thankfully gets more to do here than just spending his time being thoroughly exasperated by the elder Troi.
Given that Shadows Have Offended is a TNG Season 7 story, the novel also spends time exploring the early days of Troi’s short-lived (and often forgotten) relationship with Lt. Worf. The two characters spend a lot of time together over the course of the story, which allows for some exploration of Troi’s feelings towards the Klingon as he has the opportunity to command the Enterprise in service of Betazed’s security.
If you are looking for a read that replicates the feel of a late-season The Next Generation episode, and if you’re looking for an easy read this summer, Shadows Have Offended will fit the bill quite nicely.
It is extremely nice to see that after many years of the same rotating roster of familiar names, Simon & Schuster has begun expanding the talent pool for Star Trek novels, and particularly that they are including more diverse authors into the lineup.
With Alex White’s Deep Space Nine novel Revenant following in just a few months, here’s hoping 2022 will continue along this path, introducing us to new voices adding to the Trek literary library.
Star Trek: The Next Generation — Shadows Have Offended is in stores and available from online retailers now.