Carmen Carter: The Devil’s Heart
A Star Trek: TNG book.
Publication year: 1993
Format: print
Page count: 309
Publisher: Pocket Books
This book tells the tale of a powerful artifact which has influenced people and through them entire cultures, before Federation was formed. Throughout history the Devil’s Heart has journeyed from Iconia to Kronos to Vulcan and other planets, as well. Now, a Vulcan archeologist thinks that she’s found it but her obsession has made most other Vulcans shun her.
Enterprise-D receives a distress call from the archeology site. But when they get there, all the members are dead. Messages left behind blame the archeologist herself. Apparently Bendii’s syndrome affected her and made her kill all her companions. But Beverly Crusher finds out that someone else has killed the Vulcans. Picard pursues the murderers but only finds the husks of two starships. From one of them he finds an ancient stone, the artifact itself.
Meanwhile, people all around the galaxy want the stone for themselves. These people range from the last of the Iconians to renegade Klingons and scheming Ferengi. They’re willing to kill everyone on their path to get the Devil’s Heart for themselves.
This was a very interesting idea. However, the result is quite a scattered book. It has many point-of-view characters all over the galaxy. Most of the TNG crew got at least a brief POV section or two but Picard is the clear main character. In fact, completely new characters got more page time than most of the crew.
Picard develops a strong bond with the artifact and when he sleeps, the stone sends him flashes of history from various cultures. Most of the glimpses to the other, early histories of various species were fascinating. However, I didn’t really realize just how similar these early histories were, violent and oppressive.
Overall, this was an interesting read but quite scattered.
Publication year: 1993
Format: print
Page count: 309
Publisher: Pocket Books
This book tells the tale of a powerful artifact which has influenced people and through them entire cultures, before Federation was formed. Throughout history the Devil’s Heart has journeyed from Iconia to Kronos to Vulcan and other planets, as well. Now, a Vulcan archeologist thinks that she’s found it but her obsession has made most other Vulcans shun her.
Enterprise-D receives a distress call from the archeology site. But when they get there, all the members are dead. Messages left behind blame the archeologist herself. Apparently Bendii’s syndrome affected her and made her kill all her companions. But Beverly Crusher finds out that someone else has killed the Vulcans. Picard pursues the murderers but only finds the husks of two starships. From one of them he finds an ancient stone, the artifact itself.
Meanwhile, people all around the galaxy want the stone for themselves. These people range from the last of the Iconians to renegade Klingons and scheming Ferengi. They’re willing to kill everyone on their path to get the Devil’s Heart for themselves.
This was a very interesting idea. However, the result is quite a scattered book. It has many point-of-view characters all over the galaxy. Most of the TNG crew got at least a brief POV section or two but Picard is the clear main character. In fact, completely new characters got more page time than most of the crew.
Picard develops a strong bond with the artifact and when he sleeps, the stone sends him flashes of history from various cultures. Most of the glimpses to the other, early histories of various species were fascinating. However, I didn’t really realize just how similar these early histories were, violent and oppressive.
Overall, this was an interesting read but quite scattered.