Star Trek: Being Human (New Frontier #12) by Peter David

    I actually finished this one awhile ago and didn't get around to writing the review. Indeed, I actually read this and the sequel back to back so it's doubly problematic. Thankfully, though, that means I can do their reviews simultaneously. For those wondering what the long delay of about a year and four months was, it was due to my niece moving in. Which obviously disrupted a lot of my online time. However, I'm getting back to writing my Space Academy books so I might as well get these done since I'm definitely in a humorous space opera mood.

    This book introduces the revelation that Mark McHenry, the guy capable of flying a starship in his sleep, is actually a demigod. Indeed, he is the descendant of Apollo from Who Mourns Adonis?. Peter David has a fantastic love of TOS and makes the proper decision of attempting to weld the "Wild West" days of ST into the more stately and dignified TNG era to hilarious effect. It's part of why I love this series as I admit to being someone who enjoys the goofier side of Trek with all its whales, gangster planets, and more. People harp on the holodeck episode but I actually note it's when TNG was able to cut loose.

    Ironically, I think Being Human was when Peter David started to enter his "Dark Period" of New Frontier. The series lasted far longer than I expect he knew and probably was intended to potentially end with the destruction of the Excalibur way back when. Star Trek: Stargazer is one of my favorite Trek series but it only lasted five books with a couple of side-stories involving the cast as well as a much-appreciated coda in The Buried Age. Here, things kept going and that meant a lot of plotlines started getting traumatic and merciless. Seriously, the cast gets cut down like Post-Claremont X-men with less resurrection.

    As much as I love New Frontier, I can't say the Dark Period is my favorite part of the series as the characters start getting trimmed with the Reaper's scythe and often go through hellish circumstances to rival Miles O'Brien. In this case, the set ups for the deaths of Si Cwan, Morgan Primus, and more. The characters don't remain static in the New Frontier novels but the changes are going to be something that will put both them as well as the reader through the ringer.

    There's some questionable choices mythologically like the fact that McHenry's designated love interest (and abuser--which Peter David touches on tastefully) is Artemis, the Virgin Goddess. I think it was a weird choice and I think one of the other goddesses would have been a better choice like Aphrodite or even Athena (even though she is a virgin goddess as well--Ancient Greeks man).

    Oddly, my favorite part of the book was the Si Cwan parts after he accepts the help of the Danteri in rebuilding the Thallonian Empire. It was a bad idea, Calhoun knew it was a bad idea and Si Cwan knew it was a bad idea. However, Si Cwan is one of those characters I like ala Tyrion Lannister who thinks they're worse people than they are so they underestimate the level of stupidity as well as narcissism that makes evil people do things even against their own self-interest because pragmatism isn't actually a quality of the worst. Basically, Si Cwan can't comprehend the idea of giving up power to a master because toadying is antithetical to someone with genuine self-respect.

    Basically, you can't win the game of thrones by being smart because a lot of the people with power are just genuinely stupid. 

Available here