Book Information
Title: Greater Than the Sum
Published by: Star Trek
Publication Date: July 29 2008
ISBN-10 No: 1416571329
Greater Than the Sum Plot and Characters
In Greater Than the Sum, The Starship Rhea is investigating a carbon cluster when it comes under attack from the Einstein and, whilst most of the crew are killed or assimilated, Lieutenant T'Ryssa Chen is sent two thousand light years away to safety. It turns out that the cluster the Rhea was investigating is an entity that has slipstream technology (which enables objects and people to travel huge distances instantly) and the assimilated Einstein want the technology so they can re-establish communication with the Borg Collective in the Delta Quadrant. The Enterprise (with Chen on board) is sent to destroy the Einstein whatever the cost.
Captain Picard, La Forge, Beverly Crusher (now Mrs Picard), and Worf are all still on the Enterprise but unfortunately they are joined by the thoroughly irritating and instantly dislikeable T’Ryssa Chen (an average officer that has no place on the Federation’s flagship). The Borg also seem to have been largely forgotten as author Christopher L Bennett focuses mainly on the sex lives of the Enterprise crew.
This story continues from the previous two novels, Resistance and Before Dishonour, both books followed a single cube which was trying to make another Queen after Voyager killed the previous one in Endgame. in Resistance Picard (through his connection to the Borg) takes the Enterprise and disables the cube. The cube reactivates in Before Dishonour having gained the ability to simply absorb objects and people, and attacks Earth. Picard and Seven of Nine are able to destroy it leaving only an assimilated science ship, the Einstein,to fly off into space.
The End of The Next Generation
The void of space is where Bennett should have left the Einstein.
By bringing the assimilated ship back again for Greater Than the Sum Bennett continues the trend of having the Borg as the villains yet again. The Star Trek universe has so much diversity and so many alien species that Bennett could have taken this book in a new and original direction instead of just rehashing the Borg as the invulnerable comic-book villains.
Within moments of her introduction Bennett also makes the reader dislike T’Ryssa Chen. For no reason when her away team beam down so is thinking about the fact that she has slept with one of the other members of the team. She makes a joke and he doesn’t laugh, at which point she decides that he is now never going to see her naked again. It is that arrogance which immediately alienates her from the reader. Sex in Star Trek is always implied, no one is naive enough to assume the crews don’t have sex lives, but it is never so obviously dealt with. Chen seems to jump from bed to bed without caring who she is screwing and as an average Starfleet officer should not be on a ship famed for having the best of the best serving onboard.
Following on from the end of Voyager the Enterprise is equipped with transphasic torpedoes (weapons powerful enough to destroy a cube with one shot) but is forbidden by Starfleet to use them, because sooner or later the Borg will adapt. As the crew fight to destroy the Einstein and the audience will be shouting at Picard to just fire the torpedoes already.
Bennett's Greater Than the Sum seems to have missed the point of what Star Trek is supposed to be about, it is about exploration and charting the new frontier, not the crew humping one another. The Borg need to be left alone for a while because when done well they are unimaginably frightening (think First Contact) but when done badly (which has been happening increasingly often) they are robbed of their menace.
There is a galaxy (literally) of possibilities for a Star Trek novel. But all too often authors seem to just stay in their comfort zone and assume that a book with the Borg in it will instantly be as good as the film First Contact.
Verdict
Leave Greater than the Sum on the shelf and read something else.
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