String Theory: Evolution (STAR TREK, VOYAGER) String Theory

Star Trek Voyager: String Theory #3

by Heather Jarman

ENTANGLED STRANDS OF PAST AND PRESENT ENDANGER THE FUTURE

A wake of destruction and loss threatens the U.S.S. Voyager ™ as Chakotay assumes command. Grief over Janeway's impending death coupled with anxiety brought on by the disappearance of Paris, Kim, and the Doctor forces the crew to take increasingly dangerous actions in order to assure their own survival.

But Voyager doesn't fight alone: behind the lines, powerful forces have allied to give the starship aid. Toward this end, a familiar nemesis -- the cosmic meddler Q -- sends Paris and Kim on a perilous journey. Elsewhere, the Doctor, trapped in a dimension alien to human understanding, reunites with an old friend to help secure the fates of those he's left behind.

Yet the conflict raging in the Monorhan system is merely a surface manifestation of more serious turmoil; the true struggle is rooted in the universe's very foundation. Standing at the eye of this maelstrom is Voyager, whose crew may hold the fate of all.

Genres: Star Trek, Star Trek Voyager, Science Fiction, Fiction, Ebooks, Media Tie In, Novels

400 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2006

Reviews

[Alejandro · Rating 4 out of 5]

The String Theory trilogy comes to an end!


This is the third book in a trilogy titled “String Theory”, celebrating the 10th Anniversary of “Star Trek: Voyager” (in 2005), each book written by a different author. The whole story is set after events of the TV Fourth Season Finale (“Hope and Fear”) but before the events of the TV Fifth Season Premiere (“Night”) of the original run of the “Star Trek” Spin-off TV series.


CHOICE AND CHANCE

The crew of USS Voyager never has been so fragmented and wounded!

A key member is brain dead! Another is trapped in another dimension! And other two are stranded!

The remaining crew of the Voyager will need to get the better of its lower ranks to fill the huge void provoked by the absence of four senior staff, along with making anything possible to make its family a whole again!

The secret about the Monorhan System is out!

And the whole existence in the universe is risk!

Any choice causes consequences, that its outcome can be altered by chance. A constant about the mechanics of the balance in the universe, along with other dimensions.

And now is clear that Captain Janeway should leave alone the Monorhan System!

The consequences of the actions of the USS Voyager at the Monorhan System isn’t only affecting the future of the Nacene, but also is coming to the attention of higher powers, since the very fabrics of existence and reality are in risk to be no more, and while maybe humanity is too insignificant to realize the gravity of its actions…

…superior beings definitely will be affected in the long term of things.

Surprising and priceless appearances of very dear characters!

This isn’t just another literary event…

…this is the Tenth Anniversary Event of Star Trek: Voyager!!!

[Cupcakencorset · Rating 3 out of 5]

A good read, but I don't like the plot device of using Q to give the crew the help they need to get themselves out of their messes. It's too deus-ex-machina for me. After all, when I see Q in the story, my immediate thought is that he could just fix everything himself, if he wanted to, rendering all of the crew's struggles to date insignificant. I mean, Q could just zap the ship back to the Alpha Quadrant, which would have ended the whole series pretty quickly. Introducing Q into this branch of the Star Trek saga undermines the premise of the "hopelessness" of Voyager's situation. And this three-book series would have been better if the author had found a better way (i.e., a non-Q way) to resolve it.

[Fiona · Rating 3 out of 5]

Partly I would give this book only 2 stars. It just took so long to get me interested. Maybe that's because the story is mainly about Ocampa which never really interested me and Q - whom I find quite annoying - and the parts playing on the planet are more like Fantasy than Science Fiction. So not really the perfect book for me, but of course I wanted to finish the book series. Towards the end it was definitely gripping and that's what it got 3 stars for, but for me it was the weakest of the three String Theory books.

[Mikael Kuoppala · Rating 3 out of 5]

After Jeffrey Lang’s a simple but perfectly crafted opening “Cohesion” and Kirsten Beyer’s brilliantly constructed and beautifully written epic “Fusion,” Heather Jarman closes the String Theory show with “Evolution,” a peculiarly uneven mix of three mismatching storylines.

One third of the novel is excellent. This is the storyline that most clearly stems from the previous two books. Set onboard Voyager, it continues to explore Seven’s integration into the crew as well as the subtly deepening depression of B’Elanna which we know from the TV series escalated into suicidal behavior soon after these novels. Additionally, we have Chakotay dealing with the responsibility of command while Janeway lies dying in sickbay. Chakotay’s story mirrors his role as captain in post-TV-series Voyager fiction, of which Kirsten Beyer is currently (and thankfully) in charge of. One could argue that the Voyager storyline utilizes excessive angst, but all the desperation seems fitting in the context of the story.

Then we have a bizarre-in-a-really-bad-way storyline that picks up immediately from the wonderfully mind-twisting cliffhanger of “Fusion”. This thread follows Paris and Kim on a mission in the Q-continuum. Our heroes are accompanied by some of our beloved Q characters that are poorly used in the story. A few original characters are introduced, all of them hollow and unfocused.

Here Jarman utilizes a completely different style of writing. Her prose reads like Michael Moorcock on his very words day, completely nonsensical, lacking in aesthetics and tone. I absolutely love surrealism, and the Q continuum has offered some truly wonderful pieces of surrealist literature in Trek lore, but here it’s played for infantile laughs and behavior that rings completely off-character for the two protagonists.

On a third front Jarman has the Doctor on a mission in an Occampa of the past, during a time when the race is just about to be forced underground by climate change. This storyline is presented as a pseudo fantasy tale utilizing the psionic qualities of the Ocampa arbitrarily. The prose is again different, but this time it’s just simply unprofessional. Clumsy sentences follow each other, the style varying chaotically, the rhythm nowhere to be seen. On top of this the actual story is again quite weak in its disinteresting predictabilities and awkward melodrama.

What we get from all of this is a schizophrenic novel. It almost seems as if Jarman has written a beautiful ending to the String Theory saga and randomly mixed in two really bad pieces of fan fiction from her childhood without sufficient prosaic updates.

In her grand finale, Jarman brings all the intriguing storylines of the trilogy together adequately and even manages to find some closure to her two nonsensical storylines. The ending of the novel is actually quite smartly constructed, even if the author’s prose keeps on being really poor through many of her scenes.

“Evolution” ends up being better than the sum of its parts, though. It’s often painfully frustrating to read because of bad writing, but at times it moves, compels and asks valid questions. If only Jarman had decided to take a different direction, we might have a perfect trilogy of Voyager fiction. Now we have two perfect books and one adequate one to end it all and leave a bland aftertaste.

[Sharon · Rating 3 out of 5]

Evolution is the final book in the String Theory trilogy.

The Doctor is the main focus of this part of the story. He is flung into the weird subspace dimension where he takes a revealing journey which answers more questions about the Ocampa. Tom and Harry have an an adventure with Q and q. Chakotay is in charge of Voyager as Janeway lies in a coma.

This book was a hard for me to get through. I like the character of the Doctor very much but I found his chapters were over long and too involved. There was too much time spent in his head. I got bored with it and found myself skimming through them. The parts on Voyager were not as exciting as they had been in the first two books. The Paris/Harry/q chapters were fun and while I've never been a big fan of Q I found I enjoyed those parts most of all.

This trilogy goes a long way in tying up loose ends left over from the series. Kes' later behavior is explained and so are Captain Janeway's mood swings. It is an epic story which I think every Voyager fan should read. Just keep in mind that some of the descriptive passages are a bit more in depth than most readers are used to but the overall story is worth the read.

[Nicolas · Rating 1 out of 5]

Right off the bat, let me just say I hate it when they switch writers within a trilogy. The style changes, the characterization changes and the focus shifts. It's a bad idea. The most disappointing part of this book was that I actually enjoyed the first two in the series. By the time I got to this turd I was already two books into the story, so I had to suffer through the rest of this book. It couldn't be helped. Anyway, there were too many seperate storylines; too much focus on bland, original characters... just too much. The author tried to throw so many different things in this book that even the interesting plotlines were trimmed down to fit everything in. It resulted in a crowded, uneven Voyager novel and an unsatisfying, "Well I'm glad everything's okay, guys" conclusion to an otherwise decent series. My advice: Skip this series. The first two are fun, but not worth the anticlimactic climax.

[Daniel · Rating 4 out of 5]

Evoloution completes the Star Trek: Voyager String Theory trilogy of books. This series sets up the fourth season and tries to explain the tonal shift of Voyager at this point. Evolution completes the Nacene story with a little help from Q, q, and Kes. In fact, seeing what eventually happens to Kes is worth the time it takes to read the book. Moreover, the story elements on Ocampa are also quite good as well. One of my favorite sections involves q (Lower case, not a graduate of Q U) where she, Tom, and Harry are all trying to fix the unraveling universe in a nightclub and casino. If you thought the female Q was fun to watch, q is a bit more interesting and, frankly, I would love to see more of her. Despite all this, the various story threads seem a bit too much, with the author hopping from one narrative to the next all the time. In the end, the book is pretty good but journey is a bit indirect. The last 20 pages or so are well worth the price of admission.

[Jimyanni · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book is the conclusion to a three-book series, so don't start reading it if you haven't read the first two books of the series; it won't make much sense. Then again, since it involves the Voyager crew in conflict with hundreds of hyper-powered beings any one of whom could swat them like flies, and they survive the experience anyway (because of some help from OTHER hyper-powered beings, admittedly) it doesn't make much sense anyway. It's too well-written to rate below two stars,but the story itself is barely worth one. Unless you are, like me, determined to read all Star Trek stories, give this whole trilogy a pass. It really isn't worth the time or the money.

[Randy · Rating 2 out of 5]

The trilogy ends with a dud. Two of the three story lines were unbearably boring. Snooze fest.

[Austin · Rating 2 out of 5]

(This is a third version of this review. Nothing has been removed, things have been added that, in my fervor to rate this poorly, I forgot about or did not expand on)

I had to bring this book to work with me so I could finish it and go home to read something better. I truly hate to be this person and this kind of fan, but did Heather Jarman ever watch full seasons of Voyager? Even an episode?

So many of the characters are not what they are like in the show, let alone in the other two books of this trilogy; Chakotay begins as a resentful jerk towards Tuvok, B’Elanna (even when there is an entire novel in this trilogy centered around her) becomes nearly all about her relationship with Tom that it eclipses most everything else about her and what other character’s perceptions are about her, Harry is painted as a doormat for an inter dimensional being who he creeps on when they are first introduced. The only characters POVs I found remotely interesting was the Doctor’s, both Nacene, and occasionally Kes (who, I have to admit, did have the best story after being introduced). Others simply faded into the background.

Specifically regarding B’Elanna and Tom’s relationship: this could be a personal feeling, but I enjoy when the two are equally obsessed with each other. I think it is too often that a strong woman is presented in media, given a love interest, and then her importance or individuality is dumbed down to either be “all about the man” or simply just there. Meanwhile, the man could give two shits if she lives or dies. That is what so many of they shared plot line is: B’Elanna has whole points of view that are so focused on finding Tom and if Tom is all right and if she would ever see Tom again, while in Tom’s perspective, he has maybe a paragraph that subtly mentions “Hey, I have a relationship with B’Elanna.” There is more focus on the race scene and the gambling when we see through his eyes that there is about B’Elanna. And then, at the very end of the novel, Tom can sense something is different and wrong with her, and he does NOTHING! B’Elanna breaks her arm and flat out refuses to fix it before Tom has to threaten her with embarrassment, and all this Tom Paris (because this is not the same Tom Paris who nearly sabotaged his chances in a race just to propose to B’Elanna and nearly fought his pregnant wife when she tried to alter their child’s DNA) can think is, “Damn, that was crazy. Sex was good though.” He goes back to writing a holonovel (but makes sure to include how sexy B’Elanna would be in role he’s considering putting in there). I understand that this book has to somehow fit canonically into what happens, and I know that the struggle of B’Elanna’s mental health in the wake of the Maquis being destroyed is a very big story leading into the season these novels are meant to be set before, but if you spend nearly 400 pages essentially saying this woman’s life would be nothing without this man, end it happily. That is quite literally all I ask of you.

I thank the lord that Kirsten Beyer incapacitated Janeway at the end of her novel. I think if I had to read whatever storyline Heather Jarman concocted for the best Starfleet captain we’ve seen, I would go insane. But it still doesn’t protect her! Janeway is saved by the Keeper of the Light, but has her memories removed/locked away for good, or else what she experienced would actually kill her. To help, he wipes Naomi Wildman’s mind (because apparently the incredibly mature six year old can’t be trusted to keep a secret, but Neelix can) is wiped as well and everyone else is sworn to secrecy. I’m sorry, but this is truly unnecessary. Voyager constantly had storylines where everyone forgot something that happened because of time stream tampering, and it was received to mixed reviews, but at least that made even a modicum of sense more than, “We’re hiding this from the captain and all of Starfleet, shh!” Jarman makes sure to include references that more than one character FREQUENTLY REMEMBERS these events. In an attempt to make sure “everything works in canon” a truly ridiculous and unnecessary detail was added for, what I can only assume, is Jarman’s attempt at distinction.

Additionally, Jarman writes a story and culture that I do not think is Star Trek. There are more than one instance where characters we know not be closed minded say some borderline xenophobic things regarding some of the species they interact with (Chakotay sweepingly generalizes many of the Monorhans for a one off villain from the first novel when he was the man who defended the changed Monorhans on the station, Tom describing a member of a species he does not know as being a “low-life malcontent” as he and Harry pal around with a Q who casually brushed off calling the two her slaves and being shitty to said member of species) that turned me off. This doesn’t even begin to include the odd line that essentially makes all Ocampan white or the suspiciously anti-abortion line she has Tuvok think to himself.

Finally, and this is truly a personal and nitpicky thing; stop calling it a gash. I could not take it serious.

In her acknowledgments, Jarman says she was heavily supported by Kirsten Beyer, “who did everything short of co-writing the book.” I think, if that is the case, Beyer should have written the book herself. I am not saying that Beyer’s writing is perfect and without fault; I have my own criticisms of it, even with my love of her Voyager Relaunched series, but I still think she could have done this story justice better than Jarman.

[Harry Hol · Rating 2 out of 5]

Unfortunately I didn't enjoy this final part of the trilogy as much as I did the previous instalments. In my opinion there are several things wrong with the book. First and foremost, it relies too much on what's arguably the worst part of Voyager: technobabble.

There's just too much nonsense to explain the motivations of the villain. And to make things worse, for a trilogy called 'String Theory', the actual String Theory plays as much a part in the story as 'gravity monsters' play a part in me falling on my face.

It's almost like someone pitched the title and someone with no knowledge of the actual theory was asked to 'do something with that because it sounds cool'.

I can kind of get past the fact that there is a LOT wrong with the basic physics of this book. But it even breaks with established Trek-physics to make an essential plot event possible.

But let's not get bogged down in my fanboyish nitpicking. The most important problem is that the events in this concluding book don't add up to a satisfying finale. The final resolution doesn't seem to need any of the Voyager crew to play itself out. And any attempts to make them seem relevant to the plot feel forced.

This doesn't mean the entire experience is bad. I enjoyed the obvious fanservice. Most of the characters are well written and in line with Voyager cannon (with the exception of Harry Kim, who's nothing more than an unfortunate walking hormone in this book).

There are some touching moments, and Q is making a fun appearance.

I just wished there had been a more cohesive and more character driven conclusion to what started out with two very fun Voyager books.

Two and a half stars, tops.

[Sarah · Rating 5 out of 5]

"What is it about home that continually pulls us back?"

Chance and choice forever entwined as an ugly, juicy, and complicated thought I'll be chewing on for a while. I don't understand the appeal of gambling but a cosmic Vegas for celestial beings to gamble away planets, stars and nebulae.... That Q is banned from... Yes. Harry falling for yet another unattainable woman is probably my favorite Trek trope. IT GIVES ME LIFE!! The Doctor having a nice lesson about humility is always comforting because that mans ego drives me up a wall. Tom Paris being Tom Paris. But for real B'Elanna's sexuality is "meet me in the pit" which totally means that when q was finished with Harry she totally stoped by for fun times with the hellcat and her pilot. I WILL NOT BE CONVINCED OTHERWISE!! Remembering both B'Elanna and Kathryn's future mental health spirals gotta appreciate the little details.

By no means perfect but it gave me what I wanted and needed so I can't complain. And it did more for me than the first 2 so really really can't complain.

[Carina · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ahh, Q. My favourite Star Trek guest star (though I'm not a huge fan of Picard series 2...), Q's appearance in this book was enjoyable from start to finish, even if his use felt a tad... convenient at times.

Talking of convenience, the ending here felt *very* convenient, especially with the whole Janeway will be fine provided no one ever speaks of these events again. It felt like the author was trying to make up for poor writing for Janeway in the show.

Talking of show writing, I loved B'Elanna throughout this series, but this book especially. The series does a good job of explaining her ... depression(?) in series 5, but this book certainly fills in some gaps about it.

A lot of the plot elements here did escape me, but less than in book 2, but it's also not quite on par with book 1. That said I did enjoy this and I'm pleased this trilogy formed the last books I'm reading in 2022.

[Brenda · Rating 2 out of 5]

For me, this book was divided into three main sections: the fantasy genre section with Kes and the Doctor, the casino section with Tom, Harry, and Q, and the worried ship section with a large company of alien refugees on board. I didn't enjoy any section and had a hard time understanding or visualizing all of the abstractions about things like weaving strings of life force, and what the Q can and cannot do due to "chance and choice." I also had no real picture of the aliens or the Doctor's new body in mind. But worst of all, when we crawled into the heads of the characters, they didn't seem like the characters I had grown to love. But the dialog was decent, and it felt good to conclude the trilogy with some focus on Seven of Nine and B'Elanna again.

[Amy Tudor · Rating 4 out of 5]

A solid ending which fits so well into where the series was at this point. Although I struggled with some of the concepts in this, and often got a bit lost in some of it, it was solid and a great conclusion to the three part story. I enjoyed Tom and Harry's adventures with the Q in particular and my P/T shipper heart was grateful for their thoughts of each other throughout (Although I am disappointed we didn't get a reuniting scene). Janeway was barely in this book at all - which did allow some more time for Chakotay so was interesting to see how he managed to lead the crew. Overall a good 3 parter which kept my interest.

[Fate's Lady · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book was terrible. the characters acted like caricatures of themselves, sometimes shifting entirely into behaviors or language patterns that are just completely wrong. The plot went in ridiculous directions, the entire thing was basically solved by super powered beings, rendering most of the cast's actions irrelevant, and to top it off, there's a line about how Janeway will be emotionally erratic forevermore. Uh, say what now? This whole trilogy was sort of a mess, but this book is by far the worst.

[Diana · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 stars.
Overall, I just felt like this book had too many plotlines going, with not enough of the Voyager characters being at the forefront. The story was hard to follow at times, and it was unclear where it was going and why the different plotlines mattered. Janeway was not in the book at all until the last chapter, though there were a few sweet moments of Chakotay staying by her side. She tried to tie in some plot points from other episodes, like why they are in the void in Night and why Kes came back so angry in Fury. I think those worked okay. Just not super impressed with this one.

[Josephine · Rating 3 out of 5]

Too long. The first book was ok, the 2nd book was quite interesting, and this one required a lot of skimming through unnecessary detail. Really this trilogy could have been one long book preferably written by the author of the 2nd book.

/*spoiler alert*/

It was nice to see someone in the story line who had left the ship (and know more abt what happened to her) so I did enjoy that a lot.

[omiczech · Rating 2 out of 5]

Lehce překombinovaný fanfic.

[Christina Farr-Thompson · Rating 2 out of 5]

the first and the second one was amazing. I felt this was a poor final chapter. The plot line kind lags and drawn out.

[Melvin Lance]

Enjoyable.

[Jamie · Rating 3 out of 5]

What?

I found this book to be very odd. Parts of this felt more like Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy than Star Trek.

[Steven Shinder · Rating 4 out of 5]

Thought I'd read all the Q-centric books, but apparently not.

[Rocky Sunico · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's the last book in this little trilogy and wow we're all over the place. It was already strange that the Doctor got sucked into another reality that was somehow "magnetic" to photonic energy, but then the story adds in time travel, Qs (plural!), and even more things. Then there's the fun fact that Janeway is out of action for most of the book as well, so the crew have to figure things out on their own.

I do appreciate the general direction of this trilogy to give us more backstory for the Nacene. I wasn't expecting the level of detail to get super crazy specific, but I guess that's par for the course for this sort of thing. It's fun in its own right but it does go to rather extreme lengths to tell all the stories it wants to cover.

[Shannon · Rating 3 out of 5]

I kept asking myself, "Self, when do you think Q will finally show up in this series?"

Low and behold, he finally made an appearance. It's been almost two weeks since I've finished this book, and I wish I could say I remembered most of the finale. But then again, I was never really fond of Kes to begin with. I could not wait for this shit to be over with.

It's not written badly, it's okay. I think it might be better than the second book, but I honestly can't remember.

I had the ePub version of the book and it was annoying. This was the first book that annoyed me with letter spacing. I'm not sure if the paperback or other versions featured unfinished quotes, misspelled words, and italicizedSpacinglike this.

This book did happen to feature a lot from the underdogs of the crew, what with Janeway being out of the picture for the most part. I did like the doctor's interaction with the past, so long as it left Kes out of it.

I guess I was happy with the ending. I didn't quite understand the last part, but neither did I care.

[Beth · Rating 3 out of 5]

While the story itself was ok, I could have done without a lot of the extraneous science-type stuff. Chakotay has to assume command of Voyager due to Janeway's impending death, while Tom, Harry and The Doctor have disappeared. Each of these latter three have their own sections throughout, during which the cosmic meddler known as Q makes an appearance, as well as an old friend. I had figured out who that might be as soon as The Doctor was sent to a specific planet a thousand years in the past, to try to stop what was happening in the current time line. This was book 3 of a trilogy and IMNSHO could easily have been told in two books.

[Kirsten · Rating 3 out of 5]

Fairly action-packed, and a good conclusion to the trilogy! Great use of existing characters and history (love how much they tied in the Ocampa), and some nice character development. And I couldn't help but giggle at the author's reference to Janeway's seemingly bipolar tendencies...

[Angela · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Doctor is lost in the rift. Q helps out Harry and Tom. This is a fun conclusion to the trilogy. The Q bits were delightful and I really liked the Doctors time in Ocampas' past. The other character storylines are ok, but I found myself wanted to read about the Doctor or Tom. A very good read.

[Tonya · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great story. Pretty good conclusion to the string theory story. I love anything Voyager!

[blue · Rating 3 out of 5]

is this book even real