Fire Ship

Star Trek: The Captain's Table #4

by Diane Carey

There's a bar called "The Captain's Table, " where those who have commanded mighty vessels of every shape and era can meet, relax, and share a friendly drink or two with others of their calling. Sometimes a brawl may break out but it's all in the family, more or less. Just remember, the first round of drinks is always paid for with a story...even in the Delta Quadrant.
A sudden attack separates Captain Kathryn Janeway from her ship and crew. Soon she is rescued -- but not by "Voyager." Alone aboard an alien vessel, Janeway finds herself in the middle of a war she cannot yet understand. She must quickly learn the ways of this new culture and work her way back to captain if she is to protect her new allies from the war that only she knows is coming. Without her ship, all her quick wits and Starfleet experience may not be quite enough to save the Delta Quadrant from war.

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

274 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published July 1, 1998

About the author

Diane Carey also wrote the Distress Call 911 young adult series under the name D.L. Carey.

Diane Carey is primarily a science fiction author best known for her work in the Star Trek franchise. She has been the lead-off writer for two Star Trek spin-off book series: Star Trek The Next Generation with Star Trek: Ghost Ship, and the novelization of the Star Trek: Enterprise pilot, Broken Bow.

For more information, please see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diane_Carey

Reviews

[Alejandro · Rating 2 out of 5]

I think that in this fourth novel of the book event The Captain's Table from the franchise Star Trek, the author, Diane Carey, choose an odd plot for this particular book event. Just like in the case of the book with Captain Picard. In this novel, Captain Kathryn Janeway got separated from her ship and crew and almost the entire tale she is like that. So, while it's a good premise that she is trapped in an alien ship and she must survive on her own, my expectation for a story about Janeway in this event was to be on the captain's chair in command of her ship and crew. Also, the story isn't so good, so this didn't help to increase the reading experience of this novel.

[Adam · Rating 1 out of 5]

The one star is generous.

I am so disappointed and dismayed.

The initial pages were intriguing and I enjoyed reading the scene of the bar. However, my alarm bells began to ring the moment Kathryn Janeway started to talk. The characterisation was puzzling. It felt like the author had never watched a Star Trek: Voyager episode before. It makes it all the more perplexing when you realise that the author is Diane Carey! How on earth could she get this novel so wrong!? Especially as she has written a Janeway backstory novel that was just incredible. The cynic in me says that someone else wrote this and she put her name on it.

The story was mundane at best. A truly weird choice for a novel, especially for Janeway to deal with. Then again, I can only assume that an alien had taken her form and tried to act like her - that’s the only way to explain the truly awful portrayal of one of my favourite fictional characters.

I know this may sound as though I am being precious and ‘not my star trek’ but I really think this is just a bad book.

Such a shame.

[Erica · Rating 5 out of 5]

I first read this book 2 ½ years ago and loved it. When I recently decided that it was time to reread it it was in part because how Janeway's strength in this story inspires me, and as I'm going through some tough times I needed to read this story once again.

Here you can read my first review that was published on Amazon in 2015:

Captain Janeway is my favorite character in Star Trek: Voyager, and I love to read stories that are centered around her. In this story she ends up at the somewhat mysterious Captain's Table where she gets to tell a story from her life as a captain. She tells the story about when she was off ship with another captain from a people, the Iscoy, that Voyager had met. Suddenly the Iscoy are attacked and Janeway is sure she saw a warp core explosion at the space dock where Voyager was. With the other captain dead and with Voyager presumably destroyed Janeway was on her own. Injured, she crawled into an escape pod and is later rescued by a ship commanded by a captain named Quen from a people she's never seen before. Not only does this crew have issues with women serving in space, although they welcome her until they can drop her off somewhere else, they strongly believe in working your way up and doesn't want to take advantage of her knowledge. So she gets to be the equivalent of a deck swab even though she's sure that whoever destroyed Voyager and the Iscoy space dock is coming there, too...

In the beginning of the book I was a little skeptical as to how I would deal with the Captain's Table being such a mysterious place and how I would feel about a book being written in a first person point of view. But my skepticism soon faded and I fell in love with the book. With the story being told. That it was written in a first person point of view as if it were Janeway's own words turned out to be only a positive thing. It was like being inside her head and to try and fully grasp what she experienced and felt during this time. The story she told was one that really got to me. It inspired me. It shows the strength that Janeway has in a whole new light. In this story she's truly on her own. She doesn't have her crew to back her up, in fact she even thinks her crew is dead and that the hope of ever seeing them or the Alpha Quadrant again is forever gone. Due to that we get to read about a whole new side to Janeway that we haven't seen before. Once again am I reminded of why this amazing character inspires me so much. I love this book!

[P.C. Haring · Rating 2 out of 5]

Frustrating....

There is a certain conceit with this series of novels - Because it's in the first person, the storyteller must have been successful. That's fine. I'll buy that. But at the same time it becomes so easy for the author to take advantage of our knowledge of that conceit.

The entire premise of the novel centers on Janeway being separated from Voyager. It's not a huge spoiler... happens in the first few pages of her story that she re-tells at the Captains table. However due to circumstances, Janeway comes to believe that she is the sole survivor of Voyager's destruction.

And what follows is the most frustrating Star Trek tie in novel I have ever read. We know that Janeway and Voayger have to be reunited. But because she believes her ship is gone, the reader spends the majority of this slowly paced, plodding novel wanting to reach through the pages and yell at her to GO FIND YOUR SHIP!!!

And of course, because Janeway isn't looking for her ship... the only way they can be reunited is by her ship finding her... leaving us to wait... and wait... and wait... until the author decides the story is over and the predictable reunion can finally happen.

If that isn't frustrating enough, the author's characterization of Janeway is...inconsistent at best with the character we've seen on the series, to the point where I wanted to reach through the pages, and shake Janeway to wake her the hell up.

I can not reccomend this book. If you're like me and want to read the entire Captains table series, go ahead. It isn't horrible. But be prepared to be frustrated.

[Jae · Rating 2 out of 5]

I've enjoyed Diane Carey's writing before but this isn't her at her best. Janeway's voice felt very off—she came across as frantic and socially clueless instead of smart, level-headed, and strong. Also a minor irk was that Carey kept referring to Janeway as having had an engineering background as opposed to her well-established career in the science and command divisions. Despite this, the actual story is mostly good and the alien cultures she creates for the story are excellent.

[Elizabeth Perez · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really didn't like the start of this one, I thought it was going to be a DNF but after reading a few reviews I gave it another chapter and it just snowballed from ok to amazing.

So for this first time the cover represents the book pretty well, it is al about Janeway. There is a conflict Janeway sees Voyager blow-up and then rescued by aliens. Janeway is a deckhand for good portion of the book and I love her insights! There were so many great parts, I have enjoyed books by Diane Carey before but this one takes the cake. I think this will be in my top 5 maybe top 3 favorite Star Trek Voyager books.

I've always wanted to know how the enlisted would get along and how they would live ect... and I think this book finally did the trick for me. A ship can not get by with out the 'lower deck' personnel so this was a nice glance at day to day life AND how it is probably not horrible.

My favorite part is the last two sentences of chapter 24, just heartwarming!

[Daniel · Rating 2 out of 5]

This entry into the Captain's Table miniseries of Star Trek novels has a few good things going for it. First, Carey chooses to isolate Janeway in the plot from the other members of Voyager's crew, thereby focusing solely on the captain and not getting bogged down with B-plots with other established characters. In contrast to some of the other previous books, she also stays close to the story, not the act of Janeway 'telling the story' in the bar. The previous novel in the series, with Sisko fell far into this trap, leaving bar scenes that felt more relevant and engaging than the actual 'tale'.

Carey also writes this with what has been the most compelling plot yet in the miniseries, and some aliens as a threat who are actually fascinating in their social motivations for antagonism. However, the novel falters in a rather prolonged adjustment of Janeway to life aboard another ship. She oddly accepts her situation too easily and the friendly aliens are too perfectly designed as a balance between being accommodating to Janeway, and being mistrustful. The ending falls together far too easily, with predictable Starfleet superiority.

[Craig · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was an odd book. I found it hard to get into at first but once I accepted that I was reading another Diane Carey novel I just had to go with it. I found a lot of things to enjoy like the culture and idea of the Warranters and their society, the Menace and their problems and how Janeway had to adapt to life on the ship. The flaws, however, are where I tripped up and made it harder to read. It's a Diane Carey novel and she has her own writing, this novel is SUPPOSED to be in Janeway's words but this novel fell into the pitfall of what I feared about the Captain's Table series and that's just changing the voice of the story from the third person to the first person. Sometimes it worked but other times it did not, can you imagine Janeway telling a story and going "pew-pew!"?...yeah. This book does little with the Captain's Table setting and it ignored from the beginning all the way to the end of the story. I guess the patrons that always interrupt had already left... Neat idea and interesting enough story, it just couldn't get over the hurdles of Carey's poor writing to be a better book.

[Phillip · Rating 1 out of 5]

As a story in and of itself, this works. As a Captain Katherine Janeway story - this one has quite a few problems. I know the author enjoys sailing, but I think she lets her love of ships and how they work overtake telling a Star Trek tale. This is also a "Star Trek: Voyager" book that ... features no one from Voyager, except Janeway. And then ... this Janeway acts very little like the captain we saw for seven years. I've never heard Janeway accuse anything of having "moxie," calling people "baby," and referring to her crew as "boys." Also, I've never heard her say "oh hell no!" There are times when the book takes way too long to explain technology and procedures, and then will just skip scenes and have battles happen off scene. I just don't believe Janeway would act they way she did in this book, so I'd say hard pass on this one for Star Trek fans.

[Mikael Kuoppala · Rating 2 out of 5]

I like Janeway immensly, but in this book her characterization is way off. She comes across as a paper thin stereotype with a very narrow and not horribly cerebral view on life. She definitely is not a scientist or a diplomat in this one. Furthermore Carey's bold choice of narrational style doesn't really work, making the novel hard to get a grip of.

[Stasia Bruhn · Rating 1 out of 5]

I tried to like this book but halfway through I just got bored, majorly bored....Plus Janeway just didn't sound like herself..I don't know something was off about this book to me..Mosaic is a better choice if U want to read about Janeway....

[Sandra Cassidy · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of my favourite Star Trek Books!! Can read it again and again!! Xx

[Rose]

So very, very slow -- and way too much telling over showing. I've liked some of Carey's other works; this one just didn't quite do it for me.

[Tommy Verhaegen · Rating 3 out of 5]

The fourth book in the series, this time told by captain Kathryn Janeway. Author Diane Carey didn't bother much about the concept of the "Captain's Table". It is fairly obvious that she had the story ready and just added an introduction and a couple of pages at the end to make it fit in the series. The concept has further no influence on the story at all, not has it an added value.
Add to that the fact that Janeway is rather egocentric and not very likeable and it seems clear why this is not the best story in the series.
The idea is excellent though: Voyager is destroyed (ok, every Trekkie knows that that will be ok in the end!) and only Janeway survives and wakes up in a completely different wolrd as she used to know.
She has to start at the bottom, once accepted, as a starship crew member and work her way up in the rankd. And that in an all-male society. The way she manages to gain the thrust of her crew-members, surge through the ranks and become captain is quite unbelievable though. The completely alien technology on the other hand is well found and both fun and intriguing to read about.
The fate of the enemy, unlimited breeding for survival, presents a warning for our own planet. As in Africa and Asia people are breeding at an incredible rate, populiation is multiplying while there is not room nor food for them. Their solution (since they oppose for political and religious reasons contraception) is to invade the better off and less populated regions of Earth, being Europe, destroying the welfare there in the process as well and generally heading towards a worldwide catastrophe.
The miracle solution of Janeway will not be applicable here, sadly enough.

[Octavia Cade · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is the best of the Captain's Table miniseries that I've read so far - though I think I'm only about halfway through it at this point. Still, Janeway's my favourite Trek character so I was looking forward to this one especially, and it's a great character study of her. Interestingly, she's pretty much the only Voyager character in this, apart from little bits at the beginning and the end - given this book takes place in the Delta Quadrant, I wasn't expecting that. But with Voyager apparently destroyed, Janeway is rescued from an escape pod and taken in by an alien crew who are struggling with challenges of their own.

I liked the character work here, as I said, and I liked the alien crew - their culture is very clearly different from Janeway's but they're generally compassionate and thoughtful people. The antagonists here were slightly less successful: Carey has devised a culture that is both heartbreaking and desperately cruel, but their lack of focus on the biological sciences makes no credible sense, I'm afraid, given their situation. Still, I enjoyed it.

[Jessica Edmonds · Rating 2 out of 5]

This should never have been in The Captain’s Table series. Every preceding book split the narrative between the bar environment and the story’s flashback. It really feels like this was an unrelated book they just grabbed because they needed a Janeway story. The Captain’s Table is only briefly mentioned at the beginning and very end of this book. And what’s worse, it’s not a great book. It’s not written in Janeway’s voice. And I don’t know who this character is but it’s definitely not Janeway. I just couldn’t even force myself to imagine Janeway’s voice while reading this. And her actions were completely out of character. I was so excited when I got to Janeway’s novel in the series and this was such a let down.

[Daniel Kukwa · Rating 4 out of 5]

It has two strikes against it: (1) The Captain's Table is a linking plot thread that just doesn't work for me, and (2) it's a novel supposedly set in later series continuity but clearly behaving like a season 1 story. Those caveats aside, it's easily the best of this series, as (1) it might be early Janeway, but Diane Carey clearly loves and respects early Janeway and goes to town with her character development, and (2) the creation of an alien environment -- and a Starfleet officer forced to learn on the fly in this environment -- is first rate work, and much better than in other Trek novels. So we'll call this a win.

[Kevin · Rating 5 out of 5]

In this story, Janeway finds herself in an escape pod, separated from Voyager and the space dock it’s attached to. They come under attack and she thinks both are destroyed. She is picked up by an alien race who are a couple steps lower on the space faring scale. She works herself from low person on the totem pole to the captaincy in rather short order. As captain of the vessel she tries to help them win a war. In the final battle Voyager shows up unexpectedly and saves the day. Definitely recommended

[Fayd Eaton · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is not my captain. Kathryn Janeway is not the woman in this book. The first part of the book is cool...this bar only for captain is really a good idea. But the story told by Capt. Janeway is really boring. She does not sound like herself. No spoiler here but also the end is really bad written. Anyway this is a Janeway-centric book. The Voyager crew is just in a few pages.

[Diana · Rating 3 out of 5]

Decent story overall, but the characterization of Janeway was very different from how she was in the show. Janeway would never just abandon her crew to stay with an alien race?! That was ridiculous. I found it hard to believe that Voyager wouldn't have looked for Janeway after the explosion either. Also, it was weird that the rest of the crew wasn't in most of the book.

[Levy Mclaurin · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved this book and the plot behind it. I have to admit though, I would have loved a story more voyager centric especially if it’s a story being brought to the captains table.

Overall great characters and great story, but you can’t go wrong with Kay!

[Sean Randall · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was a really fabulous story. Exciting, dramatic, unusual in terms of setting (when is a warp culture not a warp culture, and all that). So I really loved it, found it captivating – but the internal voice was just so not Janeway. So a mixed bag, and no mistake.

[Aaron Eichler · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was an interesting story. I am not sure what season it is supposed to be in. I know it is after season 4 because of Seven. Janeway had to go through great sorrow basically alone even on a ship of many crew on what was basically a sailing ship in space. I love how she finally got home.

[Rei Smoak · Rating 2 out of 5]

I wish I'd liked this book. Janeway is one of my favorite characters, and Diane Carey has written some great Trek stories. Sadly this just wasn't one of them. The language was clunky, the plot was a series of contrivances, and the end was very deus ex machina-esque. Very disappointing overall.

[Chiara · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not one of the better Trek releated books I ever read. And I really LOVE Voyager and Captain Janeeway. Perhaps that is my problem.

[Tiffany · Rating 3 out of 5]

At least it was short

[Erika Gliszinski]

I'm starting with "Book 4". Not sure if it matters....

[Cathy Bowyer · Rating 5 out of 5]

BABY YOU GOT MOXIE

[Jeff Muñiz · Rating 3 out of 5]

While I enjoyed it, it was not as good as the previous ones in the series. The story telling from the bar is more integrated in the previous books. In this one it seems more of an after thought to get "The Captains Table" into the story.

[David · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was most surprised with the prose of the first chapter! I have read many StarTrek novels by Diane Carey & I've always liked them but the opening chapter seemed much better than any other book of hers I've read!

I read the book in a total state of confusion - not knowing whether she was telling a "tall story" at the "Captain's Table" or whether this was a real experience she had gone through! Even in the closing page I wasn't 100% sure!!!

I was amazed at her (Diane Carey) ability to create a whole new class of technology! I can't remember ever having read a book where so much detail is given to a new form of technology.

I've given the book 4 stars instead of five because of the uncertainty through out the book that this was a real experience or a tale she was inventing as she told her story.

January 29th 2012,

I've just finished reading this book, for the 2nd time, before I send it off to a Bookmooch member but I can't say my understanding of the story has changed from my comments above.

My initial impressions have not been modified by the 2nd reading.