Harper, 1997, $5.99, ISBN 0-06-105682-0, 276 pgs.

If William Shatner and James Doohan can get folks to ghostwrite novels, so can Michael "Worf" Dorn. Oddly enough, Dorn's name is on the cover, but the other two authors are not.

It's not a bad novel, but neither does it make me want to rush out and see if there's a sequel.

Archaeologist Tony Miller, investigating statues on a Pacific Island, New Tahiti, suddenly finds himself in the middle of an alien war over the Earth's environment. Meanwhile, a tear in subspace--oops, sorry for the Star Trek analogy--sends him into the equivalent of the Bermuda Triangle. Egyptian punk rockers, Japanese samurai, island villagers, Celtic druids, and others collide in a mish-mash of plot.

Somewhere in there is an Artifact that needs delivering. Now, you'd think that if aliens were smart enough to corrupt time and space, they'd be smart enough to figure out how to move the artifact themselves. Alas, they need Tony, and sure enough, he has only a 14% chance of success. Thank you Mr. Data.

The sad part is that after finishing the novel, the ending is a non-ending. I suppose it's to make you yearn for the sequel. Well, I suspect I'll find it in the same place I found this one -- a discount bin...not that I'm going to be looking.

This article appears in MagWeb (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web.
Other military history articles and gaming articles are available at http://www.magweb.com