I was not a huge fan of the Tasha Yar character on TNG. She seemed always a little bit over the top in some of her reactions on the bridge. I don't know, it's probably just me. I was only 8 years old when TNG first aired. I read this book to see if maybe I could see Yar in a new light, but nope, she's pretty much the same as she was on the show. If not more so. The story just seemed very by the numbers, if that makes sense. And Dares "ending" was for me to contrived and unbelievable. I missed the other members of the crew and and Data was off character to me. (I know this was an early story and the characters weren't fleshed out.) ( )

Jean Lorrah is two for three: I didn't love "The IDIC Epidemic," but I really liked "The Vulcan Academy Murders," and she's back on form again here. The idea of dashing space pirates, etc. is a rather TOS vision of Star Trek, but I don't mind it here because it's combined with some geopolitical ideas, and underpinned with a really loving examination of Data and Tasha Yar's relationship. (Of course it doesn't cohere with the backstory Tasha is given later, but whatever.) Is it perfect? No, because how could it be when all of Tasha's emotional experience has to get jammed in with an adventure story? I would want to read a whole novel just about her trauma and recovery. But in my opinion it makes gestures in the right direction.

You know, I've never seen "Legacy," the episode of The Next Generation where Tasha Yar's sister turns up, and we learn about the long-dead Tasha's backstory in more detail. Yet I have read Survivors, a TNG novel written during the first season (published during the second) that tells us about Tasha's childhood and early Starfleet career in great detail. In a bit of "head-canon," I suspect that even if I had seen "Legacy," I would still prefer this as the "true" backstory of Tasha Yar. Lorrah depicts the ideal Yar, the one TNG never actually gave us: a damaged woman from a damaged world, and thus someone who believes in the idealism of the Federation even more than those raised within it. The characterization of Tasha and also Data are really the book's strong points: I think Lorrah gets Data better than the show writers did at this point. (I really liked the touch that his rattling off of synonyms was a purposeful affectation.) You can see why Pocket commissioned Lorrah to write a Data-focused "giant novel" in Metamorphosis, because he just jumps off the page here, a perfect mixture of superintelligence and emotional inexperience. There's a lot else I could praise or say about this book, but suffice it to say that it's the best kind of tie-in fiction-- a story we couldn't have gotten on screen, but fitting in perfectly with the ones we did.

Describes Tasha Yar's childhood on a post-apocalyptic planet! Much darker and grittier than most Next Gen novels. ( )

A much better story for Tasha Yar than what they gave on the show. ( )