Star Trek: Voyager: Homecoming by Christie Golden - Review

One of the great ideas that you'll come across when exploring the world of Star Trek tie-in fiction is that of the relaunch novels. The concept is to continue telling the stories of your favourite Star Trek series; specifically the stories that take place after the series finale. What to know what happened to Picard and the Enterprise-D crew after the end credits of Star Trek Nemesis? There are plenty of books devoted to the idea. What happened to all the storylines that weren't wrapped up by DS9's "What We Leave Behind" and the new stories they teased? There's a novel series for that. 

In fact, there are multiples novel series for that. Several dozen books, plenty of multi-series crossovers, stories taking place with a focus outside of the Federation and other stories focusing on characters that only appear in a handful of episodes and were significantly more fleshed out in the novels. Honestly, it's a treasure trove of Trek goodness. It's big, messy, and complicated. Take a look at The Trek Collective's reading guide if you need convincing about my last point.

I imagine it's a glorious place for fans to get lost in. I say imagine because I haven't done a deep dive until now. It's a big place to explore and I've been attracted by the idea for so long. Alas, early years of parenthood have drastically reduced the number of hours I can devote to reading and the mental and emotional exhaustion of living in a global pandemic isn't helping either. That said, there's a wonderful community of Trek fans of Twitter, many of whom regularly post about the Trek novels they're reading, and I've found this encouraging. Since Voyager is the last series I finished, I started with the first Voyager relaunch novel: Homecoming by Christie Golden. 

Taking place immediately after the series finale, Golden attempts to do what the writers of the TV series weren't able to deliver in "Endgame". That is to show Voyager's arrival back to Earth, how the crew felt upon the successful completion of their long journey, and how the Federation reacted to their return. As a starting point for the relaunch series this makes a lot of sense. It's a big event and to gloss over it or jump forward until after the crew has settled in the Alpha Quadrant would have been a cheat. (Actually, I think this could work to grab your attention but ultimately I think you would have to tell flashback stories filling out what occurred between "Endgame" and whatever year you skipped to.) 

There's a lot to establish in this first novel as the characters spread out. It's a logical progression from their arrival back to Earth, but how it is a Voyager novel if nobody is together and the ship is nowhere in sight? Unfortunately, Homecoming doesn't really answer that question, but it makes an effort to establish the characters separately from one another. There is large cast of characters to work with and some appear much less than others and some have a harder time settling into their new lives. 

For Tom and B'Elanna it's relatively simple. Tom has his father with whom he is starting to reconcile with and while B'Elanna father is trying to do the same with her, she's focusing on her new family with Tom and their new daughter, Miral. Well, until she receives a message about her mother and (with Tom's blessing) leaves her husband and daughter to go investigate something from her mother's past. Her appearances in the book are limited, but Golden does a nice setup for future stories with B'Elanna while also grounding it in past episode the series. She does that particularly well, further exploring things that were introduced before without having her new story relying on the TV series to a debilitating degree. 

Unfortunately, she doesn't pull this off for all the characters. Another character that doesn't appear much is Tuvok. He also has a family to return to and it's done pretty early on in the book. After which we se very little of him. Unlike B'Elanna there's not much being setup for his character, though Golden does address a dangling thread from the series finale.

Surprising no one, Harry is also not very present in the story. Well, that's not entirely true. He's the subject of one of the storylines that Golden is weaving, but he's completely overshadowed by his former (and now new again) girlfriend Libby. I quite like Libby and she's got a lot of potential as a character, but Harry is a part of her story rather than being the hero of his own. If it wasn't for his poor treatment by the writers of Voyager I wouldn't have a problem with it. As it is, I can't help but feel that he's being used as a punching bag again. 

The last character who doesn't get much screen time (uh, page time?) is Chakotay. Golden quickly dispenses with the forced and ineffective romance between Chakotay and Seven, but after that's done, his story seems a little aimless. Golden uses him as a way to explore what happened to the Maquis during the Dominion War which is only partially successful. Voyager did so little with the Maquis throughout its seven seasons that its almost a little jarring to have this be a part of Chakotay's story in Homecoming. That's not Golden's fault however, because she is using a part of his character that was introduced in the TV series, but it seems odd because the series did so little with it. A few other things of note happen with him in the book, but again it's mostly setup for something else to take place in a later book. 

The remaining characters all have much more time spent on their stories, in part because they're so closely tied to the plot. Janeway reconnects with her ex-fiancée, Mark, and gets close with this family. Seven moves in with her aunt, Irene Hansen. Along the way she learns that she doesn't like the attention from the world and doesn't like her identity in the public mind being reduced to being the token former Borg from that ship that was lost in the Delta Quadrant. The Doctor suffers a bit of personal crisis and searches for a place to belong. He lives with Tom and Miral for a bit being super uncle, but is bored by it because it doesn't require much effort for him. 

So much of the book's plot is actually setup. It's Golden establishing the characters new identity and purpose off of the ship. It's something worth doing, but because their is a large cast and because a lot took place in the Alpha Quadrant during their absence, it takes a considerable number of pages for Golden to do it all. She's playing catch up for the characters while also laying groundwork for future stories. Only once this initial task has been completed do we get hit with the "real" plot: a Borg invasion unlike any seen before. A secondary plot, which may or may not be connected to the Borg invasion, is a rebellion for photonic beings. They are fighting for equality and their methods are getting increasingly disruptive to society as well as increasingly violent. Due to the nature of the events affecting Earth, Voyager's crew is involved, but their treatment by the Federation is less than friendly or collaborative. It's at this point in the narrative that the book abruptly ends.

Cover of the German edition 
of Homecoming.

That leads me directly into my main complaint about Homecoming. This is half a book. Some of the appeal of the relaunch series is that they'll continue telling a serialized story after the end of the TV series. This implies the possibility of storylines that will extend beyond a single book. That's exciting and I was expecting some of that in Homecoming. The intent with Homecoming was undoubtedly to launch (you could even say relaunh) Star Trek: Voyager in novel form. As such, Homecoming can be viewed as pilot. Perhaps not as a pilot of an original show, but let's say similar to the pilot of a spin-off series. In that respect Golden has a difficult job to do both by reintroducing familiar characters in an unfamiliar setting and hopefully manage to do it all while telling a compelling story. She does the first task well enough, even though I have some issues with some characters' stories, but the second is where she fails. 

Despite my expectation that Homecoming would likely introduce story elements that would be further explored in later books, I was taken aback at how distinctly cutoff and incomplete this book is. There's nothing in the title or the blurb on the back of the book telling me to expect part two. I don't even own The Farther Shore yet because I didn't think I would need to read it immediately after Homecoming simply to conclude the story started in that volume. The publisher, Pocket Books, could have dome something real simple to tell me that the first two novels of the Voyager relaunch series were closely tied together. Heck, at the time this book was published they had done it with Avatar, Book One and Avatar, Book Two, both written by S. D. Perry which was published just before Homecoming. Alternatively they could have made the first relaunch novel double the usual length, simultaneously giving it a special treatment while allowing Golden a more appropriate page count to succeed at her task.

You might be reading this thinking what's the big deal? There are plenty of examples of books where something like this takes place. Sure, there are, but they're, but none of the storylines introduced in this book end. Not a single one. That and the whiplash discovery that "the book ends here" both contributed to this feeling. I didn't like it one bit.

Honestly, that's a shame. While I'm not in love with what does occur in the book, I'm interested and looking forward to reading what Golden has planned with it all. I'm not crazy for any of the new characters in the book aside from Libby, mostly because aside from her they all seem pretty one-dimensional, but that's fine because the characters I want to read about are the Voyager crew. I even like some of the new directions Golden plots out for them. How does Seven's growth as a person change now that she's off the ship? I love Tom as a new father and would love more stories of him and Miral being the best dad and daughter combo around. That says a lot because I generally don't like him much. There is a lot of promise to B'Elanna's story and Janeway is primed to engage in some of her classic take-no-bullshit Janeway action in the next book. In short, I like what's being done with the characters but we get so little of it that it's not satisfying. 

In all, the book isn't a complete failure because I want to keep reading what Golden is writing. However, I'm not thrilled by the unoriginality of the plot (there's corruption in Starfleet and the Borg are invading!) and I feel cheated by what was likely a publishing decision to take a single book, cut it in half, and market them both as individual volumes. The result is that there's nothing satisfying about finishing Homecoming because there is so little in terms of a complete story that occurs. It's almost entirely setup, but setup without any payoff, not even short term payoff. I really hope that the second book The Farther Shore has some resolution or at least significant plot progression. It's an unfortunately weak start to the Voyager relaunch series.