| Review : |
No wonder the devil is such a cranky guy. Evidently he lost his heart eons ago... and a whole bunch of moderately-interesting people have been fondling it ever since. Okay, so the titular heart doesn't actually belong to THE devil, but... it does get passed around quite a lot--and not surprisingly, the ancient and all-powerful artifact of lore ultimately makes its way to the Enterprise where... well... not a lot happens. In an effort to expound upon the history of the heart, a fair amount of space is devoted to its prior keepers. These passages, though exquisitely written, ultimately do little to advance the plot because they don't really tell us anything we don't already know. In fact, it smells a bit like filler--though there ARE a few interesting tidbits here and there. Then again... there isn't really much of a plot to advance. Once the heart lands aboard the Enterprise, Picard makes a descent into senility while taking the heart back to Vulcan. Sure there is some generic Romulan activity to make things interesting, and the Iconians make an appearance too, but everything unfolds at such an incredibly SLOW pace that watching paint dry almost seems exciting. Still, the characters are generally spot-on, the writing is well above the norm for a Star Trek book, and despite the dreadful pace, the story is satisfactory. Thus, 'The Devil's Heart' claws its way to a 3 out of 5. |
