When Riker talks to the main witness, we read that the man “sat back and considered the question, summoning up memories of the events a few weeks past.” A few weeks past? I thought the second murder had just happened! How can it have taken place weeks ago? Why wasn’t it reported at the time? If these questions were explained in the book’s text, I missed them. I expected him to arrive at a crime scene, but instead we read about a calm farm. Here’s just one example: about 100 pages into book one, a second murder is reported and Riker is sent to investigate. Sometimes there were apparent contradictions or discrepancies in the writing that I couldn’t figure out. There were several times reading these books when I had to stop and flip back a few pages to make sure I understood what was happening. That’s not necessarily bad, but the books were sometimes choppy and hard to understand. It’s interesting to read a Star Trek novel written in something different from the usual “house” style. And he often summarized parts of conversations or other events, rather than taking the reader through those scenes in full. For example, Mr Greenberg seemed to favor shorter scenes, with his chapters often jumping quickly from one character/location to another. Greenberg’s writing style felt different to me than many/most other Pocket Books Trek novels.

These books were, I think, the shortest books in the series. It was a delight to read these two novels which he’d written!

Greenberg regularly wrote/“hosted” the letters page, which I always loved reading. I have warm memories of those comics (most especially Peter David’s long run on the main Star Trek series), and Mr. Robert Greenberger has written a variety of Star Trek projects over the years, but he is best known to me as the editor of DC Comics’ wonderful Star Trek comic book series in the eighties/nineties. ( Click here for my review of books 1 and 2: A Time to be Born and A Time to Die, by John Vornholt, and click here for my review of books 3 and 4: A Time to Sow and A Time to Harvest, by Dayton Ward & Kevin Dilmore.) I’ve gone back to read, for the first time, the nine-book “A Time To…” saga of Star Trek novels published in 2004, designed to bridge the gap between Star Trek: Insurrection and Star Trek: Nemesis, the last of the TNG movies. Star Trek: A Time to Love and A Time to Hate

A Time to Love by Robert Greenberger