Battlestar Galactica by Jeffrey A. Carver Summary and Reviews
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Book Reviews of Battlestar Galactica
Book Review: A bland, emotionless reading...
Summary: 2 Stars
I wasn't expecting much... and that's what I got. As a rule, I find that most abridged readings are stale and uninteresting. However, I really dig BSG so I thought I'd give this one a shot. I didn't care for it very much. It told the story... it got the details right. However, it seemed to me that Jonathan Davis was just going through the motions and wasn't putting any emotion behind the words. This performance was significantly bit less than stellar. I didn't hate it... but it's priced low for a reason.Book Review: Pretty good Novelization
Summary: 4 Stars
The novelization of "Battlestar Galactica" by Jeffery Carver is a pretty good one. Mr. Carver does a very good job in his visualization of many of the battle scenes. While this novelization does not offer the reader many extra or deleted scenes, he does give the reader good insight to several characters. Overall this novelization very good. Book Review: Nothing New
Summary: 1 Stars
There is nothing in this novelization that is not in the miniseries on dvd. Novelizations are only interesting if they contain deleted scenes, or some background material from the screenplay that was not filmed, or (occasionally) new information created by the author to flesh out the story. This does none of that.Book Review: entertaining rendition
Summary: 4 Stars
The Cylons were created by humanity to improve mankind's life in the Twelve Colonies, but were transformed into killing weapons of mass destruction until they decided to destroy anything human. For the next decade, humanity warred against their creation with the loser eradicated from the Twelve Colonies. No one won and a truce occurs; the Cylons leave the sector. After one scheduled meeting in year one of the "peace", the Cylons vanished never to be heard from again until now thirty-nine years later.
In that interim, the Cylons have devoted their energy to their prime objective: destroy humanity! Their plan is clever as a new generation of Cylons has been created who look and act like humans not metal monstrosities whose design was totally based on form not aesthetics. Their new assault from within proves successful with only one human warship left after a massive attack. The Battlestar Galactica was about to be turned into a museum while Commander William Adama was retiring, but instead he must rally humanity against a stronger amoral adversary whose genocide objective seems certain to occur.
Action-packed, this novelization of the latest Battlestar Galactica tale is a fun story for fans of the series. Cylons are portrayed too often as loquacious boasters explaining their genocide plans instead of just cold bloodedly killing machines; thus the tale loses some of its potency as it feels like a TV adaptation with four degrees of Star Wars. Still within that limiting context, Jeffrey A. Carver displays his writing talent as he makes the Twelve Colonies and the key humans and Cylons seem real. The Battlestar audience will want to enlist in the war of survival as Mr. Carver provides an entertaining rendition.
Book Review: Remember that this book is based on the Miniseries - not the series itself
Summary: 5 Stars
cwldm "cwldm" who wrote the review `Less than the original' (and who only gave this book 2 stars) would have you believe that the use of the word 'God' in this book is an oversight on the part of the author, due to the fact that the religion of the Colonials is polytheistic in nature and the word used should be 'gods'.
However, if the reviewer were a true fan of the show, he/she would realise that the opposing religious views of the Cylons and Colonials was not actually officially introduced until Season One. If you watch the Miniseries, you will see that the word 'God' is used several times (by Cylons and Colonials alike) and the word 'gods' does not appear at all.
In fact, the only slight reference to polytheism in the Miniseries is to the 'Lords of Kobol', and Ron D. Moore himself has admitted that at that point, the Lords of Kobol were only going to be historical figures in Colonial history (like the saints in Catholicism) and not any sort of deities.
There are other aspects of the Miniseries which were changed in actual series in order to make more sense (i.e. changing the Astral Queen from a freighter to a prison transport and changing the number of prisoners from 500 to 5,000), and is to be expected.
In short, it is the job of the author to write a book that is true to the specific subject material, in this case, the Miniseries. In this, I believe that Jeffrey Carver has done his job, and done it well (hence the five stars).
It is not however, the job of the author to attempt to fill in every plot-hole, contradiction and continuity error made by the show's creator's. And considering the fact that most books based on television series are never truly considered to be `canon' by either the fans or the powers that be, any changes made by the author would be futile, as the 'official version' (the Miniseries) despite being contradicted later, will always be considered to be the `correct version`.
The Miniseries is the starting point for every other story about the Galactica, and it makes sense therefore, that the first book Tor would release would be a novel of the Miniseries. Anyone who has not seen the Miniseries in a while should get this book before reading any other Galactica novels (released in the latter half of 2006), if only to serve as a reminder of the events that led to the situation in which the Galactica now finds itself.