With the train wreck that was The Farther Shore, one had to wonder about the continuation of the Star Trek: Voyager series. With Spirit Walk: Old Wounds, would Christie Golden be able to recover from it, or would she continue to wallow in overly emotional characterization and romance novel elements that permeated that book (and, to a lesser and more tolerable extent, Homecoming)? Golden is finally able to create her own characters and take the familiar Voyager characters into uncharted waters. Unfortunately, she falls more into the latter category than the former, and the book really suffers for it.

Chakotay has been named captain of the starship Voyager, and his first mission is to ferry a bunch of colonists who had abandoned their colony in the Cardassian demilitarized zone back to the planet. It seems that nothing has been heard of the colony for a while now, and the colonists are eager to find out what happened and to return to their people now that the Cardassians are defeated. With some old faces and some new, Chakotay must form a cohesive crew and discover the secret of what happened to the colony. His sister, Sekaya, is also along on the mission as a spirit guide to the colonists (though no good reason is given for this, because while they ask for a guide and say they are a spiritual people, they don't appear to really do much with it). Meanwhile, Admiral Janeway is trying to forestall a mass exodus of planets from the Federation after the recently completed Dominion War. Unfortunately, that appears like it will be harder than it looks, despite the cordial relations she fosters with one of the planetary leaders.

I have four words for you: Harry Kim, Security Chief. With this jaw-dropping development, a lot of the believability of the novel just flies out the window. Why Chakotay would choose Kim to be his security chief when Kim has not only not shown any desire to be in security before, but he has a truly appalling naivete even up toward the end of the series. This is not a man I would want taking charge of security. He certainly deserves a promotion, but a new position as well? What makes matters worse is that Kim is the only recognizable face that Chakotay takes with him on Voyager (the only other main character who served on the ship during the series is Lyssa Campbell, but she's also a creation from one of Golden's previous books and never actually appeared on television). Thus, we are given a brand new crew for the most part, forcing us to trust in Golden's characterization skills to get to know the new people.

Unfortunately, that doesn't go over too well. Kaz, the medical officer, is from the previous two books and gets a bit more development here. However, he treads old ground like it was new, as he's a Trill that wasn't meant to be joined with a symbiont but had to because there was no other host available. We've seen this before in Ezri Dax, and only the circumstances have changed. He's not a bland character, but the constant references to Grandak, his symbiont's previous host, started getting annoying. He enlists the help of the new ship's counselor in dealing with the problem of the previous host coming to the forefront.

Which brings me to Astall. She is a Huanni, a race introduced in Golden's The Last Roundup. The Huanni are overly emotional beings who have been absorbed into the Federation and have made wonderful counselors. What Astall makes, however, is a really annoying character. Her emotions are all over the place, and she shows little of the competence that I complimented Golden on in The Last Roundup. Instead, Astall's emotions take over. She's very affectionate to everybody, giving hugs in inappropriate places and tearing up at odd times for no apparent reason. She got on my nerves in almost every scene she was in.

The rest of the introduced characters are rather bland, though there is an indication that one of them will not be so bland in the future. The problem with this is that we now get into another bad aspect of this book, which is the overly emotional writing. The character in question, Lieutenant Tare, suffered a personal assault when she was a prisoner of vicious holograms in The Farther Shore, and it's deeply affecting her. Not much is done with it in Old Wounds, but I foresee a very melodramatic subplot at some point coming up. I don't really see why this would be such a stigma in the Trek universe that we've been presented with, but for some reason she's keeping it a secret from as many people as possible. In our time? Sure. But not in the 24th century.

In addition to romance novel subplots, we have our share of romance novel plotting and writing as well. The Libby Webber storyline just has to go. It's completely unrealistic, and her relationship with Harry is also grates on the nerves, as we get the standard "oh, I can't marry you because I have a secret that I must keep from you" plot. Give me a break. She is not a believable Starfleet Intelligence agent and I roll my eyes every time she's "on screen." As for the writing, here's an example:

"She closed her eyes and leaned forward, giving the honor of her first kiss to this sweet boy she had loved all her life, who pressed his lips to hers with at first a kind of hesitant awe, then with increasing passion, not dreamy and distant from her, not any more..." pg 208-209

I believe "trite" is the right word for it.

Finally, there is the attempt to shoehorn every Voyager character into the story, despite the fact that the story has nothing to do with them. The Doctor and Seven of Nine have a few scenes together that do not further the plot at all and don't even further much of their own story either. There's no reason for these scenes to be in there other than to pad out an already sparse book. Large typeface and a short book make for a story that *really* should have been combined into one book.

There's not enough space to go into everything else that's wrong with this book, but there is lots. I already have the second book, so I'll be finishing the series, but unless it's a major step up, this will be the last. I do like these characters, despite the weaknesses of the television show, but this novel series is doing them a disservice. It's predictable (anybody who can't guess one of the major villains of the story is not paying attention) and it's poorly written. On to book two!