The Eugenics Wars Vol. 2: The Rise and Fall of Khan Noonien Singh (Star Trek)

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Summary: Tired of overpriced hardback books
Review: This sould have been a paperback book. It was not interesting enough to be hardback!!

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Summary: STAR TREK: THE EUGENICS WARS
Review: I REALLY ENJOYED THE BOOK. THE WAY THAT MR. COX INTERWOVE READ LIVED EVENTS, WITH THE EVER EVOLVING WORLD OF STAR TREK WAS EXCEPTIONAL. KEEP YOUR EYES OPEN FOR CAMEOS AND INSIDE JOKES FROM THE SERIES, AS WELL AS RELATED MATTERS(REDJAC, GILLIAN TAYLOR, AND THE BIONIC WOMAN, JUST TO NAME A FEW).
JUST AS THE WORLD WE SEE IS NOT ALL IT APPEARS TO BE, THE BEHIND THE SCENES WORKINGS OF THE EUGENICS WAR, WHICH COULD HAVE CLANDESTINELY HAPPENED RIGHT UNDER OUR VERY NOSES, IS A FANCIFUL AND CREATIVE "WHAT IF" EXERCISE.
I HIGHLY RECOMMEND ANY TREK FAN TO PICK THIS BOOK UP. IT IS WELL WORTH THE READ!

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Summary: Audacious and Highly Entertaining
Review: Lightening can indeed strike twice in the same place, as "The Eugenics Wars: The Rise and Fall of Khan Noonien Singh, Volume Two" proves to be every bit as exciting, entertaining and humorous as the first Volume of this saga. The second portion of this engrossing story takes the reader from the beginnings of Khan's consolidation of his power, through the events that lead to his flight from Earth on the DY-100 class sleeper ship SS Botany Bay. From beginning to end, this novel is eminently satisfying.

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Summary: An exciting page-turner
Review: Have you ever wondered about the infamous Eugenics Wars of the late twentieth century in the Star Trek universe? Especially the genetic-superman Khan Noonien Singh's role in them. This story helps answer those questions and allows you to ask a few more, such as: What if we started manipulating our genetic makeup? Where would this tinkering end? Would it end?

This book follows the exploits of Khan, using our history as a link between fact and fiction. It serves as warning of the dangers of genetic engineering.

This novel is carefully and concisely written. It has a steady page-turning pace which keeps you entertained to the very end. I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in Khan Noonien Singh, the ethics of genetic engineering, or the history of the early-to-mid 1990s.

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Summary: Still Fun to Read
Review: This sequel is an enjoyable book and is a nice "back fill" of story from the ever-popular Khan of Star Trek: The Orignal Series and Star Trek 2: Wrath of Khan. Cox does a good job of fitting real world events into the little pieces of back story that were already known and making it all feel natural. What he doesn't do as well is work in the cultural references to try and set the timeline for the reader. Instead of feeling natural, his tendency to slip in references to Sharon Stone, Lorena Bobbitt and the like feel more like a mallet to the head. Ok, ok we get it--this is all happening in the 90s. The date at the beginning of the chapter made that clear as did the first seventeen little references you gave us.

I'm a Star Trek fan but haven't read many of the books, so I can't compare but I enjoyed the use of existing Star Trek lore, I liked the way real world events are woven in to account for the fact that all of this which was the "future" when the show was on, is now in fact our past without having to create everything from scratch. I could have just done with a few less Tonya Harding references.

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Summary: Disappointing Follow-Up
Review: As much as I enjoyed reading volume one of The Eugenics War, I disliked volume two. When you re-watch "Space Seed," Star Trek: First Contact, or even the recent "Augments" episodes of Enterprise, you get the impression that The Eugenics Wars were this great upheval, but that's not the case in this "historical" novel of Star Trek's past. The Eugenics Wars, as the author imagines it, was a shadowy behind-the-scenes conflict that only a select few humans even know about. That's makes just a bit of a let-down. I will give the author credit: he has done an admirable job of weaving real Earth history into the alternate hisotry of Star Trek, but that is also what makes this book disappointing. The characters remain strong, chief among them Khan, Gary Seven, and Roberta, but they can't raise up an otherwise disappointing story. Furthermore, as with the previous novel, the whole Kirk/Spock/McCoy sub-plot was a waste of time and totally un-necessary. I actually found myself skipping those parts in order to get back to the main story. While I'm glad Mr. Cox -- an otherwise good Star Trek writer -- took the time to fill in this "lost" piece of Star Trek history I just wish it could have been better.

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Summary: Not what I expected...
Review: Book 1 was quite plausible and enjoyable, as it was reasonable that the Star Trek timeline not diverge too much prior to 1989. But book 2, which was supposed to show Khan's meteoric rise to world fame and power and his equally sudden fall in just four short years, disappointed me.

I kept waiting, and waiting, and... waiting. I never did see the book explode into a cataclysmic battle where Khan cements his control over a quarter of the globe, establishing himself as dictator over almost two billion people, using biological weapons against his enemies and in general making himself very well-known to the populace as a feared leader, only to be brought down by a combined assault by all the nations which were not yet under Khan's control.

Instead, the Eugenics Wars is supposedly fought in and out of the real events of the 1990s, with shadowy battles with Gary Seven and his associates.

Sorry, but I really don't buy that. Like other reviewers, I know the difference between our timeline and the alternate one of Star Trek, and to see events written in "1992" that never really happened wouldn't throw me for a loop.

If Khan Singh were virtually unknown in the 1990s I have absolutely no idea how this could be reconciled with the knowledge that (a) he is a very vain, intelligent and self-important man and (b) such people do not skulk in corners creating a shadow Khanate through which pre-existing nations do his bidding while pretending to "really" be in control. I have to wonder if Greg Cox understood that his creation is about an alternate timeline, not our own.

Book 1: Leave alone.
Book 2: REWRITE. FROM SCRATCH.

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Summary: There's No War in This War
Review: When Star Trek originally aired, the millennium seemed infinitely far away. Trek writers liberally seasoned the late 20th century with tantalizing historical convulsions. As time goes by, however, we catch up with these events and disprove them. The hardest concept for Trek writers to grasp, it seems, is that Trek takes place not in the future, but in an alternate universe. This universe has its own timeline, including a 20th century that is similar to our own in many ways but also very different. For example, there is no Star Trek in the 20th century of the Trek universe. How could there be?

Unfortunately, Trek writers have a habit of trying to maintain Trek as some sort of extrapolated present, which necessitates ever more squashing and squeezing as Trek's own past becomes better established. Greg Cox, unwilling to accept that Trek's 1993 is not our own, recasts the Eugenics Wars as something that took place "under the radar," camouflaged by religious and ethnic strife around the world, such that no ordinary citizens were aware of it. To the greatest extent possible, Cox tries to render the events of his book as something that could have happened in our own world, while we weren't looking. The fact that this isn't, after all, possible doesn't bother him. He's forgetting what the point really was: This was not about the rise and fall of a single megalomaniac. It was about humanity's catastrophic flirtation with genetic engineering, and the reason such engineering is still banned in the Federation "today."

It's sad that the Trek franchise has felt it necessary to rewrite so much of its own established history, one that is every bit as exciting and complex as our own 20th century has been. From the depredations wrought by Voyager and Enterprise to this book, the universe of Trek has been rendered watery, inconsistent and uneventful. At this rate, we'll never get to World War III, let alone the invention of warp drive. At some point, we have to acknowledge that Trek is not about the future. It's just a story. And if the franchise is to survive as Paramount obviously hopes it will, they will either have to deal with that or allow it to balkanize into dozens of mutually incompatible individual storylines. I'm not holding out much hope.

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Summary: The Eugenics Wars Vol. 2
Review: Nothing about this novel makes any sense. None of its events fit at all with the history of this period talked about in "Space Seed." While it's true that records of that time were, by the 23rd century, fragmentary, it was still known that World War III happened. The "supermen" were known to the world, as was the DY-100 space ship. In this novel, where are the supermen who seize power? Where are the men and women Napoleon-like in ability and ambition? (Never mind that in Space Seed the Eugenics Wars were a result of selective breeding, not genetic engineering.) Trying to make invented Trek history fit in with true history was an effort doomed to failure. It doesn't work. It ruins the fantasy. Apart from these flaws, Cox also fills the book (as in volume one) with references to other Trek series. Shannon O'Donnell makes an appearance, as does Rain Robinson. The Kirk-era storyline seems, again as in volume one, tacked on and pointless (and uninteresting). (Even having Gary Seven in it doesn't make any sense, but that's really a complaint for the first book.)
Then there's Cox's writing style. His editor did a sloppy job, but admittedly didn't have a lot to work with. His writing is on the same level as that the average fan fiction writer.

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Summary: Another Star Trek Rewrite
Review: Part I of this series was quite entertaining, but this one isn't what I hoped for. It's another example of rewriting the Star Trek universe in a vain attempt to fit reality. It doesn't suprise me, because this novel fits perfectly into the philosophy of the new Trek series.
I gave it two stars because it did fit reality in a somewhat clever fashion, but as someone else already stated, it didn't happen this way.