Book Review: ‘A Time to Harvest’ by Dayton Ward & Kevin Dilmore

August 10, 2021 at 5:21 am | Posted in Books, Reviews, Sci-Fi, Star Trek | Leave a comment
Tags: a time to, dayton ward, kevin dilmore

Star Trek: A Time to Harvest is the fourth book in the A Time to Series, produced by Pocket Books at Simon and Schuster, written by Dayton Ward and Kevin Dilmore, and released in May of 2004.

This book is a significant step up for Dayton Ward and Kevin Dilmore. I thought their previous book A Time to Sow was incredibly dull and boring. This book started out that way, and I was worried it would have the same issues. However, the second half of this book was amazing, and thus elevated the whole story for me. 

This book really doesn’t have much of a singular focus like the previous novels have. Dr. Crusher and Captain Picard probably have the most viewpoint chapters in the book, but certainly every main character had enough viewpoint chapters to make the book feel balanced. This book felt like a longer version of a Next Generation episode than the previous books had.

While this book draws heavily from The Next Generation episode “Conundrum”, I found that it actually reminded me more of the Voyager episode “Scientific Method”. The villains in the previous book were too unknown and not fleshed out, whereas here they were understandable. I had to look up their species to remind myself of what they were, but the authors’ descriptions worked well enough if you don’t have the time to go to Memory Alpha. 

Perhaps the best part of this book is the action and the suspense. Throughout the second half of the book, crewmen are constantly being killed or revealed as members of the villain race, and it kept me excited throughout. The authors were able to provide virtually every main character with a scene where they uncovered a spy in their midst, and it was interesting seeing their reactions. 

There were several weak portions of this book. I’ve said it in my previous reviews, but these duologies for this series really should have just been one big book. Because of the way that they are formatted, the first book usually ends poorly and the second book starts poorly. I have no doubt that David Mack’s books will be great, but this series could definitely have been better produced.

Another problem that this book has is that I didn’t know or care for the crewmen who were killed or kidnapped or impersonated. Ward and Dilmore should have included some scenes at the beginning of this book or the previous book where these side characters are bonding or playing cards or something, which would have endeared the reader to them. Because that didn’t happen, it didn’t matter that these unknown characters were dying. It just felt like destruction fatigue. 

Overall, this was a much better book than its predecessor. However, this series has yet to have truly great books, and I’m hopeful that that changes in the future. I give this book A Time to Harvest a 3 out of 5.

My next review will be a deviation from my usual schedule. I will be reviewing John Jackson Miller’s upcoming Star Trek novel Rogue Elements.

Reviewed By: Jonathan Koan for Roqoo Depot.