THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF KATHRYN JANEWAY

ed. by Una McCormack

Titan Books
(www.titanbooks.com)
2020, 199 pages, $24.99

ISBN 978-1-78909-479-4

Click here to purchase

I expected more, much more, from this fictional character autobiography. After all, Captain (and now Admiral) Kathryn Janeway is a “Star Trek” legend. She is colorful and dynamic, unpredictable and forthright, undaunted yet destined: and none of that comes through in this “autobiography.”

This is a by-the-book, almost paint-by-number rendition of a fictional life in the “Star Trek: Voyager” universe that does not draw you closer to the captain, but makes you feel distant, almost like somebody else is writing this for her. It’s too much history and not visceral enough to believe the actual captain wrote it. It’s even worse: almost as if the captain erected an emotional wall to keep others out of her memories, her past. There were few vices (other than coffee, black). Where are her loves, her passions, her failures and her emotional victories? Where were Janeway’s angers and frustrations?

She has very little opinion about encountering her future self in the book, from the concluding episode that wrapped up the series. How did Captain Kate truly feel? It had to be traumatic. She needed to be sincere about that enlightening but frustrating encounter with her future self.

In the book, Captain Kate speaks about a lot of her “regrets,’ yet gives us so little insight or even the descriptive specifics of these regrets.

If you enjoy a book carefully crafted to match series episodes, then by all means, go at it. It’s frustratingly predictable. There are no diversions. It’s almost feeling like Captain Kate is sitting down with black coffee after a hangover and telling herself, all right, lady, we have to write this before print deadline. Let’s get it done, pronto. My readers are waiting.