This is where I should probably admit to not being the biggest fan of Star Trek: Voyager. I have always been a Star Trek fan but this series was my least favourite. I felt that just at the point where Star Trek was building momentum having gone through the glory years of The Next Generation and the dark drama of Deep Space Nine. Then they moved sideways, threw away a large amount of the good core of Star Trek and headed into the unknown.

Now I will never say that a show should stay put, and constantly regurgitate old plots and villains, but to up sticks and move to a whole new part of the galaxy away from the familiar just never made sense to me. Now, not saying that the series didn't have strengths - it did. There were characters I liked - Tuvok, Torres and the EMH being the standouts, and I did really like the ship itself.

And so to the stories featured in this book - well this is a strong set of tales, more consistent in many ways than the series on which they are based, and they give an extra insight into the lives and feelings of the crewmembers. We have stories set at various points throughout the voyage home of the USS Voyager, filling in gaps and letting us into the heads of the various characters.

The best of the bunch has to be between the Keith R.A. DeCandido story following the lives of the families of the Voyager crew seen through the eyes of Kathryn Janeway's other half, the ones left behind when Voyager was transported to the Delta Quadrant, and Jeffrey Lang's tale of the Voyager talent night - a wonderful light-hearted tale.

Now this is not to say the rest of the set are inferior quality, just that these two addressed matters I felt were skipped over to a large extent - that of the integration of the Maquis members with Voyager's crew (helped by this talent show) and what happened back in the alpha quadrant once Voyager went missing.

These are good tales, good fun reading for any Trek fan.

Synopsis
Building on the success of HOMECOMING and THE FARTHER SHORE (2003), Distant Shores is a collection of stories - some sweeping, some intimate - which spans the entire length and breadth of the Voyager television series. This celebratory anthology brings together a host of Star Trek's most popular authors - among them Ilsa J. Bick, Keith R.A. DeCandido and Heather Jarman - with a veritable feast of Star Trek: Voyager fiction. Along with the STRING THEORY trilogy, this large-format action-packed anthology is published to mark ten years since the USS Voyager's epic journey began.