While this novelization is straightforward, it made me feel a lot better about Tom Paris than the actual episode did. I guess I don't read into annoying young white men as positively and as much as I could - ha.

Novelizations of movies or specific TV episodes are interesting things. They can be really good, melding what actually went on, on the screen with little things and thoughts that the characters may have actually thought. And doing it well. Or they can be very, very bad, either simply looking like someone added 'if, then, but and the's' (with some 'saids') to the script or adding too much stuff that doesn't fit with the characters of the show and goes totally against what was seen on screen.

In Caretaker there was one glaring (okay, it was probably only glaring to me who has seen most of the Voyager episodes [first run] and definitely knows how the bridge is set up) error. At one point Harry, the Operations officer swivels around in his chair to face Captain Janeway. That's fine if he's on the Enterprise, but he's on Voyager an Intrepid class vessel, where the Ops station is behind the Captain's chair, and Harry never sits, both he and Tuvok (the Security/Tactical Chief) stand, always. But, other than that it wasn't a bad novelization of an outstanding TV episode at all.

The author got the tone of the novel to match the tone of the actual episode, and then enough extra little thoughts and feelings were added here and there so it didn't seem like I was simply reading an annotized script. A solid three stars for sure. ( )