Star Trek--TOS #23: Ishmael (Hambley, Barbara)

Rating: 5
Year: 1985
Genre: Sci-Fi/Star Trek
Read again? Yes


James Kirk hopes Spock is dead.

The Vulcan science officer snuck aboard a Klingon ship, convinced its crew were Up To No Good. The ship entered a Space Cloud, ostensibly to investigate a rogue dwarf star...and then vanished. Spock managed two transmissions: "White Dwarf, Khlaru, Tillman's Factor, Guardian" and "Eighteen Sixty Seven."

Kirk knows that if the Klingons found Spock aboard their ship, they would torture him.


Meanwhile, in 1867, Aaron Stemple sees a strange light in the woods as he guides his horse through an early-morning mist toward Seattle. Upon investigating further, he finds an unconscious man. No, not a man, not with those ears, not with green blood. After days of nursing the alien into some semblance of health, Stemple is no closer to understanding him: the alien has no recollection of his own identity. Stemple passes him off as his nephew, Ishmael Marx.

About the same time "Ishmael" shows up, two mean-looking strangers come to town, asking questions; we'd recognize them as TV Klingons--dark skin, dark hair.

Can Ishmael figure out why he's in Seattle? Can Kirk figure out Spock's final transmissions?

This book hies from the era of Space Animals in Star Trek books: a Space Octopus (I'm assuming; she had a tentacle) who takes over at the Science station when Spock goes missing; and a blue-eyed Space Snot Puddle named Aurelia Steiner. There just had to be one, some sort of Cosmic thing, because shortly before getting to the part where we meet Ms. Puddle, I was re-reading the review for "Double, Double," where I made a snarky reference to them.

This book was better than I was expecting. I seem to remember not liking Hambly's style or writing for some reason, but I found no issues with this one that would keep me from coming back to it.

Star Trek--TOS #45: Double, Double (Friedman, Michael Jan)

Rating: 3
Year: 1989
Genre: Sci-fi/Star Trek
Read again? Eh. I don't know.

At some point after the Trek episode What Are Little Girls Made Of?, the USS Hood receives a distress call from supposed survivors of an expedition. The ship is quickly taken over by androids designed to replicate the crew.

The androids are led by a replica of James Kirk--and while he wants to finish the work of his creator, Dr. Korby (to establish an android colony), he also wants revenge on the real Kirk for his interference in Korby's work.

Meanwhile, the Enterprise is mounting a rescue mission. A swarm of asteroids is about to conveniently wipe out an entire civilization of aboriginal people on an island. The swarm's inconveniently large and fast, so there's no shooting or pushing them around. With minutes to spare, Kirk rescues a kid who went foraging for eggs. Beamed up in the nick of time, and all that.

It turns out that the kid's people have a life-debt thingie where the kid's got to stay with Kirk for a year, or until the life-debt is paid off, whichever comes first. So the kid (conveniently an empath) comes along (hint: androids don't have feelings).

There's also trouble with the Romulans.

Pedestrian. Few surprises in the plot and plenty of things that could have been tightened up. The book doesn't drag, but I really wish it had been more fun. I should have taken more points off for having so many pat plot points--and I should send Friedman a bill for doctor visits to fix rolled-eye muscle strains.

The big "pro" for this book is that there are no Space Animals--no anthropomorphic cows, wallabies, sheep, mice, cockroaches, snot puddles, or any of the other things that populate some Trek books.

The big "cons": stuff Friedman got wrong (I hope he eventually learned his "Trek" stuff, since someone kept giving him work):
--Romulans use disruptors and plasma--not phasers and photon torpedoes.
--Spock is a touch-telepath (can read thoughts, if he's touching you), not primarily an empath.
--The characters are 2-dimensional and stock: the emotionless Vulcan, McCoy the a-hole, Kirk the amiable hero.
--(spoiler) The Enterprise crew isn't killed after replication the way everyone else was.

Star Trek--TOS #39: Time for Yesterday (Crispin, AC)

Rating: 3
Year: 1988
Genre: Sci-fi/Star Trek
Read again? In a few years.

This sequel to Yesterday's Son takes place just before "The Wrath of Khan."

Stars are dying. Time is running too fast and making them burn out! Kirk, Spock and McCoy--three of only a few people in the Federation who know what the Guardian of Forever really is--are sent to try to find out why it's suddenly wreaking havoc with the galaxy's time-stream.

They take a psychic Space Wallaby, the best candidate for talking to the Guardian. It zaps her brain, so there's only one thing to do: go back 5,000 years, find Spock's son Zar (who once talked psychically to the Guardian), and bring him back to the present! Great Spock!

There's a snag. For Zar, it's only been about 15 years since the last time he saw them. He's been using the time to build a little kingdom in a pleasant valley. But he's surrounded by enemies! When they find him, Zar is marshaling his forces, preparing to die in battle.

A much better book than its predecessor. More twists and turns, better characterization. But the science sucks, even for a "Star Trek" novel.

Howlers:
"When a star burns all of its hydrogen, it dies." (page 33). WRONG. Stars aren't really "burning" hydrogen--they're doing nuclear fusion, where hydrogen atoms are fused into helium atoms and energy. If it's a sun-sized star, once it has "burned" through a certain amount of its hydrogen, it expands to become a red giant (there's more to it than that, but dammit, Jim, I'm a book reviewer, not an astronomer!).
Crispin's got stars going nova all over the place and uses that as the "ticking clock" gimmick that's supposed to push the plot...but they've got a freaking TIME portal they could use to minimize that problem.

One point off for the sucky science--and another for the Space Wallaby.

Star Trek--TOS #8 Yesterday's Son (Crispin, AC)

Rating: 3
Year: 1983
Genre: Sci-fi/Star Trek
Read again? In another decade

The book starts off with a weak premise: Spock & Dr. McCoy are playing chess; a new girl comes over, asks Spock about Sarpeidon, the planet where Spock & McCoy went back 5,000 years in time (and Spock nailed Mariette Hartley--"All Our Yesterdays"). She's got pictures of some of the relics of Sarpeidon's lost civilization, including a recognizable Vulcan painted on one cave wall, where no Vulcan had gone before!

Here's the weak part: the Vulcan's so recognizable that Spock knows it's not himself--therefore it must be his son.

Of course he's going to use the Guardian of Forever to go back there. McCoy and Captain Kirk tag along. Poof! They go back and find Zar, now in his mid-twenties, living alone in the icy wilderness. He's a proficient hunter and survivor, but he's been lonely for years since his mother died. He willingly agrees to go back to the future!

This is a much better book than Diane Carey's Battlestations! and Dreadnought!; characterization is reasonably good, but the plot's very linear. There have to be Bad Guys, so Crispin brings in some Romulans who wonder why the Federation is spending so much time trying to keep the Guardian's planet a secret. Big fight, of course. Zar goes back to his own time--pretty much has to.

Star Trek--TOS #31 Battlestations! (Carey, Diane)

Rating: 2/5
Year: 1986
Genre: Sci-Fi/Star Trek
Read again? Nope.

Hot on the heels of "Dreadnought" comes its sequel, with Diane Carey reprising her starring role in her own book!

It's only been a few weeks since the end of "Dreadnought!"; Piper--now a Lieutenant Commander--is sailing the Caribbean aboard James Kirk's sailboat, the Edith Keeler (really? Ugh.). Bones and Scotty are along as crew. They're boarded by Security types. Someone has stolen transwarp technology! Kirk and Scotty are beamed away to be questioned. Piper bravely hides below decks until she can engineer a brilliant escape from the remaining guards.

She gets the ship to either Haiti or the Bahamas--doesn't really matter, but Carey muddled things here--and finds the ship Kirk told her would be her first command. See, Kirk knew Something Was Up, just like in the first book, and he wants Piper as his ace in the hole because she's so damn brilliant and stuff.

Her ship is a Space Tug--and two of her adventure-mates are back: Scanner, the rumpled redneck tech genius and Mereta the med tech. Oh, and Bones McCoy comes along.

The mission: go to Argelius to find the transwarp thieves (conveniently disguised as mad scientists from Central Casting), meet up with Kirk and Spock, and save the Universe.

Carey's weak on the math and science stuff, but it's her clumsy narrative and dialogue that really make me wonder how she got more work after these two dogs.

I'll be reading a few of the later books, because she did get better.

Star Trek--TOS 29: Dreadnought! (Carey, Diane)

Rating: 2
Year: 1986
Genre: Sci-Fi/Star Trek
Read again? Oh, no.

This was a painful read, coming on the heels of Roger Zelazny's "Amber" books and J.M. Dillard's "Star Trek: The Lost Years." Those were all good books.

This one wasn't.


"Dreadnought!" is Diane Carey's first Trek novel. At first I thought the clumsy sentence construction, strange word choices ["fifteen hundred hours in the afternoon"], and bad dialog were intentional, given the book's first person narrative. But the deeper I went, the more it felt like a piece of ego-trip fan fiction starring Diane Carey as the heroine, right down to Boris Vallejo's cover art on the book: a James Bond-ish couple who are supposedly Carey and husband/collaborator Greg Brodeur.

It seems that many others feel the same way; there's even a term for such a character: "Mary Sue."

A Mary Sue (sometimes just Sue), in literary criticism and particularly in fanfiction, is a fictional character with overly idealized and hackneyed mannerisms, lacking noteworthy flaws, and primarily functioning as a wish-fulfillment fantasy for the author or reader. Perhaps the single underlying feature of all characters described as "Mary Sues" is that they are too ostentatious for the audience's taste, or that the author seems to favor the character too highly. The author may seem to push how exceptional and wonderful the "Mary Sue" character is on his or her audience, sometimes leading the audience to dislike or even resent the character fairly quickly; such a character could be described as an "author's pet".

The main character could certainly be called an "author's pet." We're given Lieutenant Piper of Proxima Centauri. As the story opens, she's in the center seat of the USS Liberty, taking the Kobayshi Maru simulation, and she very nearly beats the no-win scenario. Captain James Kirk is watching and gets her assigned to the Enterprise.

Piper--just Piper--gets aboard and soon finds out that Enterprise is shipping out to investigate the theft of a dreadnought-class battleship prototype, the Star Empire. The Space Terrorists who took the ship left a message requesting that Piper be present at an arranged rendezvous with the stolen ship. Her bio-readings will be the key to talking to the thieves.

No, there's no big investigation. No, she's not immediately named a Person of Interest and implicated in the theft. Hell, LIEUTENANT Piper's not even required to wear a proper uniform! That outfit on the Farah Fawcett-haired chick on the cover is what Piper wears for the entire story. Author's pet.

Characterization is spare. Spock is mysterious, perks his eyebrow, and argues with McCoy; Kirk is sexy, commanding; McCoy is a wiseass who argues with the Vulcan. There's little military bearing or professionalism in any Starfleet officer we encounter. Too casual and familiar.

As the plot limps along, we find that Vice Admiral Vaughn Rittenhouse was the head of the Dreadnought project and that he commissioned the ship with nefarious intent: to subjugate the Federation's enemies (and its own people if need be) and force everyone to live happily together (hence the clever name of the ship). He's installed lackeys at many levels of Starfleet, from ship captains to high-level officials, intent on pulling a military coup.

The people who stole the ship did so to block Rittenhouse and bring attention to the crisis. Kirk seems to have figured out that something was up; he wanted Piper as a tool for digging into things because he recognized her obvious abilities, I suppose--but Piper's played as naiive, damn near ignorant of starship or Fleet operations...makes me wonder why she went to the Academy if she couldn't remember any of that stuff.

The story had some potential; in a seasoned writer's hands this could have been a much better story--especially if we lost the ego tripping.

Star Trek--TOS: The Lost Years (Dillard, JM)

Rating: 5
Year: 1989
Genre: Sci-Fi/Star Trek
Read again? Yes

It's been more than 10 years since my last time through this one. It's about as good as I remembered. Good to see my memory working properly for once.

It's the end of the USS Enterprise's five-year mission [somewhere between the end of the original series and The Motionless Picture] The ship's going into an 18-month refit, her crew going on to other assignments.

James Kirk, now 35, is offered a promotion he doesn't want, from Captain to Rear Admiral, from starship to "troubleshooting" diplomatic situations and being a public face for Starfleet, which is still stinging after an attempted coup by Vice Admiral Vaughn Rittenhouse. After fighting it for six months and threatening to resign, he gives in. Kirk is assigned to work with Vice Admiral Lori Ciana--and their first "troubleshooting" assignment drives the rest of the book.

Spock has his choice of several teaching job offers--Starfleet Academy and the Vulcan Academy being the most noteworthy. When he learns that Kirk has taken the promotion, Spock chooses to stay on Vulcan.

Leonard McCoy leaves to do research on the Fabrini--and to rekindle a romance with Natira, but is heartbroken to find that she's gotten married. He hooks up with Dr. Keridwen ("Dwen") Llewellen and does a short lecture tour, sharing his research on advanced Fabrini medical technology. They end up at Vulcan, where they hang out briefly with Spock and his fiancee'.

The first 118 pages are the First Act, getting everyone into place.

There's a dispute between two populations of Space Cows, the Djanai and the Inari. The Djanai are kind of like Amish Space Cows--their religion requires them to shun technology, live simply. The Inari are technocrats and are the ruling minority of Djana--and they've desecrated holy land with their factories and technology. It's assumed that the Romulans are stirring up trouble, since Djana is in a strategic location for both the Romulans and the Federation.

Kirk and Ciana attend a reception where the Space Cow ambassador and key Federation Council members will try working things out. Things go wrong: Ambassador Sarek (Spock's father) and Uhura are taken hostage, beamed out of the conference center by Space Cows who want to sabotage the peace talks.

So now Kirk and Ciana have to go to Djana to try getting the hostages back AND to get the Space Cows moo-ing to each other again.

McCoy gets himself kidnapped by a Vulcan carrying the spirit of a long-dead Vulcan Mind Lord bent on training Romulans (they used to be Vulcans, y'know) to use his fearsome powers.


"Lost Years" isn't a great Star Trek novel, but it's definitely not the worst. It's cleanly-written, a fun read with strong characters and a good grasp of the "feel" of "Star Trek". Though Dillard takes 118 pages to spin up the plots, there's no dragging.

Star Trek: TOS 081 Mudd in your Eye (Oltion, Jerry)

Rating: 3
Year: 1997
Genre: Sci-Fi
Read again? Nope.

The main thing I remember about this book is that I bought it and read most of it on the first day in my own apartment, December 20, 1996. This will be the second reading--and based on one line on page 9, I doubt I'll go for a third.

Several books back, I ranted briefly about Trek writers who don't "get it" with important stuff about key characters; too many writers make the mistake of claiming Vulcans have no emotions. This isn't so! They HAVE feelings--but they've developed a system of logical thought and self control so that their feelings aren't in control!

Oltion stepped in it. I remember mentioning in a previous Trek book review about a book where "Spock came dangerously close to feeling emotion." This is that book. Two points off the top, one for each pointy ear! Even worse, in later parts of the book, Spock shows emotional reactions--suspicion, humor, sarcasm, irritation. It's clear that Oltion intended to say something other than "dangerously close..."--and if that's the case, he should have said the something other. Someone who makes a living putting words together should be better at putting words together.

The story opens with Kirk presiding over a wedding. There's a brief argument between bride and groom over the word, "obey" in the vows (he's surprised it's in there and refuses to obey--good man--but after a brief argument, they agree to a different word). Then Scotty (the best man) substitutes a joke ring. Then the newlyweds push cake in each others' faces.

See? This is going to be a comedy. Ha. Ha. Ha. *rolled eyes* I can hardly wait.

Fortunately, Enterprise gets diverted to investigate the sudden breakout of peace between a pair of worlds in the Nevis system that have been at war for 12,000 years. Spock's thinking about this when he gets "dangerously close"...you know, I'm tempted to take off another two points just because I came dangerously close to quoting the whole stupid phrase again. This could well come dangerously close to negative numbers in the rating.

It turns out that Harcourt Fenton Mudd--Harry, in casual circumstances--is the broker of the peace. Apparently all he's doing is selling fruit, and that's enough to bring peace to Prastor and Distrel...it's the fruit they've been at war over. See, there's this conveniently-striped fruit that's conveniently made of alternating purple and white sections. Eating one or the other is harmless, but eating one of each will conveniently kill one before one hits the ground. The war started because neither side wanted to eat the white ones. Now that Mudd's selling those white bits, there's no reason to fight. Wait, what? They go back to fighting again? That's pretty good, since we're only a third of the way into the book. Might get boring, otherwise.

Of course, Harry's got an angle; he's a con man, right? Kirk and his merry crew know this--but the Nevisians have some secrets and angles of their own. Seems that when they blow each other away with their fancy zap-guns, they get transported, processed, and sent back out into the world to live a new life. Turns out it works on humans, too: first the red-shirt-wearing bride from the wedding scene gets wasted. Then, in short order, Mudd, Chekov, Sulu, Scotty and Kirk all buy it.

No idea how canonical it is, but Mudd mentions that a distant grandfather of his was Dr. Samuel A. Mudd, who was convicted of conspiracy in Lincoln's assassination and sentenced to prison at Fort Jefferson, off the Florida Keys. Neat little tie-in with reality.

Overall, it's not an awful story, if predictable. Oltion's style flows well, so it's a quick read. I'd like to see better characterization, and a better grasp of those cold-blooded, pointy-eared Vulcans.

Star Trek: TOS #48--Rules of Engagement (Morwood, Peter)

Rating: 4
Year: 1990
Genre: Sci-Fi
Read again? Eventually.

Book set somewhere between Trek I (The Motionless Picture) and Trek II. On the "exciting" meter it's closer to I than II.

The Enterprise is diverted from R&R at Starbase 12 to deal with UFP people being kicked off a planet by the new government. It would normally be a diplomatic matter, but this planet--Dekkanar--happens to be part of a Distant Early Warning line that monitors the Neutral Zone between the Federation and Klingon (and Romulan?) space. Losing access to this planet means losing the command post and operations hardware for the 'Firechain.'

Some plot conveniences: No weapons, shields, active scanners (for diplomatic reasons) and no transporters (the planet's star is conveniently in a sunspot phase at just the right convenient frequency to scramble transporters, thereby requiring shuttles to get the Federation people off the planet).

As all this is developing, we're taken to a Klingon spacedock where an experimental D-7 battlecruiser is being readied for its proving flight. This ship will have no crew on-board--instead, it is controlled via a tether from a scout-class Bird of Prey (like the ship Kirk and crew go back in time with in the 4th movie). Hakkarl will be able to fight while cloaked and can pull maneuvers no crewed battlecruiser could manage.

The Klingons are in the same vein as John Ford's "The Final Reflection." [it differentiates between the Klingon language Ford used and that developed by Marc Okrand]. Don't like Morwood's take on Klingons; they're fine on the surface, but seem "off" in some ways--too human-like, prissy (mentally fussing over the smell of a space suit?). Like so many other authors' inability to "get" Vulcans, Morwood doesn't seem to really "get" Klingons.

The Klingon baddie Kasak was aboard the ship the tribbles were beamed to in the TOS episode "The Trouble with Tribbles." His fortunes suffered with the rest of that crew and Koloth, their captain. When he finds out that he's facing the evil James Kirk and his notorious ship, he wants revenge, but he goes about it in a whacked-out, convoluted manner.

Book seems to drag. There are good moments, but this isn't an exciting book, nor is it really engaging like "Strangers From the Sky" or "Spock's World." Still it's much better than "Windows on a Lost World." The ending is a bit weak, with the suddenly-insane Kasak bringing about his own downfall in time for the book to end. Locking phasers on a point. Man, am I ever tired of "Star Trek" right now.

Star Trek: TOS--Strangers From the Sky (Bonano, Margaret Wander)

Rating: 5/5
Year: 1987
Genre: Sci-Fi
Read again? Yes

Strangers from the sky
Strangers from the sky
They crashed but didn't die
Thought they were gonna fry
On us they're gonna spy, they're green but not bug-eyed
Strangers from the sky.

Billed as the second "Star Trek" giant novel, "Strangers" is about a book by the same name that has become an overnight phenomenon. It seems like everyone in the Federation has read it or is doing so. It's probably on Space Oprah's book list.

The official story of First Contact between humans and Vulcans is that one of our ships rescued one of theirs in 2065, they sent a diplomatic delegation to Earth in 2068, and this led to the forming of the United Federation of Planets in 2087 with the Vulcans, Centaurans, Tellarites, and Andorians all happy and getting along together.

The book everyone's enthralled by tells a different story: In 2045 a Vulcan scoutship malfunctions and crashes in the South Pacific, on the edge of a mid-ocean kelp farm. The farm's tenders, Yoshi and Tatyana, find the wrecked vessel and two surviving (though injured) crew members.

The government of a United Earth, still putting things back together in the aftermath of a third World War and the depredations of Khan and Colonel Green, are concerned--and paranoid--enough to send in the CSS Delphinus under communications blackout. Captain Jason Nyere is under special orders: contain the aliens, ascertain the threat they pose, and report back to Command if they seem friendly. If they don't...kill them and any witnesses. He's a kind of softy moderate, doesn't want to kill anyone, but he'll do his duty if it comes to that. His executive officer, Melody Sawyer, is conservative enough for both of them and would kill the planet on a misunderstanding. Kind of high-strung.

The two Vulcans are T'Lera (the mission's commander) and her son Sorahl (the navigator). Vulcans have been snooping around Earth since the early 1940's, studying our cultures, languages, territorial squabbles and world wars. They have a Prime Directive--no interference of any kind, and death before discovery. When their ship malfunctioned, they tried to self-destruct, but that failed as well.

The story swings between The Book's version of events and "modern"-day, where Admiral James Kirk commands a desk and Spock is aboard Enterprise with a boatload of trainees. Bones McCoy has been reading The Book. Kirk hasn't. Bones is enthusiastic about it, trying to goad Kirk into reading the thing. Kirk is skeptical and uneasy. Something about that period of Earth's history--the mid-to-late 21st Century--makes him uncomfortable. He finally relents, but being Jim Kirk he doesn't settle for the commonly-available book-on-disk. He wants a proper book with paper pages. As he reads it, he dozes off and dreams of a conversation with the Vulcan woman. He dreams of a room in chaos, Vulcan blood, Tatya's screaming, and a woman's voice saying "You cannot do it alone!"--and it's all real, as though he'd been there.

Even Spock has read The Book. Light-years away on a training patrol, he meditates on a troubling conviction that not only is "Strangers" truly non-fiction, but that he was there on Earth in 2045, hearing a woman saying "You cannot do it alone!"

McCoy has a problem: Kirk's growing obsession with The Book threatens his sanity and his career.

And this is just the first third of the book.

Bonano's style is refreshing after that last Trek book ("Windows on a Lost World"). She's a good story-teller who stays out of her own way, lets the book do the work, and lets us lose ourselves in the story. She has a good feel for characters and personalities, pacing, and suspense. Her portrayal of the Vulcans is especially pleasing--they are individuals, thinking and feeling people, not the emotionless androids that too many Trek authors make them out to be.

This is what a Trek novel should be like.

Star Trek #65--Windows on a Lost World (Mitchell, V E)

Rating: 2/5
Year: 1993
Genre: Sci-Fi
Read again? I hope not.

Yeah, I'm back to Trek novels again. And again, it's been nearly a decade since the last time I read this one. I know I've changed over those years; I've become a lot more attentive to an author's style, pacing, ability to tell a story, and how well they capture the "world" if they're playing in someone else's universe.

Let's be real: Only Roger Zelazny could write a damn good "Amber" novel. The new series by Betancourt lacks Zelazny's style, pacing, ability to tell a story, and doesn't capture the feel of the original. One blurb on one of the books applauds Betancourt for his use of words and characters from the Amber novels. As if vocabulary is the key to it.

It's not. His series has a "based on the events of..." feel. And that brings us to V.E. Mitchell, who uses words such as "Enterprise" and "transporter" and "Kirk" and "Spock" quite often in "Windows"--and by that metric, this should be a damn good Trek novel, right? Eh. It doesn't feel like "Star Trek." The characters don't feel right. They all speak so similarly that at times one might think Spock is playing in a one-Vulcan show based on the book, where he portrays everyone else. C'mon--when does Bones McCoy ever talk like that? Or Scotty? Gotta beam up one point just for that.

Kirk and his merry crew are assigned to lug a team of Space Archaeologists to the Careta system to snoop around in the ruins and look for their mummies. One of the archaeologists comes from a staunchly matriarchal world where women are muscle-headed ass-kickers, and of course she throws her weight around and acts like a sexist pig (sow?). Chekov won't admit it, but I think he digs her. Sulu will kill her if she tries anything.

They find something that had been boxed up tight and then buried under tons of stone. Once they dig it out, they've got an artifact that looks like a large two-paned picture window standing alone in a river valley. One pane is black, the other shows a grassy field or prairie. There's a lot of scanning and discussion, after which Chekov and Talika the Muscular are yanked through and vanish. Some of their equipment appears before another of these artifacts elsewhere on the planet. Kirk gives Spock a little time to figure out what's happened before grabbing a few red-shirts and jumping through the original window to pull off a search and rescue.

I'll spare you the pain of reading about it. The teleport thingie turns them into Space Crabs. That's not a spoiler; the "suspense" of the story is "Can Spock find a way to turn everyone back?" The answer? Spock opens a Red Lobster (well, a Green Lobster--he's Vulcan, y'know) and goes into business. I could dig that.

It takes Mitchell 64 pages to get Chekov and Talika into trouble--about one-fourth of the book--and another twenty for Kirk's follow-through. There's something to be said for taking one's time when it's done effectively, but the story thus far--while cool in concept--just drags, so I'm locking phasers and shooting down another point. I'd like to have seen things tightened up so this happens in the first couple of chapters. Get the trouble going quickly!

Then, once we the audience know what's going on, Mitchell throws some convenient plot devices into things to make sure the Enterprise crew doesn't figure things out too quickly. What's that? Kirk and the red-shirts go into the artifact, and suddenly all the probes and sensors are zapped? Gee, that's too bad. They can still follow the six Space Crabs, though, and this brings us to the most mind-bogglingly stupid plot device I think I've ever seen, and what brought me to nerve-pinch this book down to 2/5.

Spock ponders and thinks and all that stuff; McCoy shows up every once in a while to badger the hell out of him, then--going on the assumption that the Space Crabs are in fact the missing Enterprise Six--Spock decides to try talking to one of them. He beams down with a few people, approaches the Space Crab...and it gives no sign of awareness of him. So Spock FREAKING CALLS THE FREAKING SHIP AND ORDERS THEM TO BEAM THE FREAKING SPACE CRAB UP. It freaks, they try to freaking stun it, it freaking dies. No security protocol, no simply scanning the thing where it sits or setting up some crab boil, no putting it in a net or something, but beaming the damn thing up to the ship. This is nothing more than an excuse to get a Space Crab aboard for McCoy to do an autopsy on it, and since the book was written in 1993, I can't say it's the dumbest thing since Han Solo shot first, since that came a few years later.

I remember writing in my review of Peter David's "Vendetta" novel that it hadn't weathered well the decade since I'd last read it, and that that could mean the rest of the books fared less well. I seem to remember "Windows" as a favorite, but yesterday is long gone. It's a shame, because the concept had promise.

Star Trek: Federation (Judith & Garfield Reeves-Stevens)

Star Trek: Federation (Reeves-Stevens, Judith & Garfield)

Rating: 4/5
Date: 1995
Read again? Yes.
Warnings: None

Yet another Star Trek "Giant Novel." Yes, I'm avoiding the series stuff, getting the good stuff (or what I remember as good) first. I'll suffer for it later, like when I get to Sonni Cooper's "Black Fire," which I'm afraid George Lucas will buy the movie rights for--I mean, the suck's already there, so he won't have to add any of his own, which is good because he used so much of it in the 4th Indiana Jones movie.

"Federation" begins with a soon-retiring James Kirk visiting the Guardian of Forever from TOS's "City on the Edge of Forever." I know what you're thinking: "Oh, great, yet another 'time-travel' story."

No.

In this case, the Guardian is a frame for the bigger story, which is told across three time periods.

First, we meet Zephram Cochrane, the guy who invented Warp engines. It's 2061, and Cochrane has just returned from the first Warp-powered trip to Alpha Centauri. There and back in 243 days. He barely has time for a reluctant celebration, though, for one Adrik Thorsen of the Optimum Movement is after him. Thorsen wants Cochrane's Warp Drive--both as a weapon to be used in cleansing humanity of imperfections and to keep those same humans from escaping the cleansing.


Next, we flash forward to the Enterprise in 2267, where James Kirk is playing Space Poker with Spock and Sarek, and getting his ass handed to him. They're in the ship's Sickbay, recovering from the events of the TOS episode "Journey to Babel" (an assassination attempt on Kirk; Sarek in desperate need of open-heart surgery; Spock unable to leave the bridge to give blood for the cause). Remember the episode where Cochrane turned up alive on a little planetoid, and in the end Kirk promised that he'd keep it quiet?

Ummmm...ooopsie. Just like before, ships are disappearing in the Gamma Canaris region, and an admiral has come aboard wanting to know why Starfleet wasn't warned about that planetoid and its apparent hazard to navigation. And why a dead woman is asking James Kirk for help.


Then, we visit the Enterprise-D in 2366, where Picard is playing Space Chess with Data, bringing the game to a stalemate three times in a row. Mad skills, yo. It's shortly after Picard's mind-meld from the TNG episode where Sarek is suffering from Space Alzheimer's, and some of the Vulcan's chess-playing ability has stuck with the Captain. Nothing more exciting than this happens for a few pages...then the captain and his crew find themselves wondering how a Romulan Warbird has ended up in Ferengi hands, and what they have to do with the Borg.


The three plotlines are told piecemeal, one, two, three, and the Reeves-Stevenses are on the ball in keeping things organized and bringing it all together. I've read this one four or five times (and haven't read it in maybe 10 years), and as always they tell a good story and keep it entertaining. I especially like their treatment of Vulcans as thinking, FEELING beings. It's not like they're unemotional; no--they're a very (almost excessively?) passionate race who came to understand that emotions can and should be controlled, lest they control you. Too many other Trek writers come up with stupid crap like "Spock had come perilously close to feeling emotion." That's just wrong--you can see that in Spock's behavior in the original series. He does express emotions, but it's a subtle thing.


SPOILERS!

There were some things I had problems with There was little nit-picky stuff--some unnecessary hand-holding from the authors at times (belaboring a point to make sure we get it), a few places where the story gets bogged down, but none of that warrants that point I took away.

Since it's been a while since I last read it, I've changed enough where things that I really dug the first times through are just not so cool anymore--especially the bad guy Thorsen, who simply refuses to die. First he gets himself made into a cyborg, then he's just a personality matrix waiting around to take control of the Enterprise-D and then Data, all in the pursuit of Cochrane. These things happened so often on TNG that I found them as annoying as all the damn time-travel stuff the various Trek shows did. The entire third act of the book hinges on the Thorsen-thing strategically getting into position to capture the ship, and upon its ability to manipulate the Romulans, Ferengi, and ultimately Picard...yet Thorsen is defeated because of a LACK of strategic thinking ability. Didn't sit right, so there goes a point.

Star Trek: TOS Prime Directive (Judith & Garfield Reeves-Stevens)

Rating: 4/5
Date: 1991
Genre: Sci-Fi
Read again? Yes.

Talin IV is a dead world. Five Enterprise officers are blamed: Captain Kirk, Spock, Sulu, Chekov, and Uhura have all resigned from or been kicked out of Starfleet. Dr. McCoy has resigned in protest. Everyone scatters into fish-out-of-water plotlines, learning that they had been living easy aboard Enterprise. Now they can't just go wherever they want. Things they once took for granted cost money now. Finally, they get to see that the Utopian mindset of Starfleet doesn't really trickle down to the regular people.

Kirk goes off by himself, taking odd jobs and moving on as people realize who he is, sort of like Bruce Banner in "The Hulk."

Sulu and Chekov team up, fighting their way into crew positions on an Orion freighter.

McCoy and Uhura join forces. He's the sloppy liberal, she's the neat-freak conservative...hilarity ensues!

Spock joins the Space Hippies.

Mr. Scott is the only Enterprise officer untouched by the scandal, and he's put in charge of recovering the crippled starship. How'd it get crippled? There need to be some surprises.


Naturally, all roads lead back to Talin IV. Starfleet won't investigate further, settling for a quarantine of the Talin system, and it's up to the Enterprise folks to figure out what happened and make Starfleet give them back their jobs.

This is maybe the 5th time I've read "Prime Directive," but it's the first time in about a decade. It's aged well, especially compared to Peter David's "Vendetta" novel. The Stevenses' style is much sharper--and in some ways it's like watching a good "Trek" episode or movie. I especially like the way they don't fall into the stock "Trek" trap of depicting the Federation and Starfleet as near-perfect, Utopian government systems. There's a bureaucracy in each with enormous inertia--and sometimes that inertia keeps the higher-ups from being able to stop and look at a situation carefully. Then, they blame the media (didn't see it specifically in the book, granted; but humans haven't changed much in thousands of years. Why would they be so different in a few hundred?).

Characterization is good, the plot and story are engaging...right up until we find out what killed Talin IV. I didn't care so much for the cause, and that's what I took a point for.

Star Trek: TOS--Final Frontier (Diane Carey)

Star Trek: TOS--Final Frontier (Diane Carey)

Rating: 4/5
Pub Date: 1988
Genre: Sci-Fi
Read again? In another few years.

Billed as the "third giant Star Trek novel," the book follows George Samuel Kirk, father of 10-year-old James Kirk. George and his comic-relief sidekick Francis Drake Reed are nabbed from their Starbase, taken to an undisclosed location, and asked to help rescue a bunch of settlers whose ship has been disabled by Space Weather. The back of the book tries to play cagey and mysterious about the ship George and Drake are aboard, but it's pretty easy to figure out from Carey's descriptions--even though the ship is brand new and un-named. Isn't that unlucky or something? Or have the Trek folks moved past superstitious sailors?

We also follow James Kirk, some 25 years later, just after the events in "City on the Edge of Forever." Kirk is upset at losing the woman he loved (Edith Keeler), so he holes up in the barn of his family farm, reads 25-year-old letters from Dad, and ignores the hell out of everyone else, determined to feel sorry for himself just like dear old Dad was doing when he wrote those letters. McCoy and Spock show up in turn to try to help their friend and captain with his grief.

This being "Star Trek," there have to be bad guys. This time it's the Romulans--and they're curious about this unknown, un-named starship that suddenly drops right in their laps. It's a very Cold War story, with all the mutual suspicion and paranoia about the Evil Other. It's a precursor to the "Balance of Terror" episode of the original series in some ways. The episode marks the first "official" time humans and Romulans get a look at each other--but "Final Frontier" has George Kirk meeting a Romulan face to face. No idea whether this book's story line is accepted as canon among fans, but the way the meeting is resolved, it doesn't conflict with the show.

That said, I didn't like the wrap-up of the Romulan plot, so I gotta take a point off.

It's been maybe 10 years since I last read this one--and I've put off reading any sci-fi, any big series, and especially either of the Big Two franchises (Star Wars is the other one) because they wear me out--a lot of the books just plain suck. So anyway, it's been a decade. The book's an easy read and the three main plot threads are nicely braided together, but it will be a long time before I read it again, if only because of the other 1500 or so books I still need to look at.