Star Trek: Enterprise The First Adventure by Vonda N. McIntyre - Book Report #232

I won’t lie: I found this book tedious. Mostly because I was uninterested in the guests aboard the Enterprise. 

It made perfect sense; a new captain should be assigned an easy, shake-down cruise. Time to get to know the ship and its crew without putting much stress on them. 

So, brand new Captain Kirk takes on a traveling Vaudville show and is instructed to visit all the distant star bases to lift morale by taking the act “on the road.”

The idea of the book was a good one but I did not enjoy the circus performers and the fact that Kirk was instantly attracted to one of them.

There are some added characters; a Vulcan juggler who is emotional, a new alien race is discovered drifting through Federation space and Klingons come to mix it all together. 

Sounds like it should work, right?  Except it doesn’t.  It was exceedingly slow, far too introspective and just boring to read.  I’m not the kind of reader that needs a fistfight in every chapter but this book takes its time to get going. 

Having been published in 1986 it’s conceivable the author was under strict control not to do anything alarming to the franchise. So maybe I’m not being fair. 

But it all comes down to whether I enjoyed the story or not. 

I didn’t. 

To bad too. I was really hoping for something a bit more fun. 

Okay, that was quite a bit of bashing the book. It wasn’t all bad: there were some parts of the book that I did like. 

Since this is an origins story it was a lot of fun to read how Sulu came aboard, the bad feelings the senior crew held comparing Kirk to the departed Captain Pike, how Scotty treated the new captain and how Chekov was always on board the ship. 

That last point filled in the gaping plot hole from The Wrath of Kahn.  How Kahn recognizes Chekov even though he wasn’t on the TV show until the season after his appearance. 

So it did work on some levels.  It just didn’t capture my imagination. 

Vonda N. McIntyre's website - http://www.vondanmcintyre.com/

Star Trek: Envoy, a Captain Sulu Adventure by L. A. Graf - Book Report #226

At first I was disappointing by the short, one hour, run time of the audio book.

But it was well produced and narrated by none other than George Takei.  So I was in.

The story is set in the time period of Captain Sulu's command of the USS Excelsior.

Starfleet Command orders Sulu to board a shuttle and travel to a nearby starbase to assist in the final stages of a peace treaty between the Krikiki and the Den-Kai races who have been at war for decades.

When he finds out what his part in the peace process entails, Sulu finds himself in a battle between his personal morals and the greater good. 

This is the kind of subject matter that makes Star Trek so very special.

I enjoyed the story very much and found the one hour duration similar to watching an episode of the TV series.

Dilithium is a Girl’s Best Friend by Neil Bryant - Short Story Review

Oh!  What fun.

Harry Mudd, ladies and gentlemen, gets his hands on the Genesis Device.

This idea will perk up life-long fans of Star Trek.

The thing I like best about the written universe of Star Trek is the ability to play around with characters and ideas.

Not only did the author pick a popular character but he made the focus of the story be a less known one, that of Eve McHuron, one of "Mudd's Women" from the original TV series.

The plot was terrific, Bryant took the MacGuffin from the movie Star Trek II: The Wrath of Kahn and put it in the hands of Eve.  This is precisely when Mudd shows up to make a deal for the device.

The story was fast-paced and there was some welcomed humour throughout.  It's the humour that makes Star Trek work because it brings the characters to life.  The author had a nice light touch with it and never made it come across as campy.

In any case, I liked the story and it was a terrific opening to the whole collection.

Star Trek: The Kobayashi Maru by Julia Ecklar - Book Report #199

I loved this book.

It was one of those "stuck in an elevator" kind of stories, where the crew, Kirk, Bones, Scotty, Sulu and Chekov are in a shuttle craft, adrift in space, trying to get themselves rescued.

While they are waiting for Spock to find them they each tell their own story of how they coped with the Kobayashi Maru test.

This simulation is legendary in the worlds of Star Trek and I found the author played each story very well to the character's personality.

It read like a collection of short sorties making it a perfect book for my commute to and from work.

The best of the books expand our knowledge and understanding of the characters while delivering us a good adventure.

Julia Ecklar - http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/ea.cgi?2538

Julia Ecklar

Star Trek: Legacies: Purgatory's Key by Dayton Ward & Kevin Dilmore - Book Report #184

This was a fine ending to the story.

But I will be honest here, when it comes to science fiction I like mine hard.  Hard boiled is even better.  (But that is a very thin slice of the SF pie.)

Because I like my fantastic stories to be as plausible as possible I am not a big fan of; aliens with convenient "super powers", time travel, mystic powers (like the force) and alternative dimensions.

Honestly, and I am sorry if you don't agree, but these are just conveniences that allow a writer to escape from well, reality.  If you want a dose of true hard science fiction try reading The Cold Equations by Tom Godwin.  It's in the public domain and can be easily searched.  Here is a link to a PDF copy of the story - http://photos.state.gov/libraries/hochiminh/646441/vantt/The%20Cold%20Equations.pdf

Okay, the story.  Our heroes have shaken off the Romulans now they have to convince the Klingons that the work they want to do on the planet will not harm the Empire nor give the Federation an unfair advantage going forward.

Kirk and Spock have to use the Transfer Key to locate and rescue their friends from the other dimension.  Loads of time is spent showing just how strange the other dimension is, which I found exceedingly boring, but the conflict between the Klingons was very entertaining.

In the end it was the talents of Ward and Dilmore that kept me engaged.  Their sense of humour lifted the story many times when I was just about to roll my eyes.

Yes, I liked the series.  The stories were at their best when we were in our own universe  I found the characters true to their TV roots.  Interestingly I thought the narrator channelled Karl Urban's performance of Bones rather than DeForest Kelley.  But it worked for me.

I must mention the talents of Robert Petkoff who narrated all three books.  He had perfect characterisation throughout.  He convincingly channelled the original actors of the series which was a talent that needs to be recognised.  I was transported into the story by his abilities.  Excellent work.

Dayton Ward and Kevin Dilmore

Star Trek: Legacies: Best Defense by David Mack - Book Report #183

Book 2 of 3.

We continue with the adventure, with Captain Una trapped in the other dimension attempting to rescue her friends.

Meanwhile, the Romulans have the key and are making a menace of themselves with it by disrupting peace talks between the Klingon Empire and the Federation.

With David Mack writing the story you know there well be mayhem.  There is lots of action to occupy the story culminating in a spectacular battle between the Enterprise and a Romulan Bird of Prey.

The story mostly is dedicated to the recovery of the key and solving the mystery of its power.  There was some interesting tension on the Romulan vessel that I enjoyed a lot.

The book teed up the next and final instalment in the series nicely and I started listening to it right away.

David Mack

Star Trek: Legacies: Captain to Captain by Greg Cox - Book Report #182

Book One of Three in the Legacies series.


I liked this one, it really felt like characters jumped out fully realized.

The dialogue was perfect although there were times that I felt that Spock spoke a bit too much.  When that happened it usually was in the service of some humor.  So I found my self forgiving him.

One of the things I love about these books is how little details from the TV show or movies are used and expanded to create interest.

The MacGuffin in the story is a special key that activates an alien machine which has the ability to send a person into another dimension.

The part of the story that stretches plausibility is that this device has been hidden on the Enterprise for a very long time.  Two captains ago actually.

The story then travels back in time, to the era of Robert April, the first captain, and the adventure that brought the key to be hidden in the captain's quarters.  And, this is the part I liked, it was hidden behind a piece of art that was in the television show.

The key is behind this panel

What I found implausible was that after finding the key Robert April kept a promise not to reveal it's existence to his superiors.  Then told the next captain, Christopher Pike, about the key and the reasons not to divulge it's existence to Starfleet Command.  Then Pike did the same with Kirk. And none of them turned the key over!

Well, to be fair, they never were put in a situation where the key was a factor.  Until now...

But that is my only complaint.

I found the story a bunch of fun and I can't wait to listen to the next installment in the trilogy.

http://www.gregcox-author.com/

Greg Cox

Star Trek: The Original Seires: From History's Shadow by Dayton Ward - Book Report #134

Holy throwback Thursday, Batman!

Some of my favourite episodes of any Star Trek series are when they go back to a past era of Earth.

In this book Ward takes aspects of DS9's Little Green Men plus Carbon Creek from Enterprise and made it his own by following the lives of two human investigators searching for proof of alien contact on behalf of the US government.  They work from the first days of the Majestic 12 organization and through Project Blue Book.

I'd never heard of Majestic 12 (also know as MJ-12) and that's because it lives in the world of conspiracy theorists but Project Blue Book was real.  I also remember watching a TV show called Project U.F.O that followed two Project Blue Book investigators.  I was always disappointed that swamp gas seemed to be the answer behind most of the UFO sightings.  To be fair, Blue Book debunked most sightings it investigated.  Nine-year-old me really, really wanted to meet an alien.  In any case, you gotta love an author that can seamlessly blend fact and fiction to create, well, better fiction.

The story did bounce back and forth between Kirk's Enterprise and the Earth from the 40's to the 60's and made my head swim a bit.  Time travel stories have a way of spinning out of control if the author is not careful.  I did appreciate some of Kirk's musings on how time travel gave him a headache.

All in all the book was very entertaining and I highly recommend it.  As long as you have a passing knowledge of Star Trek you'll be fine.

Dayton Ward

Star Trek: The Original Series: Seasons of Light and Darkness by Michael A. Martin

6/100

This is a very good Leonard McCoy "origin" story.

I'm using quotes since the novella explores McCoy's first mission as a member of starfleet, not so much his complete back story.  Here we find him trying to put some distance between himself and a difficult period in his life.  He is accepted into starfleet medical and immediately sent to Capella IV for an extended medical/diplomatic mission.

In the TV series and movies McCoy has a very strong belief in what is right and wrong and his own roll on the Enterprise.  If I want to be flip about it; this is the story that explains his saying, "Dammit Jim!  I'm a doctor not a ..."  But I don't want to trivialize this, McCoy came to this saying in a deeply difficult way.  If anything, reading this story will make that line less of a joke and give it a deeper meaning.

Yup.  I liked this one a lot.

Read it.

The opening scene of the book.

Michael A. Martin