In the new novel by James Swallow, seven years have passed since the events of Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country. The Klingons and the Federation have begun to take their first, tentative steps towards a lasting peace.  However, there still exist many, on both sides of the Neutral Zone, who have no interest in seeing peace emerge between these two intergalactic powers.  When a series of devastating terrorist attacks wreak havoc across Klingon space, it seems that the last surviving member of the Chang/Cartwright conspiracy may hold the clue to unravelling the identity of the terrorists:  Valeris, formerly of Starfleet, now in prison with little possibility of parole.

I adore Star Trek VI, so right away this novel had my interest piqued.  The years immediately following the final adventure of the original Enterprise haven’t been that well mined , so I really enjoyed this look at how the Klingon/Federation political situation progressed following the ending of Trek VI. Mr. Swallow digs deeply into the Star Trek mythos to present a compelling tale of intergalactic espionage that addresses several meaty story threads left hanging by Trek VI.

The focus on Valeris is long overdue.  Though it wasn’t all that risky of the makers of Star Trek VI to make the one new character be the traitor, Nick Meyer’s sharp script and Kim Cattrall’s tart performance combined to create a very memorable character.  I enjoyed having the chance, reading Cast No Shadow, to peel back some of the layers of this enigmatic Vulcan.  It’s fascinating (ha ha) to dig into Valeris’ point of view, and I enjoyed the novel’s periodic flashbacks into Valeris’ history.   We learn how and why she became involved in Admiral Cartwright’s conspiracy, and in the devastating final flashback, we uncover the source of her un-Vulcan-like enmity for the Klingons.

Although he is featured extremely prominently on the cover, Spock is not that central to the novel’s story.  This was a big disappointment to me.  I assume that Mr. Swallow cannot control the content of his book’s cover art, but when I pick up a novel with Spock and Valeris on the cover, I assume that the novel is going to focus on the relationship between Spock and Valeris!  While their contentious relationship is addressed, it is not at all the novel’s focus.

Instead, in addition to telling Valeris’ story, the novel also focuses on the tale of a young Elias Vaughn’s first mission in the field.  Devoted fans of Pocket Books’ Star Trek novels of course know that Vaughn, a created-for-the-novels character, was a key player in the post-finale Deep Space Nine novels.  Several Trek novels, over the years, have explored the long-lived Vaughn’s early history… [continued]

A few years ago, Pocket Books released a terrific two-book series entitled Star Trek: Myriad Universes. (Read my review here!)  Each book featured three novellas, each written by a different author, and each featuring a fascinating “what-if” tale set in a different era of the Star Trek universe.  These were stories set in alternate universes, in which the events of Star Trek’s history (as depicted in all of the movies and TV shows) unfolded differently.  That two-book series was phenomenal, containing some of my very favorite Star Trek stories from all of Pocket Books’ novels.  So I was absolutely thrilled when I heard that a new Myriad Universe collection, once again featuring three novellas, was being released last year.  It took me longer than I thought to get to reading the book (I’m a busy guy!), but I finally was able to read it last month.  While this new collection, Shattered Light, isn’t quite the home-run that the original two books were, it’s still a supremely entertaining series of stories.

The Embrace of Cold Architects, by David R. George III — In this universe, William Riker, in command of the Enterprise following Captain Picard’s abduction by the Borg and transformation into Locutus, is able to defeat the Borg by using the Enterprise’s deflector array to destroy the attacking cube, killing Captain Picard and all the Borg on-board.  That’s a dramatic hook for the story, but the novella’s focus is actually on another change: that Data’s attempt to create a daughter, Lal (which we saw in the TNG third season episode “The Offpsring”) was delayed by several months, so that shortly after Lal’s creation, Data found his creator, the cybernetics genius Dr. Noonien Soong (as seen in the early fourth season TNG episode “Brothers”).  Dr. Soong is able to prevent the cascade failure in Lal’s positronics brain, thus saving her life.  But as we saw in “The Offspring,” many in Starfleet grow worried by the presence of a second android on-board the Enterprise, and an Admiral from the Daystrom institute (an advanced Starfleet research facility) begins pressuring Captain Riker to remove Lal from the Enterprise and bring her to their facility.  I think David R. George III is one of the very best authors working on Star Trek novels these days, so I was really excited for his contribution to this collection.  And The Embrace of Cold Architects starts out quite strongly, as we follow the ripple effects of Lal’s presence — and Picard’s loss — through the events of the early fourth season of The Next Generation. But, ultimately, this novella wound up being my least favorite story in the collection.  It ends incredibly abruptly, leaving, in my mind, the… [continued]

When Star Trek: Enterprise was cancelled after four seasons, it left several story-lines hanging.  Many Star Trek fans, myself included, had been hoping that Enterprise would one-day chronicle the events of the Romulan War hinted at in episodes of the Original Series.  (And, indeed, several episodes from Enterprise’s fourth and final season hinted that the show might indeed be heading in that direction.)  Fortunately, Michael A. Martin (along with, on the first novel, Andy Mangels) has been telling the story of the Romulan War in a series of Star Trek novels.  (Click here for my review of the first novel in that series, Kobayashi Maru, and I’ll have reviews of the other two novels in the series coming soon.)

But there was an even bigger story-line left painfully unresolved at the end of Star Trek: Enterprise. Ever since the show’s pilot episode, “Broken Bow,” we’d been hearing about a mysterious Temporal Cold War, apparently being fought throughout time by time-travelers from the future.  Factions of this Temporal Cold War were repeatedly seen to be interfering in events of Captain Archer’s time, but to what end was never clear.  We saw some apparently heroic characters (Daniels, who appeared to be from a future Starfleet), and apparently villainous characters, such as the mysterious figure glimpsed throughout the series whose identity was never revealed (leading to his being nicknamed “Future Guy” by many fans).  I write “apparently” since various episodes offered sometimes contradictory information as to who was really trying to do what.  (At one point Future guy helped Captain Archer, and at other times Daniels appeared to be less than totally truthful.)

I have been waiting for the Star Trek novels to address this enormous dangling story-line, and I am very pleased to report that Christopher L. Bennett has done so with gusto in his latest novel Star Trek Department of Temporal Investigations: Watching the Clock.  (It’s a lengthy, sort of confusing title, but I gather that the hope is that there will be future installments of novels, under the Department of Temporal Investigations heading.  I join in this hope!)

The Department of Temporal Investigations is, of course, an agency seen in only one single Star Trek episode: the Deep Space Nine episode “Trials and Tibble-ations,” in which Sisko & co. accidentally travel back in time to the events of the Classic Trek episode “The Trouble with Tribbles.”  In that episode, we were introduced to DTI agents Lucsly and Dulmur, who were sent to investigate the time-travel events on behalf of their department, which was the Starfleet agency tasked with protecting the integrity of the time-line.  Agents Lucsly and Dulmur didn’t have a lot of screen-time, but they and their department sparked… [continued]

Last spring I wrote a very positive review of the latest Star Trek: Phase Two episode, Enemy: Starfleet!, which was written by Dave Galanter.  (If there are any Star Trek fans reading this who have not yet watched this awesome completely fan-made episode, you should do so immediately!)  After reading the review, Mr. Galanter was kind enough to drop me a line.  In the course of our e-mail exchange, he asked if I had read his latest Star Trek novel: Troublesome Minds. I admitted that I had not.  Though I’d purchased it about a year ago, I kept putting aside this stand-alone adventure, set during the Enterprise (no bloody A, B, C or D)’s original five-year mission, in favor of the Trek novels that were pushing the Star Trek story forward with adventures set following the events of the 24th century-set movies and TV shows.

But after that e-mail exchange, I decided that I should really find the time to give Troublesome Minds a read.  I’m really glad I did, because it’s a ripping Star Trek yarn and a really great novel.

In his e-mails to me, Mr. Galanter described Troublesome Minds as the Star Trek episode he’d always wanted to write.  That’s a great description of the novel.  I could totally see it as an episode.  (And damn, would it make a GREAT Phase Two episode!  Are you listening, Phase Two folks??)  The story is a completely stand-alone adventure, unburdened by any involvement with long-running story-lines.  It requires no detailed knowledge of other Star Trek novels or adventures.  It’s just a fun, fast-paced piece of speculative fiction, with some great sci-fi concepts, tough moral dilemmas for Kirk & co., and some tense action.  As I said, it would have made a terrific episode!

Captain Kirk and the Starship Enterprise respond to a distress call and rescue the life of an alien named Berlis, whose ship was about to be destroyed.  This simple act of kindness turns incredibly complicated, however, when it is discovered that Berlis belongs to a race of powerful telepaths known as the Isitri.  Every several generations, an Isitri emerges whose telepathy is so powerful that, without intending to do so, he/she can control the minds of every other Isitri he/she comes in contact with, thus mentally enslaving an entire race until that Troublesome Mind dies or is killed.  Berlis is just such a mind.  Will Captain Kirk and the Enterprise crew follow the wishes of the Isitri ruling council, and murder the man they just saved?  Or will they allow him to return home, and thus enslave an entire planet for a generation?

It’s a wonderfully inventive, thorny sci-fi dilemma that Mr. Galanter has crafted,… [continued]

Although I was a bit lukewarm on the first two novels in the four-book Star Trek crossover series, Typhon Pact, I loved the third installment (Rough Beasts of Empire, by David R. George III), and having just read the fourth and final installment, Paths of Disharmony, I am pleased to report that Dayton Ward stuck the landing. I thought this novel was a terrific Next Generation book in its own right, and also a compelling finale to this four-novel series.

Although I have complained, repeatedly, over the past few years about the dearth of new Deep Space Nine novels, I was thrilled by how DS9-centric this Typhon Pact series has been.  The first novel focused on Ezri Dax and Julian Bashir, the third novel focused on Benjamin Sisko, and in Paths of Disharmony I was thrilled to discover that we were finally returning to the story-thread that was so-prominent in the early post-finale DS9 novels: the reproductive problems afflicting Andorian society (with fewer and fewer Andorian children being born each year), and the personal journey of young Andorian Starfleet officer Thirishar Ch’Thane.

It’s been many long years since Shar has appeared in a Star Trek novel (I believe his last appearance — certainly his last PROMINENT appearance — was in Worlds of Deep Space Nine: Andor: Paradigm, by Heather Jarman, from back in 2004).  In the timeline of the Trek novels, it has been four years since the events of Paradigm. Shar has been working on Andor, and the need to solve his people’s reproductive crisis has only been exacerbated by the planet-wide destruction wreaked by the Borg during their invasion of Federation Space (in the series Star Trek: Destiny).

In this new novel, Andor’s story intersects with that of the growing Typhon Pact storyline.  Captain Picard and the crew of the Enterprise E are sent to Andor to help ensure security for a conference of scientists working to solve the Andorian reproductive crisis.  But Andor is still reeling from the havoc caused by the Borg attack, and the population is in turmoil over the various scientific solutions being proposed in order to attempt to solve their reproductive issues.  Anti-Federation sentiment and anti-alien hatred collide with fears over scientific tinkering with the Andorian genetic code leading to the possible eradication of everything that makes Andorians, as a species, unique, and though the current Andorian Presider (their top governmental official) hopes that the conference will help spark a scientific breakthrough, the gathering also has the potential to turn into a flashpoint for violence.

In addition to complaining about the dearth of recent DS9 novels, I have also written repeatedly about how I felt the attempts to relaunch the Next… [continued]

Now this is more what I’m talking about!  David R. George III’s new Star Trek novel, Rough Beasts of Empire, is by far the strongest installment in the Typhon Pact series so far, and one of the best Trek books I’ve read in years.

This third Typhon Pact novel only enhanced the comment I made in my review of the second book, Seize the Fire by Michael A. Martin: that this Typhon Pact series was not turning out to be at all what I had expected.  Since the idea of the Typhon Pact — an alliance made up of most of the United Federation of Planet’s major adversaries — was established a few years ago in A Singular Destiny by Keith R.A. DeCandido and Losing the Peace by William Leisner, I had assumed that this four-novel Typhon Pact series would now tell the story of the Pact’s confrontation with the Federation.

But having read three of the four books of the series, it hasn’t turned out that way at all.  The novels haven’t been about a conflict between the new Typhon Pact and the United Federation of Planets.  (The Typhon Pact was locked in an interstellar cold war with the Federation at the start of the series, and remain exactly in the same place here at the end of book three.)  Rather, the first three novels have focused on the character arcs of various characters from across the Star Trek series (Julian Bashir, William Riker, Spock, and Benjamin Sisko) while also exploring the cultures of the various Typhon Pact races.

It’s certainly not the fault of the authors that I had different (though I think reasonable) expectations for what the series would be.  And, indeed, I don’t mind at all that the novels have been more about character and world-building.  My complaints are more that the first two novels in the series were not all that exciting.  But while I was somewhat lukewarm about both Zero Sum Game and Seize the Fire, this third novel, Rough Beasts of Empire, is a real winner.

First of all, I was very pleasantly surprised that, despite the Typhon Pact label on the book’s cover, this novel is actually the meatiest Deep Space Nine focused novel to have been published in YEARS, and easily the best DS9 novel since David Mack’s Warpath from back in 2006.  (I did love Una McCormack’s The Never-Ending Sacrifice, but that novel didn’t advance any of the main DS9 story-lines — which was also a complaint I had about Zero Sum Game which, despite featuring Dr. Bashir and Ezri Dax, in my opinion frustratingly skirted all of the big lingering DS9 stories.)  But Rough Beasts of… [continued]

I’m finally ready to catch back up with this year’s four-book series of crossover Star Trek novels from Pocket Books: The Typhon Pact.  This series represents the latest installments in Pocket Books’ exciting efforts from the past few years to push the 24th century Star Trek adventures forward past their last on-screen appearances (the movie Star Trek: Nemesis and the ending of Deep Space Nine and Voyager).  In Keith R.A. DeCandido’s excellent 2009 novel A Singular Destiny (read my review here), we learned that a number of the Federation’s deadliest enemies — the Romulans, the Tholians, the Gorn, the Breen, and others — had banded together to form a new interstellar alliance called the Typhon Pact.  This was obviously going to lead to trouble for our heroes, particularly with the Federation still reeling from the decimation wrought by the Borg invasion (chronicled in David Mack’s also-excellent 2008 trilogy of novels, Star Trek: Destiny — read my review here).  The new Typhon Pact series focuses on characters from many of the different Star Trek series, and explores the repercussions of the creation of this new alliance.

Book one of the series, Zero Sum Game, was DS9-centric.  It followed Julian Bashir and Ezri Dax (who now commands her own starship, the USS Aventine) on a mission to infiltrate the Breen.  (You can read my review of Zero Sum Game here.)  After a few months away, I’ve finally found the time to move on to book two of the series: Seize the Fire,which is written by Michael A. Martin.  This novel shifts the focus to Captain Riker and the crew of the USS Titan, and explores the society of the Gorn.

At the start of the novel, a terrible natural disaster completely destroys Sazssgerrn, the only planet in the Gorn Hegemony on which their warrior caste were able to lay their eggs.  While the Gorn political structure struggles to find a solution to this species-threatening problem, several radiation-damaged Gorn warriors who survived the planetary catastrophe begin forming their own mad plans for the future of their race.  When they discover a massive, ancient structure that appears capable of terraforming an entire world in an instant — just like the long-lost Genesis technology could — they appear to have found the instrument by which to achieve their plans.  Unfortunately, in eco-sculpting an entire planet, this device would also completely destroy any life already existing on that world.  When the Gorn attempt to test this new device on the inhabited planet of Hranrar, only Captain Riker and the USS Titan appear to stand in the way of the annihilation of the millions of Hranrarii.

I quite enjoyed Seize the Fire, although between… [continued]

Some of the earliest Star Trek books I ever read as a kid were written by Margaret Wander Bonanno (one of these days I really have to go back and re-read Strangers from the Sky to see if I still like it as much as I did back then).  After the mess with the novel Probe (which is a fascinating and horrifying tale — head to Margaret Wander Bonanno’s web-site and click on “Probe: The Novel I didn’t Write: The Whole Story” on the right-hand side of the page for all the gory details), though, Ms. Bonanno was unable to continue writing Trek novels.  Thankfully, a decade later, editor Marco Palmieri (a phenomenal editor of the Star Trek line who was sadly fired himself a few years ago) brought her back into the fold.  Her first new novel, Catalyst of Sorrows, was OK, but her next book — an exploration of the life of the Christopher Pike called Burning Dreams — was phenomenal.  When I heard that she was working on a new novel that would explore what happened to Lt. Saavik after her brief appearance in Star Trek IV, I was very excited.

The main story of Star Trek: Unspoken Truth is set in the days following the events of Star Trek IV.  But the novel continually jumps around in time, allowing us to get glimpses of Saavik’s terrible childhood spent on the Romulan outpost nicknamed Hellguard, her early days on Vulcan (after having been rescued from Hellguard by a young Spock), her time at Starfleet Academy, and the events of Star Trek II-IV.  I particularly enjoyed the way the narrative wove in and out of familiar moments from those three films.  In particular, Ms. Bonanno makes a real meal out of Saavik’s one brief scene in Star Trek IV. That scene in the movie has always disappointed me.  While I was glad she at least got that one moment (even though the creators of the Trek films had clearly decided to jettison the character), it always struck me as a poor finish to the rich character who had received so much on-screen time and development during Star Trek II and III. Ms. Bonanno really fleshes out what was going on in that scene, what Saavik was thinking, why she blurted out that comment about David Marcus, and more.  Her writing really redeemed that scene for me in a wonderful way.

Much of Unspoken Truth — particularly the first half of the novel — is made up of short scenes.  I found this story-telling style to be quite engaging.  Through an accretion of vignettes, Ms. Bonanno is able to build in our minds a fully-realized picture of Saavik… [continued]

David Mack’s novella The Sorrows of Empire appeared in the Star Trek: Mirror Universe anthology Glass Empires back in 2007.  It was the highlight of the anthology, and one of my favorite pieces of Star Trek fiction in recent memory.  (Read my review of Glass Empires here.)  Last year, Mr. Mack expanded his story to a full-length novel, and it is a real winner.

The Sorrows of Empire is set entirely in the Mirror Universe introduced in the Classic Star Trek episode “Mirror, Mirror,” and picks up very shortly after the events of that episode.  The Spock of the Mirror Universe has been swayed by his mind-meld with “our” universe’s Dr. McCoy (in which Mirror Spock gained a glimpse of a United Federation of Planets made up of worlds peacefully joined towards their common benefit) as well as by his final encounter with Captain Kirk (in which Kirk argued that the tyrannical Mirror Universe Terran Empire was doomed to eventual collapse, and so Spock’s continued loyalty to that empire was wasteful and illogical).  So Spock decides to murder the Mirror Kirk and assume command of the I.S.S. Enterprise, but this is merely the first step in a much greater plan to eventually seize control of the Empire itself and begin to introduce reason and Democracy into the structure of the Empire’s society.  But even that is merely the beginning of a much bolder, long-term plan that by which Spock would attempt to reshape the galaxy.

I love Mr. Mack’s conceit of casting Spock as the Harry Sheldon of the Mirror Universe.  The first Deep Space Nine Mirror Universe episode, “Crossover,” painted Mirror Spock as a fool whose reforms lead to the weaking of the Terran Empire and its eventual conquest by a Klingon/Cardassian alliance.  But Mr. Mack’s story completely reinvents and redeems the Spock character as one who knew that his actions would eventually lead to the Terran Empire’s collapse and the brutal subjugation of Humans and Vulcans.  But Spock’s careful actions would ensure that this would not be the end of their civilization — quite the contray, he saw that this was the only way to transition the galaxy to a much more benevolent, long-lived societal structure, and he carefully planted the seeds to ensure this ultimate outcome.  Spock is presented here as the ultimate tactician — always prepared for his adversaries’ moves, and thinking decades and even centuries ahead into the future.  It’s a wonderfully compelling and heroic depiction of this familiar character.

The novel also sets up Marlena Moreau, the “Captain’s woman” introduced in “Mirror, Mirror” as an equally compelling partner in Spock’s ambitious undertaking.  I love that she is presented as truly being Spock’s partner.  While she might… [continued]

David Mack is one of the best of the group of extraordinarily talented, reliable writers who have been writing new Star Trek novels for Pocket Books for the past several years.  It’s the compelling work of these core writers that has kept me engaged with the novels’ expansion and continuation of the Star Trek saga.  So when Amazon delivered me his latest novel, Star Trek Typhon Pact: Zero Sum Game, it immediately jumped to the top of my lengthy to-read stack.

Mr. Mack’s stories have been among my favorite Trek novels from the past few years: his terrific, tense DS9 novel Warpath (click here for my review); his Mirror Universe story The Sorrows of Empire (click here for my review); and his game-changing three-part Star Trek Destiny series (click here for my review).  (I have his novel-length expansion of The Sorrows of Empire sitting on my book-shelf.  I’m really looking forward to reading that, since I enjoyed the novella so much — this might be the next book I read.)

But despite my enjoyment of Mr. Mack’s previous work, I must admit that I had some concerns about this novel, going in.  Primarily this is based on my disappointment with the way that the Deep Space Nine series of novels has floundered.  It was the post-finale continuation of DS9 novels that got me back into Star Trek fiction, nearly a decade ago, and for the first several years I thought that Pocket Books’ DS9 series was unimpeachable.  The novels came out in fairly regular installments, and together they formed a terrifically well-made story that continued the stories of all of the beloved characters, and extended the canvas of the DS9 saga.  But after David Mack’s really fantastic novel Warpath, which ended on an excruciating cliffhanger, the series hit rough waters.  In the years since that novel’s publication (in 2006), only three post-finale-set DS9 novels have been published: two short, mediocre books, and a third novel (The Never-Ending Sacrifice) that was terrific but which told a pretty separate, distinct story that didn’t connect in any strong way to the continuing post-finale story readers have been following (click here for my review of that great book).  Whereas other novels have moved forward the stories of the other 24th-century-set Star Trek shows (we’ve seen several novels continuing the story of the crew of the Enterprise-E following the last movie, Nemesis, and there has even been a new series continuing the Voyager story), the DS9 saga has felt, to me, to have been left behind.

In his universe-spanning cross-over series, Destiny, Mr. Mack made the decision to jump ahead in the chronology and include several DS9 characters in his story, which was set… [continued]

Author Christopher Bennett returns to the Star Trek: Titan series of novels (chronicling the continuing adventures of Captain William T. Riker and the diverse inter-species crew of his new command, the deep-space exploration ship Titan) with the fifth installment in the series, Under a Torrent Sea.  (Click here for my review of book four, Sword of Damocles.)

The Titan crew discovers a water planet that, despite apparently having no land masses whatsoever, seems to contain sentient life.  Titan‘s navigator, Aili Lavena, takes the lead in the investigation of this strange new world (which the Titan crew quickly nicknames Droplet), since she comes from a water planet and is fully comfortable exploring Droplet’s oceans without the aid of a shuttlecraft or environmental suit.  Guess what, things go wrong, and she soon finds herself stranded on the planet along with the injured Captain Riker.

Following on the heels of book four’s investigation into the background and character of Bajoran science officer Jaza Najem, Under a Torrent Sea provides us with a similarly detailed look at another Titan crew-member, the Selkie Ensign Lavena.  It’s great fun to read along as these novels explore these fascinating created-for-the-novels characters, while also continuing to throw lots of new wrinkles towards the from-the-TV-shows characters like Riker and Troi, and even the Elaysian Melora Pazlar (who appeared in one second season Deep Space Nine episode).

What I enjoy most about the novels written by Christopher Bennett is the time and space that he devotes to fully investigating and exploring the alien societies that he creates.  His previous Titan novel featured his extrapolations about the workings of an entire society of space-faring Cosmozoans, while Under a Torrent Sea contains a wealth of details about the conditions on a water-planet and the type of life that might be found there.  Of course this is all science fiction, but Mr. Bennett has clearly devoted time and attention to researching the scientific underpinnings of his story.   This brings his novel closer to speculative fiction than it is to pure fantasy, and enhances the engaging nature of the story being told.

All of this wouldn’t amount to much if he didn’t have a strong story to tell within that framework, and as always Mr. Bennett does not disappoint on that score.  I really enjoyed getting to know Ensign Lavena over the course of the novel and (spoiler alert!!) I was pleased that she wasn’t written out of the series at the end of the book, the way the focus of the previous novel was!  The strength of this main story keeps the book moving along at a quick pace.  It may be why I found myself enjoying this novel even more… [continued]

It’s been a bit of a while since my last review of a novel in Pocket Books’ Star Trek: Titan series, chronicling the post-Star Trek: Nemesis adventures of Captain William Riker and his new command.  After reading the first four novels when they were originally released, earlier this year I realized that I had fallen behind on the series.  Since a few years had passed since the series began (the novels have been published at a rate of about one or two a year), I decided to go back and re-read the first four novels before moving on to the fifth and sixth installments (which were published this year).  However, after finishing book three, Orion’s Hounds, I got a bit distracted by my project to re-read all of Arthur C. Clarke’s Odyssey series, and various other things.  But now I’m back in the saddle!

Entering a region of space never-before explored by manned Federation starships, the Titan encounters the planet Orisha, whose denizens have been menaced for centuries by a celestial phenomenon that they call “the Eye” which periodically wreaks havoc on their planet.  Many Orishans worship “the Eye” as a deity, one which sits in judgment of their society and regularly punishes them for their sins.  As the Titan crew attempt to investigate this phenomenal, things (predictably) go awry and the landing party is separated from the Titan and presumed dead.

Far from being deceased, the landing party find themselves stranded on the surface of a planet Orisha that seems much different from the planet they had observed from orbit.  As the crew (both on the planet and back on Titan) attempt to extricate themselves from the situation in which they have become enmeshed, they must struggle with aspects of the Prime Directive while also confronting questions about fate and destiny.

Sword of Damocles, written by Geoffrey Thorne, is another strong, enjoyable installment in this series of novels.  I’ve been pleased by how well the different authors have been able to maintain consistency in the voices of the many new-to-the-novels characters that make up the diverse Titan crew.  Mr. Thorne has a terrific grasp on the characters, giving each of them a distinct personality even as he weaves scores of alien Titan crew-members in and out of the narrative.  It was nice to see several members of the Titan crew — such as science specialist Jaza Najem, chief engineer Dr. Xin Ra-Havreii, and head of Stellar Cartography Melora Pazlar — get a lot of attention in the story, though I must confess some disappointment (small spoiler alert!) that one intriguing character was written out of the series by the novel’s conclusion, just when I felt that this… [continued]

Today I’m continuing my look at Pocket Books’ series of Star Trek: Titan novels, chronicling the post-Nemesis adventures of newly-minted Captain William T. Riker and the starship Titan.  (Click here for my review of Book 1: Taking Wing, and here for my review of Book 2: The Red King.)  While authors Andy Mangels & Michael A. Martin wrote those first two books, with the third novel in the series, Orion’s Hounds, they hand things off to Christopher L. Bennett.

The basic premise of the Titan series is that, following the cataclysmic events of the Dominion War and the other crises that followed, Starfleet has decided to attempt to return to its basic principles of peaceful exploration.  As such, they have commissioned the creation of a new class of starships, the Luna class, designed for deep-space exploration.  Will Riker commands the Titan, one of those new Luna class vessels, and he and his crew have been sent on a mission beyond the boundaries of the Federation (specifically towards the Gum Nebula, one of the largest astronomical landmarks in the Orion Arm of the Milky Way galaxy) to attempt to seek out new life and new civilizations.

As they travel into unexplored space, Deanna Troi and the other telepaths on board Titan find their minds touched by powerful consciousnesses that, while alien, nevertheless, feel somehow familiar to Troi.  The reason for that familiarity is soon made clear as the Titan discovers that the telepathic contact originated from a school of “star-jellies” — the same type of beautiful (and enormous) space-faring creatures that the U.S.S. Enterprise-D first encountered in the pilot episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation, “Encounter at Farpoint.”

However, along with the star-jellies in their natural habitat, Titan also encounters the Pa’haquel, a species that hunts the star-jellies as well as many of the other space-dwelling life-forms found in that part of the galaxy.  The Pa’haquel are actually able to manipulate the dead corpses of the jellies, turning them into their own ships in which they’re able to live and which they use as vehicles for their hunts.  Riker, along with many members of his crew, are horrified by the actions of the Pa’haquel, but as per Starfleet regulations they are reluctant to interfere in the culture of an alien race.

Of course, events (which I won’t spoil here) soon force their hand, and a member of the Titan crew commits an act that dramatically upsets the balance between the Pa’haquel and the star-jellies.  The repercussions of that event makes plain to the Titan crew that things aren’t quite so simple as Star-jellies=good and Pa’haquel=bad, and they discover that their actions have caused dramatic ripple effects that threaten to… [continued]

After being catapulted clear of the Milky Way galaxy at the end of Taking Wing (The first Star Trek Titan novel — read my review here), Captain William T. Riker and the crew of the U.S.S. Titan find themselves in the Small Magellanic Cloud, one of the Milky Way’s satellite galaxies.  This area of space also happens to be the home of the Neyel, the mysterious race of aliens with centuries-old ties to humanity first introduced in the novel The Sundered (read my review here).

While Taking Wing was focused on introducing Riker’s new ship and its extraordinarily varied interspecies crew, as well as wrapping up a number of dangling story-threads left by the end of Star Trek: Nemesis, The Red King (written by Andy Mangels & Michael A. Martin) is more of what the Titan series was billed to be: a story of exploration, in which Riker and his crew encounter strange new worlds and new life forms.  At the same time, The Red King is a direct sequel to both Taking Wing and The Sundered, as Riker and his crew work to locate Romulan commander Donatra’s missing fleet, figure out how to return to Federation space, and unravel the mystery of a terrible new threat to Neyel space.  (Readers, meanwhile, get to learn about what has happened to the Neyel since we last met them 100 years earlier during Captain Sulu’s time in The Sundered.)

My recollection was that The Red King was my least favorite of the Titan series, but in re-reading the novel I found quite a lot to enjoy.  Mangels & Martin have a nice, easy-to-read writing style that I always find very engaging.  The Red King is a fast-paced yarn, and it continues the exploration of the unique natures and backstories of the members of Titan’s diverse inter-species crew that was begun in the previous installment.  Most interestingly to me, we finally learn the details of the event that caused the thirty-years-and-counting rift between Starfleet Admiral Leonard James Akaar and Lt. Tuvok (who had been close friends aboard the Excelsior during the events of The Sundered).

But the novel does have some weaknesses.  Primarily, the emerging sentient protouniverse that is destabilizing space in the Small Magellanic Cloud doesn’t really present that compelling a scientific mystery (the Titan crew seem to figure out what’s going on pretty quickly) nor that compelling a challenge/adversary.  As a result, the novel sometimes seems to be without a central narrative thrust.  Riker’s crew comes up with a plan to contain the protouniverse about halfway through the novel, meaning that the whole second half of the book is without any real twists.  Oh, a lot happens, don’t get me… [continued]

Back in 2003-2004, Pocket Books released a terrific series of novels entitled The Lost Era that chronicled the approximately seventy-five years between Captain Kirk’s death in Star Trek: Generations and the launch of the Enterprise-D in “Encounter at Farpoint,” the pilot episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation.

I thoroughly enjoyed this series when it was initially released, and I’ve been wanting to re-read these novels for several years now.  Since the cliffhanger at the end of Taking Wing (the first novel in Pocket Book’s Star Trek Titan series — read my review here — following the exploits of Captain William T. Riker’s new ship) referred directly to the events of the first Lost Era novel, The Sundered, I decided to go back and re-read that novel before proceeding on to Titan book 2, The Red King.

Set in 2298, five years after Star Trek: Generations, The Sundered presents us with an adventure of Captain Sulu and the U.S.S. Excelsior.  Star Trek VI introduced the idea that former U.S.S. Enterprise helmsman Hikaru Sulu had been promoted to captain of the Excelsior, and The Sundered picks up his story as the veteran master of that vessel.  Also aboard the Excelsior are several familiar faces: Pavel Chekov is Sulu’s first officer, Janice Rand is his communications officer, and Christine Chapel is his chief medical officer.  As established in the Voyager episode “Flashback,” the young Vulcan Tuvok is also on-board, though struggling to deal with the illogical nature of all of the non-Vulcans in Starfleet.  We also learn that a young Leonard James Akaar (born in the Original Series episode “Friday’s Child” and re-introduced in the last several years of Star Trek novels as a stern elderly admiral in the post-Nemesis Next Gen era) is on board as well, and had at the time a close friendship with Tuvok.

At the risk of repeating what I have written in previous Trek novel reviews ad nauseum, I am continually delighted by the interconnectedness of the last decade’s worth of Pocket Book’s Trek novels.  Though set almost a hundred years earlier, The Sundered fits in perfectly with the current batch of post-Nemesis Next Gen novels and with the new Titan series, providing a number of interesting pieces of backstory for characters featured in those other novels.  (It of course helps that The Sundered was written by Michael A. Martin & Andy Mangels, who also wrote the first two Titan novels, Taking Wing and The Red King.)

I haven’t even mentioned the main thrust of The Sundered‘s story yet.  Tenuous peace talks with the violent, xenophobic Tholians (enigmatic aliens first introduced in the classic Original Series episode “The Tholian Web”) are imperiled when the Excelsior crew… [continued]

I’ve written a lot on this site about Pocket Books’ series of post-finale Deep Space Nine novels, as well as the series of post-Nemesis Next Generation novels.  But I haven’t made much mention of another top-notch series of novels that has been a big part of Pocket Books’ exciting efforts to move the Star Trek universe forward: the continuing adventures of Captain William T. Riker and the starship Titan.

There have been six Titan novels published so far, with more on the way.  Before beginning the latest novel (set after the cataclysmic events of David Mack’s Destiny trilogy, which I reviewed here), I decided to go back and re-read the series in its entirety.  Over the next few weeks (hopefully it will be weeks, and not months!) I’ll be bringing you my thoughts on all the novels in the series.

Today, we’ll start with Taking Wing, the novel that kicked everything off, by Michael A. Martin and Andy Mangels.

After almost a decade of near-constant conflict with alien races such as the Borg, the Cardassians, the Klingons, and, of course, the Dominion, it seems that the United Federation of Planets has finally returned to a state of peace.  As such, Starfleet decides to return to its central mission of peaceful exploration and commissions the construction of a new class of starships, the Luna class, to be sent out into the unexplored regions of the galaxy to seek out new life and new civilizations.

Newly-promoted Captain William Riker (whose promotion to captaincy was one of the only decent story-points to be found in the final Next Gen film, Star Trek: Nemesis) is filled with excitement for this new mission of exploration, and he sets out to assemble the most biologically and culturally diverse crew in Starfleet history.  (More on the Titan’s crew in just a moment.)  Unfortunately, the events of Star Trek: Nemesis (in which the clone Shinzon led a Reman plot to murder the Romulan Praetor and every member of the Senate and usurp control of the Romulan Empire for himself, before he too perished in conflict with the U.S.S. Enterprise) have left the Romulan Empire fractured and in chaos.  Titan‘s mission of exploration is postponed so that Riker and his crew can travel to Romulus in the hopes of mediating some sort of power-sharing agreement and stave off a catastrophic civil war.

Taking Wing is an absolutely phenomenal novel — probably the strongest of the Titan series, and one of my favorite Trek novels from the past several years.  I really loved the Romulan storyline.  I enjoyed the way Mr. Martin & Mr. Mangels picked up the pieces from Nemesis — they really considered things that the filmmakers did… [continued]

My faith in the continuing DS9 saga is restored!

Last week I week I wrote about my disappointment with how the spectacular DS9 novel series has sort-of petered out over the past few years, but after reading the other DS9 novel published this year, Una McCormack’s spectacular The Never-Ending Sacrifice, I am again reminded about just how amazing this series can be.

The Never-Ending Sacrifice is a sequel, of sorts, to the intriguing second-season DS9 episode “Cardassians.”  In that episode, an elderly Bajoran man arrives on the station with his adoptive son, Rugal, a Cardassian child who was left behind when the Cardassian occupation of Bajor ended.  Allegations emerge that the Bajorans are raising Rugal to hate his own kind, and when his actual father arrives on the station, relieved that the son he believed dead still lives, the Cardassian government demands that Commander Sisko turn the boy over to them.  It’s a complex episode that fleshes out a lot of the show’s back-story — including a look at what went on during the Cardassian occupation and the reasons for their withdrawal (indeed, this was the episode that revealed that the Cardassians’ name for the station was Terok Nor), as well as a lot more about the deceitful web of Cardassian politics (including more information than we’d learned at that time about Garak and Dukat) and how life on Bajor was proceeding after the Cardassian withdrawal.  Despite all those great qualities, though, I was always troubled by the ending of the episode.  After all that build-up, Sisko’s decision is revealed in the closing moments in a simplistic commander’s log (it’s as if the writers just ran out of time and realized that they had to end the episode), and I couldn’t believe that Sisko actually decided to take the boy from his adoptive parents, with whom Rugal had expressed a clear desire to stay.

It was an episode that demanded a follow-up, but none ever came during the seven-year run of the show.  Luckily, Una McCormack has stepped in to fill that void.  The Never-Ending Sacrifice follows the life of Rugal from the moment he was taken by his Cardassian father-by-blood, Kotan Pa’Dar, back to Cardassia Prime, all the way through the tumultuous events of the series and through the post-finale series of novels as well.  Ms. McCormack has masterfully woven together the intimate story of Rugal’s young life with the epic tale of the rise and fall of Cardassia.

Both aspects of the story are extraordinarily compelling.  Rugal is an interesting protagonist.  Following the events of the episode “Cardassians,” I expected him to be depicted as an angry, hateful young man because of his forced separation from his adoptive… [continued]

The post-Nemesis Star Trek: The Next Generation adventures continue in the latest excellent novel from Pocket Books, Losing the Peace, by William Leisner.

Following the calamitous destruction that the Borg have wrought throughout the Federation in David Mack’s terrific Destiny trilogy (see my review here), Starfleet’s exploration programs are all put on hold as every surviving starship is called upon to help pick up the pieces.  Whole planets have been destroyed, leaving countless displaced survivors stranded across space.  The surviving Federation worlds quickly find themselves overwhelmed by an enormous flood of refugees who have lost everything, and dramatic shortages of food and materiel strike everywhere.

Captain Jean-Luc Picard and the crew of the U.S.S. Enterprise bounce about the quadrant, attempting to help where they can and put out whatever “fires” they might come across, but the enormous problems facing the Federation seem much larger than anything that can be addressed by one lone starship.  Meanwhile, Picard’s command crew (many of whom are new faces who have been introduced in Pocket Books’ post-Nemesis novels) each must face personal struggles as they try to come to grips with the tragedies they have survived.

Losing the Peace may be a unique Star Trek novel in that there is no villain.  There is no alien threat to be overcome, no unique science-fiction mystery to be solved.  Rather, the problems that beset Picard & co. this time are of a much more mundane — though no less perilous — nature.  It would have been easy for Mr. Leisner to have added in some sort of more traditional antagonist — an alien race trying to take advantage of the chaos in the Federation, or something like that — and he is to be commended for avoiding that somewhat obvious way to add drama to the story.  Instead, Mr. Leisner takes the time to draw the reader into a variety of much smaller-scale dramas taking place amongst Picard’s crew and all around the devastated Alpha Quadrant.  These aren’t “fate of the universe” stories of a galactic scale — they’re very “human” tales.  One might think that could make for a rather dull Star Trek novel.  Quite the contrary — I thoroughly enjoyed this very realistic take on what the Federation would logically be facing following the galactic upheavals that took place in Destiny, and all of the “small” stories to be found in Losing the Peace accumulate into a tense novel in which the Federation seems to be in far greater peril than it ever has been before.

I was also pleased at how well Mr. Leisner was able to characterize both the familiar Next Gen characters who appear (Picard, Beverly, Worf, and Geordi) as well as the… [continued]

I can’t believe I actually purchased a book with Star Trek: Voyager in the title!  (For those of you just tuning in, despite my intense love for Star Trek, I have a rather large amount of disdain for Voyager, the most boring and uninspired of the Trek series.)  And even more than that — I can’t believe I liked it!!

Pocket Books has published Star Trek: Voyager novels before (though not for several years).  So what prompted me to pick this one up?

Following David Mack’s magnificent three-book Destiny series (which I reviewed here) that involved characters from all of the 24th century Trek TV shows (Next Gen, DS9, and Voyager) and wreaked an enormous amount of havoc within the established Trek universe, I have been chomping at the bit to see where the story goes from here.  Keith R.A. DeCandidio’s excellent novel A Singular Destiny was the first follow-up (reviewed here), and two subsequent novels have been released over the past few months: Over a Torrent Sea, by Christopher L. Bennett (which explores the ramifications of the events of Destiny on Captain William Riker and his crew on the U.S.S. Titan, and which I’ll be reviewing here soon), and Kirsten Beyer’s Voyager novel, Full Circle, which bridges the gap between the series finale of Voyager (and the handful of Voyager novels that Pocket books released soon after) and the events of Destiny.

Full Circle is a lengthy book (clocking in at 561 pages) that really feels like two books combined into one.  (That is not a complaint.)  The bulk of the first half of the novel follows up on a storyline begun in the latter days of the Voyager series: the idea that a sect of Klingons has become convinced that Miral, the daughter of Tom Paris and B’Elanna Torres, is the Kuvah’magh, the long-predicted Klingon savior.  Upon Voyager’s return to the Alpha Quadrant, B’Elanna takes sanctuary with Miral at the Klingon monastery on Boreth, where she seeks to discover the truth behind the prophecies of the Kuvah’magh.  Of course, it isn’t long before Miral is kidnapped and Torres, and the rest of the crew of Voyager, find themselves swept up in a Klingon feud that is thousands of years old.

The second half of the novel jumps back in forth in time over the course of the next few years, catching the Voyager story-lines up with the events of the last few years worth of Trek novels that culminated in Destiny.  Voyager is home, and back on active duty with Starfleet in the Alpha Quadrant.  But none of the crew has had an easy time re-adjusting to life at home, and terrible tragedies continue to befall… [continued]

Star Trek fever continues here at MotionPicturesComics.com!  Did you miss my list of the Top Twenty Episodes of Star Trek?  Then check it out!  Previously this week I’ve written about Pocket Books’ excellent two-book Star Trek: Mirror Universe series, as well as their follow-up Mirror Universe collection “Shards and Shadows.”

Based, I presume, on the success of the two-book Mirror Universe series in 2007, this past summer Pocket Books released a similarly formatted two-book collection (each containing three novellas, just like the Mirror Universe volumes) entitled Star Trek: Myriad Universes. While all six Mirror Universe novellas charted the future-history of that one particular parallel universe, Myriad Universes contains six stories that are each set in entirely different alternate universes.  These aren’t return visits to alternate pasts or futures that we saw in any of the Trek TV shows — these are all completely new creations of the authors involved.  As with the Mirror Universe stories, these tales are all fantastic fun.

Volume I: “Infinity’s Prism”

A Less Perfect Union, by William Leisner — In the final episodes of Star Trek: Enterprise, as Earth took its first tentative steps towards uniting with the nearby alien races it had once feared and hated (the Vulcans, the Andorians, the Tellarites) to form what would one-day become the United Federation of Planets, a xenophobic hate-group called Terra Prime began gaining influence and followers on Earth.  In this story, we are introduced to a United Earth where the followers of Terra Prime convinced Earth’s government to reject the nascent interstellar alliance and instead expel all aliens from the planet.  Nearly a hundred years later, Captain Christopher Pike, in command of the U.E.S.S. Enterprise, comes across a distress signal from an old Earth vessel that has apparently crash-landed on a distant planet called Talos.  Astute readers will immediately recognize the story of the original Star Trek pilot, The Cage.  Unfortunately, things go a little differently for the United Earth Starship in this reality than they did in our familiar version of the story.  Captain Pike, along with several members of Earth’s government, begins to realize that the time may finally have come for Earth to once again reach out to its neighbors in the galaxy… and the one surviving member of Jonathan Archer’s Enterprise might be the key.  From the brilliant first chapter, which tells a so-familiar yet so-different version of the famous opening scenes of The Cage, right up through the parallel version of the Babel Conference (originally told in the great Classic Trek episode “Journey to Babel”) which forms the bulk of this novella, this is a marvelous story.  It is emotional, intense and, at the same time, hopeful, as all the… [continued]

Yesterday I discussed the two terrific collections of Star Trek: Mirror Universe novellas, “Glass Empires” and “Obsidian Alliances.”  I commented that my only real complaint was that so many of the stories ended on cliffhangers that seemed to beg for further tales to be told.

I still sense that there’s a lot more to the Mirror Universe story that we have yet to see, but for now I have to be content with Pocket Books’ recent follow-up, “Shards and Shadows.”  Rather than a collection of novellas, “Shards and Shadows” contains twelve short stories written by a “who’s-who” of great Trek authors and spanning hundreds of years of Mirror Universe future-history.

Nobunaga, by Dave Stern — Continuing the story begun in the Enterprise two-parter “In a Mirror, Darkly” and the novella Age of the Empress, this story follows the sad final days of Charles “Trip” Tucker.  His body has been broken and his mind scrambled by too many years working in close proximity to the dangerous energies produced by starship warp engines.  But beyond the pain of dying, Trip is tortured by scattered memories of something he can’t quite recall.  Was he involved in a plan by Empress Sato to construct a second ship like the miraculous 23rd century Starship Defiant?  If he was, what happened, and why can’t he remember?  Dave Stern’s story is a great mind-bender of a fractured narrative.  It also hints at what happened to the character re-introduced in the final pages of Age of the Empress, but I am still left wanting to know more about that character’s full story!  Hopefully some-day soon…

Ill Winds, by Dayton Ward & Kevin Dilmore — A story of the Mirror Universe Robert April (commander of the Enterprise before Christopher Pike and James T. Kirk).  April and his crew aboard the I.S.S. Constellation are sent to investigate the rumors of a new super-weapon being constructed by the Klingons, but which crew will prove to be the more ruthless?  A great, brutal ending fits right in with the Mirror Universe.

The Greater Good, by Margaret Wander Bonanno — It’s the tale of how James T. Kirk gains command of the Starship Enterprise, how he meets Marlena Moreau and how he gains possession of the powerful Tantalus Device (a key plot device in the very first Mirror Universe episode, Classic Trek’s “Mirror Mirror”).  It’s one of the most well-written stories in the collection, gripping and fast-paced.  At the same time, it’s a little disappointing in that it all seems a little too, well, easy.  Kirk just happens to find the Tantalus Device?  I’d have hoped for a more epic story about his acquisition of that amazing and mysterious machine, and perhaps more… [continued]

One of the most delightful surprises about the last few years of Pocket Books’ Star Trek novels (about which I have waxed poetic here, here, and here) has been the way the writers and editors have fleshed out the Mirror Universe.

This concept was first introduced in the Classic Trek episode “Mirror Mirror,” written by Jerome Bixby.  A transporter accident throws Kirk, Bones, Scotty, and Uhura into an alternate universe where the beneficent United Federation of Planets has been replaced by a vicious, evil Terran empire populated by darker versions of all the familiar Trek characters.  Year later, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine explored the idea further through a series of episodes (“Crossover,” “Through the Looking Glass,” “Shattered Mirror,” “Resurrection,” and “The Emperor’s New Cloak”) in which we discovered that the Terran Empire had been conquered by an even more brutal alliance of Klingons and Cardassians.  Finally, the two-part Enterprise episode “In a Mirror, Darkly” gave viewers a look at the origins of the dark Terran Empire.

That’s quite a number of Mirror Universe episodes that I just listed, but the Star Trek authors and editors at Pocket Books clearly felt that there was a lot more that could be done to flesh out the Mirror Universe, and thank goodness for that!  The Mirror Universe has played a large role in the recent Deep Space Nine novels, but it was really pushed into the limelight with the two-part series Star Trek: Mirror Universe, each of which contained three novellas by some of Pocket Books’ best Trek authors.

Volume I: Glass Empires

Age of the Empress, by Mike Sussman with Dayton Ward and Kevin Dilmore — This story picks up moments after the end of Enterprise‘s “In a Mirror, Darkly,” with the newly-crowned Empress Sato in command of the fearsome 23rd century Starship Defiant.  It’s not long, though, before her rule is threatened by enemies from without (a band of rebels with whom T’pol has gotten involved) and within (a coup organized by Sato’s consort, the Andorian Shran).  The tale is just as much of an action-packed romp as the two Enterprise episodes were, although it fails to answer my biggest question that was left hanging by those episodes, which is what happened, ultimately, to the Starship Defiant?

The Sorrows of Empire, by David Mack — The highlight of the series.  Spock’s exposure to “our” universe’s Captain Kirk (in the original Trek Mirror Universe episode) has convinced him that the Terran empire is illogical and must be replaced by a kinder, more just society.  Mack’s tale unfolds over the decades that follow, as we watch Spock’s eminently logical plan unfold, step by step.  In a fascinating twist, Mack casts… [continued]

In movies, in TV shows, in books, and in comic books, a big cataclysmic event is always a lot of fun.  But it only becomes meaningful and worthwhile if that big event leads to great new, interesting stories about the aftermath of whatever has happened.  

Did something BIG and DRAMATIC happen in some show’s season finale or season premiere?  Well, great!  But is everything back to normal in the very next episode?  Or are the repercussions of the exciting event explored in the episodes that followed?  Since, as you can tell from the headline, we’re talking about Star Trek today, let me give a Trek example: “The Best of Both Worlds” is possibly the high-point of Star Trek: The Next Generation.  (As anyone reading this article is probably aware, it’s an amazing, action-packed two-parter in which Captain Picard is assimilated by the Borg.)  But, for me, an enormous part of what made that event so great is the episode that follows, “Home,” in which we explore Picard’s attempt to recover from the intensely traumatic event that he went through.

David Mack’s trilogy of novels, Star Trek: Destiny, (which I reviewed here) was an incredibly exciting, ambitious story that left the established Star Trek universe in chaos.  I enjoyed Destiny thoroughly, but I was even more excited about that story’s follow-up: A Singular Destiny, written by Keith R.A. DeCandido.  That many of Mr. DeCandido’s books rank among my favorites of the recent Trek novels certainly added to my anticipation, but mostly I was just excited to see what sorts of new, exciting stories the Trek authors would be able to tell in this brave new post-Destiny world.

I am happy to report that A Singular Destiny is a terrific read, and that this new novel continues to contain all of the elements that I have so throughly enjoyed in so many of Pocket Books’ recent Star Trek novels.

As the book begins, we are introduced to a new character: Professor Sonek Pran.  Once a valued advisor to a series of Presidents of the United Federation of Planets, he has fallen out of favor and settled into a life of teaching University students on Mars.  But he is called back to service to help with the diplomatic situation within what’s left of the fractured Romulan empire (the result of the events of Star Trek: Nemesis as well novels such as Death in Winter by Michael Jan Friedman and Taking Wing by Michael A. Martin & Andy Mangels).  Needless to say, what seems like an isolated incident turns out to be only a small piece of a larger, galaxy-wide puzzle.  Before long, Professor Pran (and the readers!) have witnessed the emergence… [continued]

A few months ago I wrote about some of the exciting Star Trek fiction that Pocket Books has released over the past several years, picking up story-lines left hanging by the now off-the-air 24th century Trek series (Star Trek: The Next Generation, Deep Space Nine, and Voyager).  The over-all quality of these books has been terrific, and I have really been enjoying the sense of a coherent, connected universe that the novels have created.  Story-lines from one novel lead into the next, characters are growing and changing in ways they seldom did on the TV shows that needed to preserve the status quo from week-to-week, and there’s been a strong sense of the over-all narrative moving forward towards something really exciting.

That something exciting is Star Trek: Destiny, the three-novel series by David Mack that serves as a sort-of “season finale” for all of the Trek novels released recently.  Multiple characters from all of the Trek series, as well as a variety of new characters that have been introduced and developed in the novels, converge in this enormous storyline.

Half a decade after the end of the Dominion War, Captain Dax of the U.S.S. Aventine has discovered in the Gamma Quadrant the wreckage of Earth’s second Warp 5 starship, the U.S.S. Columbia NX-02, lost for centuries.  (The Columbia and its Captain, Erika Hernandez, were a big part of the fourth and final season of Star Trek: Enterprise.)  Meanwhile, the moment the Federation has long dreaded has arrived:  The Borg have launched a full-scale invasion of Federation territory, with hundreds of cubes.  Captain Jean-Luc Picard and the crew of the U.S.S. Enterprise attempt to lead the remains of Starfleet in a last-ditch effort to protect the core systems and somehow halt the Borg advance, but as world after world falls, their struggle becomes increasingly hopeless.  

Destiny is an ambitious, far-reaching story that tells several (interconnected) tales simultaneously.  We follow Captain Picard and the crew of the Enterprise as they fight to find some way to defeat the Borg, as they have so many times in the past.  Meanwhile, far outside of Federation space on a mission of deep-space exploration, the hopelessness of Captain William Riker and the crew of the U.S.S. Titan at being too far away to help their friends and family is compounded when they find themselves in an impossible situation, trapped by the highly advanced species called the Caeliar.  This long-lived race is connected to the mystery of the Columbia, which Dax and the Aventine are investigating in the Gamma Quadrant.  (And, not surprising, both stories are connected to the Borg’s invasion of the Federation — although what IS surprising is the remarkable nature of the ultimately-discovered… [continued]

In addition to the great series of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine novels that I discussed yesterday, Pocket Books has really stepped up their game across the board.  They have released a number of marvelous novels in the past few years dealing with ALL the different series in the Star Trek franchise.  With few exceptions, they all have the same great things going for them that the DS9 books do — tight continuity from novel to novel, strong character arcs, and terrific attention to detail in terms of picking up old plotlines from long-ago episodes of the different Trek shows, or in taking minor characters from old episodes and bringing them back in unexpected and fun ways.  I have never seen the Trek UNIVERSE treated so much like a cohesive universe before — where things that happen in one novel, or that happened in older episodes of the series, aren’t just forgotten about.  Rather, the consequences and repercussions of those actions are explored… and characters that might have been one-dimensional in the past are fleshed-out and deepened.

For example, Ensign Ro was a well-loved character introduced in season five of the Next Generation.  And yet, after her initial introduction we never learned a whole heck of a lot about her, other than that she was tough and didn’t much like authority figures.  But she has been magnificently fleshed out in the DS9 books, where she has had to struggle to figure out where she belongs as Bajor begins the process of becoming a member world of the Federation.  Will she return to Starfleet, an organization in which she has failed twice?  Will she remain on Bajor, a planet and cultural heritage she rejected and fled from in her youth?  There’s a lot of interesting drama to be had there.  Here’s another interesting example: In the second season of Deep Space Nine, there was an episode in which it looked like Bajor was going to renounce its partnership with the Federation, and a team of Bajoran officers attempted to capture the station.  The leader of those officers was a Bajoran general named Krim.  He only appeared in that one episode, but I always thought the actor made a great impression — he was a memorable character, one who was tough and extraordinarily loyal to his home planet of Bajor, but also calm, rational, and open-minded.  Well, I guess I wasn’t the only one who thought he was a great character, because the Trek novel writers have brought back Krim in the role of Bajor’s first representative to the Federation Council.  The character has played a major role in the “Bajor” novella from the Worlds of Deep Space Nine series, by… [continued]

The other day I mentioned here that there hasn’t been any truly great Star Trek around since Deep Space Nine went off the air back in 1999.

Well, that’s not entirely true.  Believe it or not, in the past few years, Pocket Book has put together a terrific line of Star Trek fiction.  You heard me right!

I have found most novels based on sci-fi TV shows or movies to be, as a rule, disappointing.  Most are saddled with the restrictions of having to adhere to the continuity of the show or movie being written about.  In other words, nothing of great significance can happen to any of the characters, because they need to be in the exact same place at the end of the book as they were in the beginning.  Well, that takes a lot of the fun out of the story!  I’ve been reading Pocket Books’ Star Trek novels since I was a kid.  Even though I got a lot of enjoyment out of the books back in the day, I quickly recognized that most of the books followed the same basic framework: the Enterprise (either Kirk’s or Picard’s) visits a new planet, has an adventure, and then our heroes head on their merry way.  There were several authors who spun some terrific Star Trek tales within that framework (Peter David being one of my favorites), but after a number of years of reading those novels I eventually drifted away.

But over the past few years, with no new Star Trek TV series or movies on the horizon (and the more recent development of J.J. Abrams’ new Star Trek movie looking like its going to be some sort of reboot in its own continuity), Pocket Books’ editors and authors have been free to move the 24th century Star Trek characters forward in exciting and unexpected ways.  Suddenly, characters from the different series can interact… old familiar characters head in dramatically different directions (some are even — gasp! — killed off!)… new characters are introduced and developed… in short, lots of exciting things happen, and the over-all Star Trek story is moved forward.  Even more exciting to me is the CONTINUITY that now exists between the Star Trek novels!  As I have written about before on this site, I LOVE continuity in my entertainment (be it in TV shows, comics, etc.)  This continuity in the Star Trek novels is delightful, as each book now has significance — with one leading into the next — and with plot twists now having weight and repercussions.  Of something happens in one novel, that is reflected in the storyline of the next novel!  And all the novels begin with a “historian’s note”… [continued]