This week, Uhura gets hand-picked by Starfleet for an assignment that actually uses her degree. Meanwhile, the rest of the crew tracks down a band of raiders laying waste to a string of colonies, and a nervous novice named Pavel Chekov gets thrown straight in the deep end as he learns the ropes of life on a tour of duty in deep space and the do’s and don’ts of bridge protocol. Why did Uhura get into communications? Will she be swayed into staying aboard her new ship permanently? Can Lt. Baila and Chekov get their respective acts together before their next performance review? All this and more in The Disinherited, the book that proves three heads are better than four.
Month: August 2019
This week, Riker feels the cold, clammy hand of anxiety grabbing his shoulder. But there’s no time for that, because a survey of desolate worlds turns up unexpected humans. Once the dust settles from the latest revolt, they discover a cockfighting ring—but it’s the birds pitting the humans against each other. Meanwhile, a young rebel leader learns that overthrowing the oppressor is merely the first victory. Why is Star Trek so bad at dealing with trauma? What’s the minimum threshold for getting to have an opinion on the bridge? And how much would a top-of-the-line thought-blocking helmet set Deanna back? All this and more in “Chains of Command”—no, not the one with the four lights.
This week, we’re taking Probe from the top, once more, with feeling. The same peace conferences, the same song decoding, the same stories about alien whales, but now we march to the beat of a different drummer—a beat that adds a boatload of useless secondary characters and gives everyone dumber names. Is Sulu the worst spy of all time? Is there anything a single pill can’t cure in the future? And why won’t everyone just leave Scotty alone about his weight? All this and more in Music of the Spheres, the book where nothing matters but the music.
This week, it’s clear the Romulans have been to the movies lately. Suddenly they’re planning their own peace initiative, with blackjack, and hookers. While they and the Federation put together dinner and a show, the probe from The Voyage Home drives through space with a trunk full of unanswered questions. And when it makes a U-turn to get the truth, Kirk and Spock realize it’s going to take a lot more than showing it a couple of whales to satisfy its curiosity this time. Which Romulans are serious about peace and which ones aren’t? What does the probe have to look forward to when it goes home? Is this yet another flippin’ “Enterprise Incident” sequel? All this and more in Probe, the I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter! of Star Trek novels.