This week, an invading force arrives with One Weird Trick for losing weight, but the Klingons are more concerned with the boogeyman that just jumped out of the closet. But if the Enterprise wants any data on the new arrivals, they may have to dig into their own lore first. What newspaper comics are still known in the 23rd century? How many middle initials does Kirk have floating around out there? And is Carey the right Diane for this job? All this and more in First Strike, the first book of the Invasion! saga, or as I like to call it, The Rath Cycle.

First Strike (Invasion! #1)
Author: Diane Carey
Pages: 289
Published: July 1996
Timeline: Immediately after “Friday’s Child” (S2E11). They’re even still tussling with the Klingons on Capella IV in this one
Prerequisites: None
Not to be confused with: First Frontier (TOS #75, also a Diane Carey novel), itself not to be confused with Final Frontier (TOS event novel, also a Diane Carey novel). Also not to be confused with (Jackie Chan’s) First Strike, which is not a Diane Carey novel.

So far we’ve had multi-part sagas, and we’ve had multi-series crossovers, but until now, we haven’t had a multi-part multi-series crossover. But with two triumphant series under the franchise’s belt and two more well-received series running concurrently, the time must have seemed right for an event of commensurate ambition. Pocket Books editor-in-chief John Ordover and Diane Carey created the concept, which saw each of the four captains face off against a foe known as the Furies, creatures that give the races of the Alpha Quadrant the heebie-jeebies because they look exactly like nightmare demons out of some of their most enduring myths and legends.

Part One kicks off with a Klingon fleet nearly getting their atoms scattered in all directions at infinite speed by a weird drop in mass, which they only barely survive (minus one unfortunate ship) by pouring everything and then some into their shields. When General Kellen attempts to transport back to his ship, his pattern is redirected to a spooky cave that he realizes is also a ship that came through the fissure created by the mass-decrease event. He does some light exploring and encounters a being he swears is straight out of Klingon lore, something he calls Iraga. He manages to escape and books it for Capella IV, where he calls a time-out on the Starfleet–Capellan/Klingon skirmish. He declares a temporary ceasefire and even agrees to dedicate the rest of his life to forging peace between the Klingons and the Federation if Kirk will just please please pleeze get rid of the big scary monsters. This is framed as peculiar behavior for Kellen, who has a reputation for being unusually calm for a Klingon, a reputation this book wastes no time demonstrating is almost wholly unearned.

Kirk talks to the aliens and beams over with a party to check the scene out. Kellen insists they can’t be reasoned with, but Kellen also dove for the weapons console and shot at them the second they allowed him on the bridge, so maybe he’s not as laid back as he and the rest of the Empire thinks. Indeed, Zennor, the “Vergo” (roughly captain) of the ship, seems pretty chill as he fills in the backstory: his species and a handful of others lost a war in the Alpha Quadrant some few thousand years ago and got exiled to Space B.F.E. At first they fought amongst each other, but when they realized they all had their exile in common, they worked together to re-attain their previous level of technology and learn how to work the wormhole device that was discarded along with them. Now they are back to ask the peoples of the Federation, the Klingon Empire, et al., to please drop whatever stupid meaningless lives they’re busy living and let them have their quadrant back, please and thank you.

But Zennor has doubts about the mission. If they were wrong about the wormhole machine being a machine and not a god that cruelly mocked them from among the stars, what else might they be wrong about? He wants proof that he’s arrived at the proper destination and doesn’t want to attack innocent people based solely on an assumption. But Garamanus, a member of the Danai, which represents more theological than scientific interests, insists that this is the place and that their millennia of efforts not go to waste. Can Kirk capitalize on that schism before they decide to proceed with the invasion—or before Kellen decides to carry out his own plan?

First Strike represents a hard about face for Carey from her last Trek novel, First Frontier. Whereas that previous book leaned more into hard science—or, at least, into the most up-to-date science of that day—this one takes a trip into old lore and gets back to that old, corny-but-fun TOS idea of a mythological being actually being an alien. I suppose if I knew more about Gaelic and Celtic myths, I might have been able to figure out what was going on sooner, but I don’t think it was too overtly telegraphed. This one is a lot more fun than the dinosaur book, and has some fun bits scattered here and there for more than just scholars of mythology. As an etymology wonk, I especially got a tiny thrill out of learning that the word that “heresy” is derived from means “free choice”. And it totally is, more or less! I looked it up! Carey is having a lot of fun here, which isn’t surprising, since we know from long experience that the quality of her books is directly proportional to her investment in the premise—and you don’t get much more invested than having actually come up with the project’s premise yourself. 

The only complaint I would have considered remotely major is that a lot of scenes drag on through multiple chapters, to the point where it starts to sometimes feel like serious padding, but having already finished reading The Soldiers of Fear at the time I’m writing this review puts a bit of a different shine on it. I never like to get too far ahead of myself, but that book was an almost shockingly quick read. We’ll talk about that more next week, but for now, suffice it to say that that book’s approach softened me up on the draggier parts of this one quite a bit. I’d much rather hang out for too long in an author’s world than not long enough if it’s a good one.

I admit I have some early qualms about the saga’s ability to maintain a consistent level of high performance, given that each one is written by a different author. But for now, the first one is a solid start and good on its own merits. At last, we’re stepping into the realm of interconnected books and inter-novel continuity that seemed like such a distant twinkle on the horizon when I started doing these reviews. I’m pretty excited about reaching this point, and I feel like we’re in for good times around the bend.

MVP & LVP

• My MVP this week is Kirk. He really does believe he can hammer out a negotiation with the Furies, to a degree that remains somewhat charming and sweet even as it becomes inescapably naive. I think sometimes we get a little too far away from the doe-eyed idealism of the series, and a fresh hit of it is always nice. I was originally going to give it to Spock, for continuing to contribute via a series of monitors even while laid up in bed with a spinal injury he suffered in the Capella IV dustup, but I’m trying to wean myself off of the idea that’s somehow heroic or indicative of an admirable work ethic to keep powering through work while you’re sick or injured. This isn’t late capitalism, Spock! Surely you get sick days on the Enterprise. Stop busting your hump when you’re supposed to be recuperating!
• This week’s LVP is whoever drummed up the idea that Kellen is calm by Klingon standards. Were we talking about the same Klingon? What were those people on? Any opportunity he has to lash out and make things ten times worse, he immediately pounces on like a targ. What about that screams “calm” to anyone? Klingons are dumb.

Stray Bits

• Bannon recurs from First Frontier. Seems to be shaping up a little better this time around. There’s still an officer who is not so jazzed about being in the line of duty, however. Actually, there are two! They don’t have the attitude, though—they’re just lower-deckers who had the misfortune to pull the wrong shift. Still, they acquit themselves reasonably well.
• With Gaelic and Celtic mythology being so prominently involved, this would have been a slam dunk for Diane Duane. But Diane Carey came up with the idea, so obviously she’s the one who gets the whack at it. Still, what could have been, ya know?
• Science Officer Aragor, p. 28: “Approach pattern SochDIch on my mark!” Uhhh, approach pattern what now?
  
• Kellen, p. 67: “Then you are Captain James B. Kirk?” Hey, have some respect. It’s James R. Kirk!
  
• Scotty reacting to McCoy’s incredulity at the devil playing bagpipes in a Robert Burns poem, p. 173: “Welcome to heaven, here’s your harp, welcome to hell, here’re your bagpipes.” At first I thought this was a cheeky Far Side reference, but it turns out the comic I was thinking of says “Welcome to hell, here’s your accordion.” Then I realized that for as old as Star Trek tends to skew with pop culture, they probably wouldn’t shout out a cool strip like The Far Side anyway. They’d probably wax nostalgic for like, I don’t know. Beetle Bailey or some garbage.
  

Final Assessment

Good. First Strike is the literary branch of Star Trek‘s first toe dip in the waters of real serialization and continuity among itself, and it bodes well that that that first step is a strong and confident one. Diane Carey’s foray into Middle English mythology is much more fun than her last sojourn into hard science, and even though the need for several scenes to drag across multiple chapters is questionable, it’s hard to get too upset about having so much time to kick your shoes off and get comfy in such a fascinating story. Much of what makes TOS special shines through in this book. I hope the rest of the Invasion! saga, with each installment entrusted to a different author, can keep up the good work.

NEXT TIME: Invasion! continues with The Soldiers of Fear