I read my first Star Trek novel—Doctor’s Orders by Diane Duane—in 1995, at the age of 10. I didn’t have much experience with TOS at the time, and I didn’t know anything about canon and non-canon—I just knew I wanted more adventures with those characters. As Star Trek novels go, I still think I could hardly have made a better first choice, especially for a standalone story, and for a long time, through fluctuating levels of interest in expanded universes, it remained my favorite.
Even with a lot of TOS and a little Duane under my belt, however, absolutely nothing could have prepared me for The Wounded Sky.