This week, when a trip to the souvenir shop goes sideways for Chekov, he’ll soon have more to worry about than a night in the slammer. An efficiency expert starts gunning for his job—that is, until he gets gunned down himself. What goofy hobby is Sulu taking up this time? Has The Motion Picture finally been stripped of its Worst Transporter Accident title? And is someone trying to ship Chekov and Uhura? All this and more in Death Count, the book that points its thumbs at thee.
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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.
This week, Kirk squares off with Totally-Not-Q, who banishes three of his officers to tumultuous moments in Earth’s past. While he learns how to play nice with the Klingons and work out the god-alien’s inscrutable morality, his missing crewmen struggle to reconcile their desire to return to their own time with the obligations they’ve committed to in their new surroundings. What’s a ghargh? Is Kirk always this whiny? Why don’t children ever just listen? It’s the book with a special appearance by John Larroquette!
This week, when most of the senior officers wait in a busted shuttlecraft for the sweet embrace of death, they decide to pass the time by telling tales out of school. Kirk can’t accept failure, Chekov goes lone wolf, Sulu deals with a death in the family, and Scotty stays spectacularly on brand. How much does it cost to build a starship? What counts as a “young” death in the Trek universe? Would anyone really waste that much paper in the 23rd century? It’s the book that passes with flying colors.
Occasionally, it happens that someone who is otherwise a perfectly decent and talented writer just can’t nail down that Star Trek vibe. We’ve seen it before. For someone who only wrote one Star Trek novel, Laurence Yep has exceptional pedigree: he’s won a Newbery Medal and the Laura Ingalls Wilder Medal, among other accolades, and he’s written a ton of highly praised books and series for children that are steeped in Chinese lore. But that doesn’t necessarily guarantee adequate characterizations and interesting stories in other universes.