Every book reviewed on the site is compiled here, broken down by year. Click on the picture of the book to go to its review.
As of 1/15/2021, books on Deep Space Spines will be rated on what I am calling the TBAGE (pronounced “teabag”) scale: Terrible, Bad, Average, Good, Excellent. Ratings for each book are indicated by their initial letter in brackets and bold red text. Personally, I liked the emojis, but they just weren’t displaying properly for everyone. Again, I will attempt a retroactive transition that I will probably not finish before the next change in the rating system.
1979
![Star Trek: The Motion Picture (TOS #1). Kirk gets the band back together to stop a giant cloud from destroying Earth. (Reviewed 10/20/2017.) [Average]](https://deepspacespines.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/001-Motion-Picture-174x300.jpg)
Star Trek: The Motion Picture (TOS #1). Kirk gets the band back together to stop a giant cloud from destroying Earth. (Reviewed 10/20/2017.) [Average]
1981
The Entropy Effect (TOS #2). Spock travels back in time to prevent accelerated entropy from destroying the universe, but settles for a Band-Aid. Meanwhile, Sulu must choose between boinking the new security chief or beefing up his résumé. (Reviewed 10/27/2017.) [Excellent]
The Klingon Gambit (TOS #3). All the Vulcans vanish from a research station near the planet Alnath II. Could it have something to do with how everyone starts acting really weird once they begin orbiting the planet? No, it’s probably Klingons, because Klingons. (Reviewed 11/3/17.) [Bad]
The Covenant of the Crown (TOS #4). McCoy’s birthday makes him acutely aware of his ever-encroaching oldness, but there’s nothing like an escort mission with a young princess who wants to jump the Bones to put a little pep back in his step. (Reviewed 11/10/17.) [Good]
1982
The Prometheus Design (TOS #5). Beings from another universe test our own to see if greatness can be achieved without aggression. Can Kirk’s command style win over a Vulcan admiral who relieves him of command and a distressingly cruel post-Kolinahr Spock? (Reviewed 11/17/17.) [Bad]
The Abode of Life (TOS #6). The Enterprise, stranded in unexplored space, must rely for repairs on a people who don’t believe anything exists outside their world yet have somehow independently mastered transporter technology, all while not breaking the Prime Directive. (Reviewed 11/24/17.) [Good]
Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (TOS #7). Khan exacts his revenge on Kirk for dumping him and his crew on an inhospitable planet fifteen years prior. (Reviewed 12/1/17.) [Good]
1983
Black Fire (TOS #8). Spock once again goes behind Starfleet’s backs to investigate a savage warrior race that threatens the galaxy at large. Warning: this book could awaken some extremely specific, vaguely fetishistic Spock-related feelings in some readers. (Reviewed 12/8/17.) [Average]
Triangle (TOS #9). Conflicting higher consciousnesses compete to determine the next step of human evolution by driving a wedge between Kirk and Spock with a woman and forcing the trio into a bizarre “mate-hunt.” (Reviewed 12/15/17.) [Average]
Web of the Romulans (TOS #10). Romulans cross the Neutral Zone border with strangely non-militaristic intent, and Kirk has to figure out what they’re up to without setting off intergalactic war or spurning the advances of the lovesick Enterprise computer. (Reviewed 12/22/17.) [Good]
Yesterday’s Son (TOS #11). Spock learns he sired a son with Zarabeth during the events of “All Our Yesterdays” and uses the Guardian of Forever to bring him back to the present and acclimate him to the Vulcan way of life. (Reviewed 12/29/17.) [Excellent]
Mutiny on the Enterprise (TOS #12). The Enterprise is on its way out to the Orion Arm to negotiate peace between two worlds and keep the Romulans off their backs, but a strange pacifist woman picked up from a derelict ship threatens to unravel it all. (Reviewed 1/5/18.) [Terrible]
The Wounded Sky (TOS #13). The Enterprise receives the honor of testing the new Intergalactic Inversion Drive, but they soon realize that using it is causing the lack of entropy from another universe to leak through and render time and reality meaningless. (Reviewed 1/12/18.) [Excellent]
1984
The Trellisane Confrontation (TOS #14). Kirk, Spock, and McCoy are stuck on a planet trying to defend it from its Klingon-aided neighbor while prisoners hijack his ship with the intent of taking it across the Romulan border and triggering intergalactic war. (Reviewed 1/19/18.) [Average]
Corona (TOS #15). A reporter from a backwater mining planet tags along with the Enterprise crew as they solve the mystery of a long-stranded space station of Vulcans and the grouping of sentient proto-stars controlling their actions. (Reviewed 1/26/18.) [Average]
The Final Reflection (TOS #16). A popular historical novel recounts the life of Krenn, a Klingon captain who learned the virtue of peace from a Federation ambassador to the Empire and averted an attempt by his own people to launch a war against the Federation. (Reviewed 2/2/18.) [Excellent]
Star Trek III: The Search for Spock (TOS #17). Kirk and his crew go behind Starfleet’s backs to travel to the now-forbidden Genesis planet, take Spock’s regenerated body back to Vulcan, and transfer his essence from McCoy to Spock. (Reviewed 2/9/18.) [Good]
My Enemy, My Ally (TOS #18). Kirk teams up with an old nemesis to thwart a Romulan plan to capture Vulcans, ingest and absorb their DNA, and regain the psionic abilities they lost to genetic drift. (Reviewed 2/16/18.) [Excellent]
The Tears of the Singers (TOS #19). The seal-like inhabitants of Taygeta V are threatened by poachers, and their song is tearing a hole in space. Uhura becomes involved in their plight, working with a popular composer to help solve the mystery of the song. (Reviewed 2/23/18.) [Excellent]
The Vulcan Academy Murders (TOS #20). Kirk puts on his Sherlock Holmes hat in hopes of solving the murders of people receiving an experimental treatment on Vulcan before the culprit can kill the treatment’s most high-profile recipient: Spock’s mother, Amanda Grayson. (Reviewed 3/2/18.) [Bad]
1985
Uhura’s Song (TOS #21). The Enterprise must find a cure for a rapidly spreading, deadly disease, and the only clues they have to go on are buried in the lyrics of songs Uhura learned long ago from an old friend. (Reviewed 3/9/18.) [Excellent]
Shadow Lord (TOS #22). Spock and Sulu accompany Prince Vikram of Angira back to his homeworld to help him modernize the primitive planet and end up in the middle of a coup that leaves Vikram as the sole successor to the throne. (Reviewed 3/16/18.) [Terrible]
Ishmael (TOS #23). Spock is hurtled through time back to Seattle in 1868, finding himself in the care of a man named Aaron Stemple, with no memory of anything prior to waking in Aaron’s bed. (Reviewed 3/23/18.) [Average]
Killing Time (TOS #24). History is altered when the Romulans successfully carry out a plan to go back in time and assassinate three figures key to establishing the Federation in the hopes of making Federation space easier to conquer. (Reviewed 3/30/18.) [Average]
Dwellers in the Crucible (TOS #25). T’Shael and Cleante, two of a group of Federation delegates known as Warrantors of the Peace, are captured along with four others and must stick together to survive the tortures visited upon them by their Klingon captors. (Reviewed 4/6/18.) [Excellent]
Pawns and Symbols (TOS #26). Agriculture scientist Jean Czerny is captured from her outpost on Sherman’s Planet and enlisted by Klingon commander Kang to develop a new strain of quadrotriticale to avert a famine ravaging the Klingon Empire. (Reviewed 4/13/18.) [Bad]
1986
Mindshadow (TOS #27). You can’t go home again, but Spock does after he takes a nasty fall and suffers severe brain damage. Kirk competes with McCoy for the affections of a new crew member while figuring out how to render aid to a planet that doesn’t want it. (Reviewed 4/20/18.) [Good]
Crisis on Centaurus (TOS #28). The Enterprise travels to the planet Centaurus to locate and extradite the person responsible for setting off an antimatter bomb at New Athens Spaceport, but the Centauran government has other ideas. (Reviewed 4/27/18.) [Terrible]
Dreadnought! (TOS #29). Lt. Piper, fresh out of Starfleet Academy and newly assigned to the Enterprise, finds herself forced into a difficult command role when rebels steal a new top-secret warship and demand to speak only to her. (Reviewed 5/4/18.) [Average]
Demons (TOS #30). The Enterprise crew and most of the population of Vulcan are possessed by energy-based brain parasites, and Spock, McCoy, and Spock’s protégé escape to Vulcan to neutralize the threat at the source. (Reviewed 5/11/18.) [Bad]
Enterprise: The First Adventure (TOS event). The crew struggles with morale and rapport on their first mission under the command of Captain Kirk as they host a vaudeville troupe on a tour of starbases that takes them uncomfortably close to Klingon space. (Reviewed 5/18/18.) [Excellent]
Battlestations! (TOS #31). Lt. Piper settles into her first true command and learns how to earn a crew’s respect as she pursues amoral scientists who have stolen transwarp technology and seek to auction it off to the highest bidder. (Reviewed 5/25/18.) [Average]
Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home (TOS, unnumbered). The Enterprise crew time-travels to the 1980s to find humpback whales, which are extinct in their own time, in order to establish contact with an incoming probe that seeks to destroy Earth. (Reviewed 6/1/18.) [Average]
1987
Chain of Attack (TOS #32). While studying gravitational anomalies, the Enterprise is flung several parsecs and galaxies off course, discovering a wide swath of planetary destruction and two races who each think the other is responsible for it. (Reviewed 6/8/18.) [Good]
Deep Domain (TOS #33). Spock and Chekov go missing during an ecological survey of a planet that’s 98 percent water, and when Kirk and McCoy go looking for them, they get a lot of run-around from a civilization on the brink of a military coup. (Reviewed 6/15/18.) [Average]
Dreams of the Raven (TOS #34). The Enterprise is drawn into a trap and crippled, and while they try to hobble back to the last trading post, McCoy loses 25 years of memories in a head injury and longs to get back to Earth for a second chance at a life without regrets. (Reviewed 6/22/18.) [Terrible]
Strangers from the Sky (TOS event). A popular new book posits that there was a first contact with Vulcans 20 years before the formally recognized one and triggers blocked memories in Kirk and Spock, who recall being part of the events related therein. (Reviewed 6/29/18.) [Good]
The Romulan Way (TOS #35). McCoy is captured by Romulans and held hostage behind enemy lines in a house where a Federation double agent is working under deep cover. Can she help him escape, or has she “gone native”? (Reviewed 7/6/18.) [Excellent]
How Much for Just the Planet? (TOS #36). The Enterprise and the Klingons race to develop a planet with copious dilithium deposits, but are waylaid by the natives, who divert and distract them with a convoluted absurdist farce. (Reviewed 7/13/18.) [Bad]
Encounter at Farpoint (TNG, unnumbered). For their first mission, the Enterprise-D crew investigates a mysterious new deep-space outpost and encounters Q, an omnipotent being who declares humanity savages and tries to thwart their exploration efforts. (Reviewed 7/20/18.) [Average]
Bloodthirst (TOS #37). The Enterprise brings aboard the lone survivor of a biochemical research fiasco who manifests vampire-like symptoms as they investigate a plot that may involve some of Starfleet’s highest-ranking officers. (Reviewed 7/27/18.) [Good]
1988
Final Frontier (TOS event). The Federation sends its first-ever starship, led by Captain Robert April and first officer George Kirk, to rescue a ship caught in an ion storm, but a traitor sabotages the warp drive and strands the starship deep in Romulan space. (Reviewed 8/3/18.) [Bad]
The IDIC Epidemic (TOS #38). The Vulcan science colony Nisus is ravaged by a plague that mutates into deadlier strains in children of mixed heritage, threatening to undermine the colony’s ideals of diversity. (Reviewed 8/10/18.) [Average]
Time for Yesterday (TOS #39). When the Guardian of Forever falls asleep on the job, waves of time displacement cause stars to age rapidly, and only Spock’s son Zar can bring the Guardian to its senses. (Reviewed 8/17/18.) [Good]
Timetrap (TOS #40). Kirk loses consciousness while responding to a distress signal from a Klingon ship, and upon waking is told that one hundred years have passed and the Klingons and Federation have made peace with each other. (Reviewed 8/24/18.) [Bad]
Ghost Ship (TNG #1). Troi senses the “ghosts” of Soviet naval officers who were consumed by an electromagnetic phenomenon back in the 1990s, and the Enterprise-D must find a way to communicate with the phenomenon to keep from suffering the same fate. (Reviewed 8/31/18.) [Good]
The Three-Minute Universe (TOS #41). The Sackers, a race whose biological makeup assaults all five humanoid senses, use stolen technology to trigger a Big Bang event, and Kirk must persuade them to reseal the opened universe. (Reviewed 9/7/18.) [Excellent]
Spock’s World (TOS event). Vulcan has decided to secede from the Federation, and Kirk, Spock, and McCoy are summoned to testify and argue in opposition of the decision. (Reviewed 9/14/18.) [Excellent]
The Peacekeepers (TNG #2). While searching a derelict space station, Geordi and Data are transported one-way several thousand light years away to a connected ship and meet a man who used the alien technology to disarm his planet’s nuclear arsenal. (Reviewed 9/21/18.) [Terrible]
Memory Prime (TOS #42). The Enterprise escorts a delegation of award-nominated scientists to the Nobel/Z.Magnees prize ceremony at the Memory Prime information colony, and Spock is framed for an attempt to murder them. (Reviewed 9/28/18.) [Average]
The Children of Hamlin (TNG #3). The Enterprise finds the aliens responsible for an infamous massacre and attempts to retrieve the survivors with the help of an evasive ambassador and his mysterious aide. (Reviewed 10/5/18.) [Average]
The Final Nexus (TOS #43). As the universe-hopping gates from Chain of Attack begin to break down, Spock must figure out how to communicate with an entity from another universe that is leaking through the gates and paralyzing entire starship crews with terror. (Reviewed 10/12/18.) [Bad]
1989
Survivors (TNG #4). On a mission to survey a planet requesting Federation assistance, Tasha Yar encounters an ex-lover, grapples with the Prime Directive, gets caught up in an imminent war, and tries to resolve her feelings about Data. (Reviewed 10/19/18.) [Good]
Vulcan’s Glory (TOS #44). Spock struggles to balance duty to Starfleet, filial obligation, and newfound romantic feelings for a fellow Vulcan crew member on his first mission as the Enterprise follows a lead on a long-missing jewel of great historical import to Vulcan. (Reviewed 10/26/18). [Average]
Strike Zone (TNG #5). An alien race bullied by the Klingons gets their revenge using a mysterious weapons stash found on a backwater planet, and the Enterprise is enlisted to mediate. Meanwhile, Wesley runs himself ragged trying to find a cure for a friend’s terminal illness. (Reviewed 11/2/18.) [Average]
Double, Double (TOS #45). Another copy of one of Roger Korby’s androids returns from an expedition on Exo III to find everyone gone and creates another Kirk android, who intends to gain control of the Enterprise in another attempt to carry out Korby’s wishes. (Reviewed 11/9/18.) [Average]
Power Hungry (TNG #6). The Enterprise delivers famine relief to the planet Thiopa, gets dragged into a conflict between the planet’s ruler and a small religious faction, and tries to help them reverse their trajectory toward total environmental collapse. (Reviewed 11/16/18.) [Excellent]
Star Trek V: The Final Frontier (TOS, unnumbered). Spock’s half-brother commandeers the Enterprise and steers it toward the center of the galaxy in a crazed search for God. (Reviewed 11/23/18.) [Good]
Masks (TNG #7). The Enterprise travels to Lorca, where masks are worn to denote status, to establish formal diplomatic relations. Riker’s team searches for Picard’s after losing contact, and both seek the planet’s ruler, holder of an artifact called the Wisdom Mask. (Reviewed 11/30/18.) [Terrible]
The Captains’ Honor (TNG #8). When Starfleet enlists the Enterprise and the Centurion to help a peaceful planet stave off invasion, Picard butts heads with the other ship’s captain, who favors aggressive action over his more peaceful approach. (Reviewed 12/7/18.) [Average]
The Cry of the Onlies (TOS #46). Kirk tries to mend the Federation’s relationship with a planet where teenagers have overthrown the corrupt ruling council, but the arrival of a familiar face piloting a stolen experimental ship complicates matters considerably. (Reviewed 12/14/18.) [Excellent]
The Lost Years (TOS event). As the five-year mission draws to a close, the Enterprise’s senior officers begin to go their separate ways, but the revival of an ancient and evil Vulcan master’s katra draws them back into each other’s orbits. (Reviewed 12/21/18.) [Good]
A Call to Darkness (TNG #9). Picard, Pulaski, Geordi, and Worf are captured by the Klah’kimmbri, who erase their memories and put them to work in various roles of a barbaric televised charade meant to entertain and pacify their planet’s lower class. (Reviewed 12/28/18.) [Bad]
The Kobayashi Maru (TOS #47). Stranded in a shuttle with little hope of survival, Kirk, Chekov, Sulu, and Scotty pass the time by recounting their experiences with Starfleet Academy’s infamously unwinnable command scenario. (Reviewed 1/4/19.) [Excellent]
1990
A Rock and a Hard Place (TNG #10). While Riker aids a struggling terraforming team, the rest of the Enterprise crew contends with his temporary replacement, a man with a shadowy past and a knack for psychological mind games. (Reviewed 1/11/19.) [Excellent]
Rules of Engagement (TOS #48). The Enterprise is tasked with retrieving ousted Federation diplomats from a world in the midst of a coup, but a Klingon seeking revenge against Kirk further complicates an already messy assignment. (Reviewed 1/18/19.) [Average]
Metamorphosis (TNG event). As a reward for aiding a native in her mandated quest, the “gods” of the planet Elysia grant Data his deepest desire: to become human. (Reviewed 1/25/19.) [Average]
The Pandora Principle (TOS #49). Years after rescuing Saavik from a feral existence on the brutal Romulan world known as Hellguard, Spock must rely on her assistance in stopping a new biological weapon from destroying the Federation. (Reviewed 2/1/19.) [Bad]
Gulliver’s Fugitives (TNG #11). On a mission to Rampart, a planet where fiction and imagination are outlawed, Picard is captured by the planet’s thought police, and Troi falls in with a band of underground rebels who are preparing for civil war. (Reviewed 2/8/19.) [Average]
Doctor’s Orders (TOS #50). Kirk gives McCoy the conn on a lark to teach him a lesson about the rigors of command, but when he disappears during a first contact mission, McCoy must defend the Enterprise against an onslaught of Klingons and Orion pirates. (Reviewed 2/15/19.) [Excellent]
Doomsday World (TNG #12). Geordi, Worf, and Data find themselves the prime suspects in a rash of terrorist attacks on Kirlos and must prove their innocence before tensions drive a permanent wedge between the two diplomatic organizations overseeing the planet. (Reviewed 2/22/19.) [Average]
Prime Directive (TOS event). When Kirk kills an entire planet in a warp drive accident, Starfleet casts him out and he becomes persona non grata, but his senior officers insist he is innocent and go to extreme lengths to prove it. (Reviewed 3/1/19.) [Excellent]
The Eyes of the Beholders (TNG #13). A beam of unusual makeup drags the Enterprise toward an alien artifact that attacks people through their dreams. Meanwhile, Dr. Selar becomes invested in the fate of a young, blind, and orphaned Andorian girl. (Reviewed 3/8/19.) [Average]
Enemy Unseen (TOS #51). Kirk must stop a spy sabotaging diplomatic negotiations on the Enterprise while warding off advances from an old flame and attempting to understand his guests’ convoluted ideas about harmony, balance, and honor. (Reviewed 3/15/19.) [Terrible]
Exiles (TNG #14). Neighboring planets facing separate ecological disasters—one natural, one manmade—must set aside their centuries-long rivalry and come to a mutual agreement to prevent their destruction. (Reviewed 3/22/19.) [Average]
Home is the Hunter (TOS #52). As punishment for a skirmish with the Klingons that leads to a child’s death on the planet he presides over, a powerful alien banishes Scotty, Sulu, and Chekov to tumultuous epochs in Earth history. (Reviewed 3/29/19.) [Good]
1991
Fortune’s Light (TNG #15). Riker goes undercover in some old stomping grounds to clear an old friend accused of stealing a priceless artifact. Meanwhile, Data reenacts a baseball game Riker left running in the holodeck. (Reviewed 4/5/19.) 2.5
Ghost-Walker (TOS #53). A malevolent being ousts Kirk from his body to use it for its own nefarious ends, and Kirk must stave off the dispersal of his incorporeal form long enough to find a way to inform his crew of his predicament. (Reviewed 4/12/19.) 3.5
Contamination (TNG #16). Picard tasks Worf and Deanna Troi with getting to the bottom of a renowned scientist’s death aboard the Enterprise. (Reviewed 4/19/19.) 1.5
A Flag Full of Stars (TOS #54). A disgraced Klingon teaching a class of gifted students in New York invents a device that could revolutionize interstellar travel—or incite all-out war. (Reviewed 4/26/19.) 3.5
Vendetta (TNG event novel). A ship that may have the ability to destroy the Borg arrives on the scene, and its pilot has only one thing on her mind: revenge. Meanwhile, Geordi works to reintegrate a woman once assimilated by the Borg back into society. (Reviewed 5/3/19.) 3
Renegade (TOS #55). When Spock and McCoy disappear after beaming down to resolve a dispute between two planets, Kirk must find out who’s tampering with his shields and sensors if he hopes to stand any chance of finding them. (Reviewed 5/10/19.) 1.5
Boogeymen (TNG #17). Formidable aliens created by Wesley Crusher for tactical practice on the holodeck combine with a virus planted by an exologist desperate to disappear into anonymity to create a surreal nightmare for the Enterprise crew. (Reviewed 5/17/19.) 3.5
Legacy (TOS #56). Kirk and his team disappear during a routine survey, but the Enterprise is redirected to save a taken-over mining colony, where Spock must outwit an old adversary while working through a nasty bout of poison. (Reviewed 5/24/19.) 3
Q-in-Law (TNG #18). When Q drops in on a week-long wedding ceremony being hosted on the Enterprise—ostensibly to observe human love rituals—he and Deanna Troi’s mother Lwaxana become mutually fascinated with one another. (Reviewed 5/31/19.) 3.5
The Rift (TOS #57). A passage to the Gamma Quadrant opens once every 33 years, and the Enterprise makes two attempts—the first under Pike, the latter under Kirk—to establish diplomatic relations with a reclusive race on the other side. (Reviewed 6/7/19.) 3
Reunion (TNG event novel). The Enterprise hosts an honor guard comprising several of Picard’s old crewmates from his previous command on the Stargazer, but an assassin picking them off one by one disrupts what should be a joyous reunion. (Reviewed 6/21/19.) 1.5
Unification (TNG episode novelization). Picard and Data go undercover to the Romulan homeworld to locate and retrieve Ambassador Spock, who is believed to have defected, but is actually working with an underground movement to reunite Vulcan and Romulus. (Reviewed 6/28/19.) 2.5
Perchance to Dream (TNG #19). A survey of Domarus IV shows no apparent sentient life, but when the survey team and their shuttle mysteriously disappear during an altercation with an opponent who lays claim to the world, Picard begins to suspect otherwise. (Reviewed 7/5/19.) 3
1992
Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country (TOS movie novelization). Reluctantly accepting the reality that perpetual war is unsustainable, the Klingons are finally ready to give peace a shot, but sabotage and decades of prejudice stand in the way of progress. (Reviewed 7/12/19.) 3.5
Spartacus (TNG #20). The Enterprise becomes mired in a difficult ethical quandary when they mediate a conflict between a crew of androids who commandeered a ship to escape their slavery and the authorities seeking to reclaim them and punish them for acts of terrorism. (Reviewed 7/19/19.) 4
Faces of Fire (TOS #58). While Kirk and a haughty ambassador try to defuse a religious dispute on Alpha Maluria VI, Spock outwits Klingons invading a terraforming colony while protecting the colonists’ children, a group that includes a young David Marcus. (Reviewed 7/26/19.) 2.5
Probe (TOS event novel). As the Federation and the Romulan Empire get the ball rolling on peace talks in the wake of the Praetor’s death, the probe that nearly destroyed Earth in Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home returns, seeking answers to difficult questions. (Reviewed 8/2/19.) 2.5
Music of the Spheres (original version of Probe). The original manuscript of Probe as written by Margaret Wander Bonanno, before it was declared unusable by the editorial arm of Pocket Books and handed over to Gene DeWeese for wholesale changes. (Reviewed 8/16/19.) 2
Chains of Command (TNG #21). The Enterprise discovers a colony of humans on a desolate ice world, separated into bands of slaves and overseers and set upon each other generations ago by an avian alien race that considered them a threat to their existence. (Reviewed 8/23/19.) 2.5
The Disinherited (TOS #59). Uhura is recruited for a mission requiring her linguistic skills while the rest of the Enterprise crew, including a nervous greenhorn named Pavel Chekov, fight off bands of raiders that are destroying colonies with seemingly no motive. (Reviewed 8/30/19.) 4.5
Imbalance (TNG #22). During a touch-and-go negotiation with the Jarada, Riker, Dr. Crusher, Worf, and Keiko O’Brien become separated without a link to the Enterprise as more and more members of the insectoid race succumb to a mysterious insanity. (Reviewed 9/6/19.) 3
Ice Trap (TOS #60). Kirk and McCoy investigate an outbreak of mental insanity among the crew of an orbital research station while Uhura and Chekov search for the crew of a missing shuttlecraft in the wilderness of the ice planet Nordstral. (Reviewed 9/13/19.) 3.5
Imzadi (TNG event novel). Languishing in a backwater starbase 40 years after Deanna’s death, Admiral Riker becomes convinced that her death was not part of the natural order of events and seeks to use the Guardian of Forever to avert it. (Reviewed 9/20/19.) 4.5
Sanctuary (TOS #61). When Kirk, Spock, and Bones crash-land a shuttle on a planet rumored to harbor fugitives while in pursuit of a space pirate, they soon find that no one who enters the world is allowed to leave. (Reviewed 9/27/19.) 4
War Drums (TNG #23). While Worf tries to make peace between a Federation colony and a band of feral Klingons whose presence on the planet predates the colony, Ro Laren keeps an eye on worrisome seismograph readings while enduring prejudice and assassination attempts. (Reviewed 10/4/19.) 3
Death Count (TOS #62). While the Enterprise maintains a presence in Andorian-Orion space, an efficiency auditor targets Chekov and makes overtures toward forcing a departmental restructuring, but a series of gruesome murders soon takes priority. (Reviewed 10/12/19.) 2.5
Best Destiny (TOS event novel). As Starfleet prepares to decommission the Enterprise-A, a distress signal calls Kirk to a planet he recalls from his adolescence, when his father George Kirk took him out on a space cruise in an attempt to curb his hooligan ways. (Reviewed 10/18/19.) 2.5
Relics (TNG episode novelization). Decades after storing himself in a transporter pattern to survive a crash, Scotty is revived by the Enterprise-D crew, but his excitement gives way to melancholy as he realizes his methods and style hold little sway with a new generation. (Reviewed 11/1/19.) 4
Nightshade (TNG #24). Picard is sent to help the people Oriana end two hundred years of civil war, but when he is accused of the murder of one of the factions’ leaders, Worf and Troi must work to prove his innocence. (Reviewed 11/8/19.) 2
1993
Shell Game (TOS #63). A Romulan space station is found floating derelict through Federation space, and when the Enterprise investigates it, the phenomenon that disabled it threatens to leave their ship in the same condition. (Reviewed 11/15/19.) 3.5
Emissary (DS9 #1, episode novelization). As the Cardassian occupation of Bajor comes to an end, Benjamin Sisko takes command of the orbital station Deep Space Nine, which is soon discovered to sit right next to the galaxy’s first known stable wormhole. (Reviewed 11/23/19.) 3
Grounded (TNG #25). When the crew rescues the survivors of a science colony, an invasive silicon-based life form makes it back to the Enterprise with them, leading Starfleet to call for the ship’s destruction to prevent the life form’s spread. (Reviewed 11/29/19.) 2.5
The Starship Trap (TOS #64). Starships from all over the galaxy are disappearing without a trace. The culprit? A Federation scientist who seeks to end war with a “weapon of peace” he can use to deposit overly violent and militaristic ships into other universes. (Reviewed 12/6/19.) 4.5
The Devil’s Heart (TNG event novel). The discovery of a mythical artifact of the Iconian civilization makes waves throughout the galaxy, and when Picard comes into possession of it, it changes his behavior and begins to attract greedy pursuers to the Enterprise. (Reviewed 12/13/19.) 3
The Romulan Prize (TNG #26). Armed with a new, more powerful class of warbird, the Romulans capture the Enterprise and take it to Hermeticus II, demanding to know why the Neutral Zone-straddling planet has been quarantined for over thirty years. (Reviewed 12/23/19.) 3
The Siege (DS9 #2). While access to the wormhole is restricted in the wake of a nasty case of subspace compression, Sisko and Odo contend with a troublesome missionary and a shapeshifting serial killer. (Reviewed 12/29/19.) 2
Windows on a Lost World (TOS #65). Kirk passes through an ancient transporter-like artifact on Careta IV and is turned into a specimen of the xenophobic predator race that created it, inhabiting the alien body while still retaining his own consciousness. (Reviewed 1/4/20.) 🖖
From the Depths (TOS #66). The Enterprise is tasked with relocating human settlers from their ocean planet home, but while Kirk wants to make sure he has all the information before following orders, the assisting commissioner is determined to forcibly remove them. (Reviewed 1/11/20.) 👎👎
Shadows on the Sun (TOS event novel). The Enterprise is sent to a dangerous planet McCoy was stationed on in his first ever medical training assignment, and tagging along is a duo of diplomats: his ex-wife Jocelyn and an old rival who is now her husband. (Reviewed 1/18/20.) 🖖🖖
Worf’s First Adventure (TNG, YA). Worf enlists in Starfleet Academy only to face the disappointing reality that bigotry and racism toward Klingons persist even in an institution such as Starfleet, and struggles with a roommate who espouses those views. (Reviewed 1/24/20.) 🖖
Bloodletter (DS9 #3). While the Federation and Cardassians race to establish a sovereign claim on the Gamma Quadrant side of the wormhole, Kira is targeted by the leader of an extremist Bajoran religious sect, who seeks to assassinate her for being a traitor to the faith. (Reviewed 1/31/20.) 👎
Guises of the Mind (TNG #27). Deanna Troi helps a nun with telepathic abilities develop mental barriers and goes with Picard to check in on Capulon IV, where a king who had previously planned to welcome Federation assistance seems to have had a change of heart. (Reviewed 2/7/20.) 🖖
The Great Starship Race (TOS #67). A friendly race held by the people of Gullrey attracts several competitors, including the Enterprise, but turns deadly when a Romulan ship, whose commander had a lethal encounter with the Rey many years before, enters the contest. (Reviewed 2/14/20.) 🖖
Descent (TNG episode novelization). The Borg collective, thrown into disarray by the introduction of Hugh’s individuality into their collective, come under the sway of a new leader: Data’s brother Lore, who leads them into battle against the Federation. (Reviewed 2/21/20.) 👎👎
Line of Fire (TNG, YA). Worf and his study group are chosen to help solve civil disputes on a joint Federation/Klingon colony, but end up defending it against an unknown attacker whose methods seem designed to exacerbate the discord between the colonists. (Reviewed 2/28/20.) 🖖
The Big Game (DS9 #4). Odo buys into a poker tournament organized by Quark to track the murderer of one of its participants, who may turn out to know a thing or two about the subspace waves rocking the station. (Reviewed 3/6/20.) 👎
Here There Be Dragons (TNG #28). The Enterprise crew find themselves going inside a stellar cluster to track down poachers who are hunting a species that resembles Earth dragons and who have found artifacts that may shed light on the mystery of the Preservers. (Reviewed 3/13/20.) 🖖
Dark Mirror (TNG event novel). The Enterprise-D is pulled into the Mirror Universe—this time on purpose rather than by accident—by the Earth Empire, which plans to return to their universe posing as them and conquer it. (Reviewed 3/20/20.) 🖖🖖
Survival (TNG, YA). Stranded on Dantar IV until help arrives, Worf, K’Ehleyr, and the others must outrun and outsmart the colony’s attacker, who has crash-landed near their camp. (Reviewed 3/27/20.) 👎
1994
Firestorm (TOS #68). Uhura takes the lead in mediation proceedings between a Federation geology team and the people of Elas on a planet where a gigantic volcano is about to blow. (Reviewed 4/3/20.) 🖖
Fallen Heroes (DS9 #5). Quark activates a device that sends him and Odo three days into the future to a Deep Space Nine where nearly everyone has died, leaving them to piece together the mystery of what happened and how to reverse it. (Reviewed 4/10/20.) 👎👎
Sarek (TOS event novel). Ambassador Sarek seeks to obtain irrefutable proof of a conspiracy wherein Romulans are using telepathically adept Vulcans to exploit latent xenophobic streaks and put the Federation and the Klingon Empire at war with each other. (Reviewed 4/17/20.) 🖖🖖
Sins of Commission (TNG #29). The Enterprise crew shelters the victims of a starliner crippled by an explosion and tries to determine the explosion’s source amid a spate of emotions heightened and intensified by an inscrutable alien race called the Sli. (Reviewed 4/24/20.) 👎
The Star Ghost (DS9, YA). Nog fears that a ghost-like being he sees has come to haunt his family, but Jake trusts the specter and follows it into the realm of the incorporeal, where he learns of a Cardassian threat he must help thwart. (Reviewed 5/1/20.) 🖖🖖
The Patrian Transgression (TOS #69). Kirk and his crew agree to assist with efforts to peaceably resolve a Klingon-aided rebel uprising, but the parties arranging the negotiations pass the buck and leave them the responsibility of solving a brutal internal affair themselves. (Reviewed 5/8/20.) 🖖
Stowaways (DS9, YA). Eager to feel land under his feet again, Jake allows himself to be tempted by Nog into stowing away on Dr. Bashir’s shuttle to Bajor, but when Bashir goes missing, they begin to fear he has been kidnapped. (Reviewed 5/15/20.) 👎
Debtors’ Planet (TNG #30). A Ferengi operation to turn a planet’s population into xenophobic slaves doesn’t jive with their usual M.O., leading the Enterprise crew to believe the Ferengi are working for masters of their own. (Reviewed 5/22/20.) 🖖🖖
Betrayal (DS9 #6). While a series of targeted bombings derails trade negotiations with Bajor, the Cardassians demand the return of a deserter who is hiding out on the station. (Reviewed 5/29/20.) 🖖
Traitor Winds (TOS #70). Sulu and Chekov go on the lam after being accused of stealing classified technology and committing treason as part of a larger plot to discredit Admiral Kirk. (Reviewed 6/5/20.) 🖖
All Good Things… (TNG episode novelization). Captain Picard must coordinate an effort among three different timelines through which he is time-shifting to overcome an anti-time anomaly that threatens to undo all human existence. (Reviewed 6/12/20.) 🖖🖖
Capture the Flag (TNG, YA). Geordi heads up a team of ragtag misfits from his first-year gym class as they compete in a capture-the-flag tournament on an uninhabited planet with half Earth gravity. (Reviewed 6/19/20.) 🖖🖖
Q-Squared (TNG event novel). Q needs Picard’s help to rein in his protégé, a mischievous child named Trelane, who has tapped into the storm of chaos at the center of the multiverse and is now rearranging reality as he sees fit. (Reviewed 6/26/20.) 🖖🖖
Foreign Foes (TNG #31). During negotiations between the Klingons and a race still angry at past subjugation by them, an unknown external force garbles sensor readings, blinds Geordi, makes several crew members glib and irritable, and produces erratic behavior in others. (Reviewed 7/3/20.) 🖖
Atlantis Station (TNG, YA). Geordi must put aside his issues with condescending classmates on a field trip when volcanic activity threatens to destroy the underwater base the cadets are touring. (Reviewed 7/10/20.) 👎
Crossroad (TOS #71). Renegades from a grim future timeline emerge from a volatile nebula and hijack the Enterprise, demanding ship repairs and transport to a planet that is protected by the Prime Directive. (Reviewed 7/17/20.) 🖖🖖
Warchild (DS9 #7). Bashir seeks a cure for a plague ravaging resettlement camps on Bajor while Dax searches for a child prophesied by the recently departed Kai Opaka to unite Bajor using her healing abilities. (Reviewed 7/24/20.) 👎
Requiem (TNG #32). On the way to a summit at the Gorn homeworld, the Enterprise takes a detour to investigate an unusual space station, where Picard is thrown back in time to Cestus III days before the historic massacre of the Federation colony by the Gorn. (Reviewed 7/31/20.) 🖖
The Search (DS9 episode novelization). Equipped with the new battle cruiser Defiant, Sisko and his officers travel to the Gamma Quadrant in the hopes of locating the Founders and communicating their peaceful intentions. (Reviewed 8/7/20.) 🖖
Federation (TOS/TNG event novel). Zefram Cochrane, the creator of warp technology, is pursued for centuries by Colonel Adrik Thorsen, a remnant of the Eugenics Wars who stubbornly believes his discoveries can be used to create the ultimate bomb. (Reviewed 8/14/20.) 🖖🖖
Antimatter (DS9 #8). When Bajoran terrorists steal a shipment of antimatter meant for a starship being built on Bajor, Sisko and Dax travel through the wormhole and pose as private mediators in an attempt to get it back. (Reviewed 8/21/20.) 👎
Prisoners of Peace (DS9, YA). Keiko’s students meet a new Bajoran classmate, who is very rude and only interested in killing Cardassians, and discover a Cardassian girl who stowed away in the station vents after tiring of her people’s propaganda. (Reviewed 8/28/20.) 🖖🖖
The Better Man (TOS #72). The Enterprise heads to the Nova Empyrea colony to renegotiate a treaty, during which McCoy grapples with an ambassador who used to be his best friend and learns from the colony’s council president that her daughter is also his. (Reviewed 9/4/20.) ☹️
Star Trek: Generations (TOS/TNG movie novelization). Picard must stop an El-Aurian scientist from destroying stars to divert the route of an energy ribbon called the Nexus, which will take those in its path to a joyous wish-fulfillment paradise outside of time. (Reviewed 9/11/20.) 😐
The Pet (DS9, YA). Odo entrusts the care of a creature picked up on a Federation-sponsored tour of the Gamma Quadrant to Jake and Nog, who must elude the sinister man who considers it his property and wants it back. (Reviewed 9/18/20.) 🤢
1995
Balance of Power (TNG #33). Two rogue Ferengi use a device that turns cheap metals into counterfeit gold-pressed latinum to dominate a galaxy-wide auction for a deceased scientist’s wild inventions, and have kidnapped the device’s architect: Wesley Crusher. (Reviewed 9/26/20.) 💎
Mystery of the Missing Crew (TNG, YA). En route to Starfleet Academy, Data must team up with his new friends to figure out why all the adults on the ship have vanished and what to do about robots being beamed over by hostile aggressors. (Reviewed 10/2/20.) 😐
Proud Helios (DS9 #9). A band of space pirates prove to be a thorn in the side for both the Cardassians and Benjamin Sisko, especially when they kidnap Chief O’Brien and Sisko must get him back before the Cardassians mete out their own version of justice. (Reviewed 10/9/20.) ☹️
Caretaker (VOY #1, episode novelization). While attempting to retrieve her chief of security from an undercover operation, Captain Kathryn Janeway’s ship, the USS Voyager, hits an unusual energy wave and is flung over 70,000 light years away to the Delta Quadrant. (Reviewed 10/16/20.) 🙂
Recovery (TOS #73). A new ship that’s fully automated and built for evacuating large populations goes haywire on its test run, and its designer seeks revenge on Admiral Kirk while his creation sets a potentially war-causing course for Tholian space. (Reviewed 10/23/20.) 🙂
Blaze of Glory (TNG #34). While Captain Picard tries to gain support for deposing an overlord who is selling his people out to the Romulans, Riker and Geordi go undercover and fall into the clutches of a flamboyant Errol Flynn-esque space pirate. (Reviewed 10/30/20.) 🤢
Warped (DS9 event novel). A con man who brings altered holosuites that tap directly into the subconsciouses of their users to Deep Space Nine has bigger plans to turn Bajor into a center of pleasure and profit, and bigger plans beyond that still. (Reviewed 11/6/20.) ☹️
Secret of the Lizard People (TNG, YA). Data’s class is invited to witness a celestial event that will result in the birth of a star, but they could miss it when their detour to render aid to a space station that crashed in an asteroid belt turns deadly. (Reviewed 11/14/20.) 🙂
Valhalla (DS9 #10). Sisko and Kira try to indirectly influence internal Cardassian affairs that could potentially lead to an attempt to re-occupy Bajor, but a sentient derelict ship from the wormhole that believes it has arrived in heaven hampers their efforts. (Reviewed 11/27/20.) 🙂
The Romulan Strategem (TNG #35). Picard and Sela compete to convince a strategic border world to join their respective organizations. Meanwhile, a teenage boy Ro Laren meets in her new duty as orientation officer develops a crush on her. (Reviewed 12/4/20.) 🙂
The Escape (VOY #2). While investigating what appears to be an abandoned shipyard on the planet Alcawell, Torres, Kim, and Neelix accidentally travel 300,000 years into the planet’s past, where they are summarily charged with a number of temporal crimes. (Reviewed 12/11/20.) 💎
Devil in the Sky (DS9 #11). While Kira, Dax, and Bashir go on a rescue mission to save a Horta captured by the Cardassians, the Horta’s eggs hatch on Deep Space Nine, causing pandemonium as the babies eat their way through the station. (Reviewed 12/18/20.) 🙂
The Ashes of Eden (Shatnerverse, TOS). Retirement has left Kirk feeling a little bored, but that all changes when a young half-Klingon, half-Romulan woman comes into his life and invites him to a world that promises eternal youth and needs his help. (Reviewed 12/26/20.) 😐
The Fearful Summons (TOS #74). When Captain Sulu is captured by rogue traders and Starfleet’s attempt to get him back gets stymied by red tape, Kirk decides to take matters into his own hands and reassembles his old crew to mount a rescue of their own. (Reviewed 1/1/21.) ☹️
Arcade (DS9, YA). Jake must beat a video game that no has ever won in order to rescue his friends, who have fallen into comas and whose minds have become trapped in the game following their own failed attempts. (Reviewed 1/8/21.) 🙂
Into the Nebula (TNG #36). The Enterprise helps the survivors of a dying planet find the source of the thick cloud of waste that is destroying their world and figure out how to pull their planet back from the brink of irreversible environmental damage. (Reviewed 1/15/21.) [Good]
Ragnarok (VOY #3). Ignoring Neelix’s advice in hopes of finding a shortcut home, Janeway takes Voyager straight through the heart of the Kuriyar Cluster, plunging the ship into the midst of a centuries-long war between the Hachai and the P’nir. (Reviewed 1/22/21.) [Terrible]
The Ferengi Rules of Acquisition (DS9, Misc). A small chapbook featuring roughly one-fourth of the eponymous two hundred eighty-five Rules that comprise the accumulated financial wisdom of the Ferengi, along with assorted black-and-white stills. (Reviewed 1/29/21.) [Average]
First Frontier (TOS #75). Testing on a new type of shield goes awry and sends the Enterprise to another timeline where the asteroid that killed the dinosaurs never struck Earth, causing humanity and the Federation to never develop (Reviewed 2/5/21.) [Bad]
Field Trip (DS9, YA). Keiko promises Commander Sisko a safe class trip to a planet not too deep into the Gamma Quadrant that shows no signs of life other than plants, but when they arrive, their runabout is taken down by Cardassian raiders. (Reviewed 2/12/21.) [Bad]
The Laertian Gamble (DS9 #12). A telepath cajoles Dr. Bashir into gambling on her behalf as an experiment to see if her unnatural good luck will work through a proxy, which soon proves to have devastating effects on objects throughout the galaxy. (Reviewed 2/19/21.) [Terrible]
Violations (VOY #4). Arriving at a large commercial hub where information is the coin of the realm, Janeway’s attempt to negotiate for possible wormhole locations ends with the crew being rendered unconscious and their main computer core stolen. (Reviewed 2/26/21.) [Average]
The Last Stand (TNG #37). Enterprise’s investigation of something making warp one not far from their location draws them into a 7,000-year-old conflict between the penitent Lethanta and the race they once enslaved, the revenge-driven Krann. (Reviewed 3/5/21.) [Average]
Starfall (TNG, YA). Jean-Luc Picard fails the Academy entrance exam on his first attempt, but is determined to get in despite his father’s disapproval and plans for him to take charge of the production of a new wine at Chateau Picard. (Reviewed 3/12/21.) [Excellent]
The Way of the Warrior (DS9 episode novelization). Sisko summons Worf to Deep Space Nine to enlist his help in thwarting the Klingons, who are preparing to descend on Cardassia Prime, fearing that changelings have infiltrated the Cardassian government. (Reviewed 3/19/21.) [Good]
Station Rage (DS9 #13). Recognizing the body of a Cardassian left in stasis in an obscure corner of Deep Space Nine as that of a legendary general, Garak revives the man and his loyal soldiers, who immediately seek to take over the station. (Reviewed 3/26/21.) [Good]
Incident at Arbuk (VOY #5). Janeway orders a detour to investigate a distress signal, leading to a city in space melted to slag and showing no signs of life, along with a mysterious elongated tube pointing directly at it and pummeling it with heavy fire. (Reviewed 4/2/21.) [Bad]
The Captain’s Daughter (TOS #76). When Captain Jon Harriman is forced to kill Demora Sulu in self-defense after she goes feral during an away mission, her father journeys to the planet where she died to find out what really happened. (Reviewed 4/9/21.) [Good]
Crossover (TNG event). Spock is captured on a visit to one of the outer worlds of the Romulan Empire, which spawns two rescue attempts: one by Admiral McCoy and the Enterprise-D sanctioned by Starfleet, and a less official attempt by Captain Scott. (Reviewed 4/16/21.) [Good]
Nova Command (TNG, YA). Picard makes friends and earns a spot on an elite training team in his first semester at the Academy, but is annoyed by a cocky colleague who seems to be just a little bit better at everything than he is. (Reviewed 4/23/21.) [Good]
1996
Twilight’s End (TOS #77). The planet Rimillia needs Scotty to help them with a massive project to rotate their tidally locked planet using thousands of impulse engines, but extremist opposition to the project threatens to derail it. (Reviewed 4/30/21.) [Average]
Dragon’s Honor (TNG #38). On the planet Pai, Picard must ensure that a wedding between two nobles goes well and convince their emperor to join the Federation so that the Enterprise can legally render aid against an approaching race of malevolent space pirates. (Reviewed 5/7/21.) [Good]
The Long Night (DS9 #14). When word gets out that a ship long thought vanished turns up crashed into an asteroid, people and groups turn out from all over the Alpha Quadrant to vie for the treasures within. (Reviewed 5/14/21.) [Bad]
Gypsy World (DS9, YA). Jake and Nog are kidnapped by the Fjori for trying to look at their secret starmaps and are taken to their secret homeworld, which they, as outsiders who now know where the planet is located, are never allowed to leave. (Reviewed 5/21/21.) [Terrible]
The Murdered Sun (VOY #6). Chakotay is determined to give whatever help he can to a peaceful people whose sun is turning prematurely into a red giant as a result of a nearby anomaly siphoning massive amounts of hydrogen off of it. (Reviewed 5/28/21.) [Excellent]
Rogue Saucer (TNG #39). Admiral Nechayev taps Picard and his crew to test a new prototype saucer section that can withstand crash landings, but the experiment is hijacked by her new aide, who delivers the new saucer into the hands of the Maquis. (Reviewed 6/4/21.) [Excellent]
Loyalties (TNG, YA). When a fellow cadet becomes injured during a medical simulation and the instructor blames her roommate, Beverly Howard determines to find out what really happened. (Reviewed 6/11/21.) [Bad]
Ghost of a Chance (VOY #7). Chakotay and Janeway both receive a vision of spirits pleading for their help as Voyager approaches a primitive planet being torn apart by earthquakes and deals with the Televek, who have a decidedly less altruistic interest in the planet. (Reviewed 6/18/21.) [Average]
The Return (Shatnerverse, TOS/TNG). As part of a tenuous and bizarre Romulan-Borg alliance, James Kirk is resurrected by the Romulans and brainwashed into finding and killing Jean-Luc Picard, setting the stage for the Borg to destroy the Federation. (Reviewed 6/25/21.) [Average]
The Rings of Tautee (TOS #78). The sudden and nearly simultaneous disintegration of all fifteen major planets in the Tautee system leads Captain Kirk to wonder if rumors of a new Klingon superweapon might be true. (Reviewed 7/2/21.) [Average]
Star Trek: Klingon (video game novelization).
Possession (TNG #40). An ancient evil that ravaged the planet Vulcan almost a century ago has been biding its time, mutating and adapting inside the mind of a Vulcan scientist, and is now ready to infect the rest of the universe, starting with the Enterprise. (Reviewed 7/9/21.) [Bad]
Objective: Bajor (DS9 #15). Sisko must reckon with the peculiar prejudices and entitlements of a species called the Hive, who siphoned all the raw materials off a Bajoran colony world and are en route to do the same to Bajor and Cardassia Prime. (Reviewed 7/23/21.) [Excellent]
Highest Score (DS9, YA). Jake and Nog’s video game skills land them a job mining raw materials from dangerous planets through a game-like simulation, but the game may be more real than their employer originally let on. (Reviewed 7/30/21.) [Average]
Cybersong (VOY #8). The Voyager crew find themselves having trouble escaping a tachyon field they had no intention of exploring and must work out the mystery of the malevolent entity that wants to keep them there if they want to have any hope of escaping. (Reviewed 8/6/21.) [Terrible]
First Strike (TOS #79, Invasion! #1). A high-ranking Klingon general enlists Kirk’s aid in dealing with beings who emerge from a fissure in space and announce their intention to reclaim the Alpha Quadrant from the “conquerors” who drove them out 5000 years prior. (Reviewed 8/13/21.) [Good]
The Soldiers of Fear (TNG #41, Invasion! #2). Eighty years after their first return to the Alpha Quadrant, the Furies return as promised, with more ships and a weapon to project psychological torments directly into people’s minds. (Reviewed 8/20/21.) [Bad]
Kahless (TNG event). A Boreth monk discovers a scroll that, if legitimate, could discredit the mythic deeds of Kahless, serve as the catalyst in a conspiracy to overthrow Gowron, and shake the foundations of all Klingon belief to their very core. (Reviewed 8/27/21.) [Good]
Crisis on Vulcan (TOS, YA). When one of the colonies of the planet Marath is displeased with a treaty Sarek helped them draft, Spock has to figure out what their issue with it is before his family winds up in their crosshairs. (Reviewed 9/3/21.) [Average]
Time’s Enemy (DS9 #16, Invasion! #3). When the Defiant is found derelict 5000 years after having been thrown back in time during a catastrophic battle, Sisko must figure out how to avert the timeline and stop the implacable organisms who brought it about. (Reviewed 9/24/21.) [Excellent]
The Final Fury (VOY #9, Invasion! #4). Voyager stumbles upon the Fury homeworld and sees a chance to eliminate the Fury threat once and for all, but find themselves stymied by moral dilemmas and an apparent lack of structural weakness in the Furies’ machinery. (Reviewed 10/13/21.) [Bad]
The Joy Machine (TOS #80). When two Federation agents assigned to the planet Timshel stop reporting, the Enterprise is dispatched to investigate and discovers a society whose citizens toil unceasingly at menial labor in exchange for a few moments of unparalleled ecstasy. (Reviewed 10/22/21.) [Average]
Aftershock (TOS, YA). As punishment for an overly rough football incident, Leonard McCoy is pressed into service for the Disaster Relief Service Club, which is almost immediately sent to a colony world to investigate a series of earthquakes. (Reviewed 10/30/21.) [Terrible]
Infiltrator (TNG #42). A civilian scientist aboard the Enterprise must keep her genetic engineering a secret, but she may have to blow her cover when saboteurs from her homeworld unleash a virus that overwrites human DNA with their augmentations. (Reviewed 11/23/21.) [Excellent]
Cadet Kirk (TOS, YA). Young James Kirk struggles to locate a balance between following the rules and bending them as he works with his new friends Spock and Leonard McCoy to extricate themselves from a hostage situation. (Reviewed 11/26/21.) [Average]
The Heart of the Warrior (DS9 #17). Kira, Odo, and Worf are selected for a mission in the Gamma Quadrant that could give their side a big leg up against the Dominion. Back at home, Sisko manages short tempers and clashing personalities at a peace conference. (Reviewed 12/9/21.) [Average]
Mosaic (VOY event). While Voyager hides out in a nebula licking its wounds after a Kazon ambush that leaves half the crew stranded on a mysterious planet, Captain Janeway reflects on the childhood experiences that made her who she is today. (Reviewed 12/21/21.) [Good]
Flashback (VOY episode). The resurfacing of a suppressed memory threatens Tuvok with fatal brain damage. Janeway agrees to a mind meld to resolve the crisis, an experience that takes her and Tuvok back to his first deep-space assignment on the Excelsior. (Reviewed 12/29/21.) [Excellent]
A Fury Scorned (TNG #43). With Epictetus III’s sun on the verge of going nova, Data proposes an ambitious plan to draw power from the dying star to create a wormhole and send the planet through it and into the orbit of a more stable star. (Reviewed 1/5/22.) [Bad]
Saratoga (DS9 #18). Sisko and his old crewmates are sent to Utopia Planitia to christen a new model of their old ship, but a saboteur endangers the journey. Meanwhile, when Quark falls ill amid an effort to do a favor for Major Kira, Odo steps in to close the deal. (Reviewed 1/11/22.) [Good]
Star Trek: First Contact (TNG movie). When the Borg seek to alter the timeline by preventing humanity from achieving warp, the Enterprise-E crew follows them into the past to stop them and aid the shiftless Zefram Cochrane in making his historic flight. (Reviewed 1/22/22.) [Average]
Crossfire (TNG, YA). The Starfleet Academy Band’s performance at Pacifica earns them a fawning fan in one of the judges, an Orion, who abducts their ship and takes them to perform for troops suffering from low morale as they fight in a grim proxy war. (Reviewed 2/8/22.) [Good]
Trials and Tribble-ations (DS9 episode). Agents from the Department of Temporal Investigations interrogate Captain Sisko regarding his actions in traveling back in time to prevent Captain Kirk’s assassination at Space Station K-7. (Reviewed 2/15/22.) [Good]
Bless the Beasts (VOY #10). The Sardalians disagree among themselves about how to procure the sea mammal’s blood that will cure their congenital plague, and Tom Paris and Harry Kim are caught in the middle of their conflict. (Reviewed 3/15/22.) [Average]
1997
Mudd in Your Eye (TOS #81). Kirk is flabbergasted to discover that notorious con man Harry Mudd has brokered a peace between two planets that have been at war for 12,000 years, but must soon bail him out when the people return to their warlike ways. (Reviewed 4/1/22.) [Excellent]
The Death of Princes (TNG #44). While Crusher and Picard investigate a high-fatality plague on a planet reluctant to accept their help, Riker and Troi embark on a damage control mission to retrieve an observer who has broken the Prime Directive. (Reviewed 4/8/22.) [Average]
The Tempest (DS9 #19). Dax and Keiko fly into the heart of a plasma storm rocking the sector in hopes of gathering information that will help the station weather it. Meanwhile, Worf contends with new enemies his denial of departure clearance made him. (Reviewed 4/30/22.) [Good]
The Garden (VOY #11). Voyager’s latest stop to stock up on food has to be successful or they won’t make it to the next one, but the people they find want something that Janeway may not be in a position to give them. (Reviewed 5/17/22.) [Terrible]
Cardassian Imps (DS9, YA). While Jake and Nog’s discovery of a new toy on an abandoned level of the station spirals out of control, the senior officers try to figure out why a supposedly inert dust is rapidly accumulating in the climate control systems. (Reviewed 5/20/22.) [Average]
Chrysalis (VOY #12). In need of food yet again, Voyager stops at a planet that appears uninhabited, but is home to a species whose members hope to enter a state of joyous ecstasy called the Long Sleep and become excited when it happens to one of Janeway’s ensigns. (Reviewed 6/4/22.) [Good]
Intellivore (TNG #45). Enterprise is sent along with the Oraidhe to assist the science vessel Marignano in the Beta Quadrant, where a patrol to dissuade pirates soon finds the three ships running into a much deadlier and nearly incomprehensible threat. (Reviewed 6/10/22.) [Average]
Breakaway (TNG, YA). In her first year as a cadet, Deanna Troi struggles to build her mental shields and intimidates classmates with her cold demeanor and privilege, and sees an opportunity to take a major test early as her only way to repair her reputation. (Reviewed 7/9/22.) [Excellent]
Wrath of the Prophets (DS9 #20). When a nasty disease gets into Bajor’s water supply and spreads throughout the population and beyond, Sisko and his team find themselves reluctantly accepting assistance from an unlikely source: Starfleet defector Ro Laren. (Reviewed 7/19/22.) [Average]
The Black Shore (VOY #13). Voyager catches a canned message from a remote planet offering passersby their hospitality. Janeway decides shore leave might be nice, but Chakotay and Kes sense malevolent presences and dark secrets lurking behind the fun times. (Reviewed 8/2/22.) [Good]
Avenger (TOS/TNG, Shatnerverse.) A radical sect of Vulcan eco-terrorists have unleashed a pathogen that is rapidly destroying all plant life in the galaxy, and Kirk, Spock, and the Enterprise-E crew have mere days to halt its virulent spread. (Reviewed 8/9/22.) [Average]
Mind Meld (TOS #82). During a stop en route to an experimental ceremony with potentially huge implications for Vulcan/Romulan unification, Spock’s niece Teska mind melds with a murdered diplomat just before his death, putting herself and Spock in the thick of it. (Reviewed 8/15/22.) [Excellent]
Star Trek: Starfleet Academy (video game novelization).
Space Camp (DS9, YA). When Ben signs Jake up for an Academy preparatory camp, Jake convinces him to get Nog in as well, but the two boys soon find their attraction to a Betazoid girl driving a wedge in their friendship. (Reviewed 8/23/22.) [Terrible]
House of Cards (New Frontier #1). The Thallonian Empire is crumbling and losing its grip on its subject worlds, and maverick captain Mackenzie Calhoun is tapped to take the Ambassador-class Excalibur into its sector and render aid where necessary. (Reviewed 8/30/22.) [Good]
Into the Void (NF #2). The crew of the Excalibur assemble and head off into Sector 221-G, getting to know each other, helping out a ship knocked out of whack in a violent crossfire, and learning the secret of Thallon’s miracle soil from stowaway Si Cwan. (Reviewed 9/15/22.) [Excellent]
Vulcan’s Forge (TOS event). Several years after Spock and a human friend he met at a Vulcan coming-of-age ceremony stopped a madman from overtaking the planet, the two, now both Starfleet captains, cross paths and find themselves facing the same menace again. (Reviewed 10/31/22.) Excellent
Lifeline (VOY, YA). Cadet Janeway struggles with missing her dad, learning how to accept help from others, and pleasing a tough cadet group commander with a penchant for surprise drills and inspections. (Reviewed 11/7/22.) Bad
The Two-Front War (NF #3). The Excalibur finds a planet willing to take on the Cambon’s refugees, but Calhoun suspects a trap. Zak Kebron tries to keep Si Cwan from rushing headlong into a foolish decision. Selar and Soleta confide in each other. (Reviewed 11/26/22.) Excellent
End Game (NF #4). Fearing he’s going soft, Calhoun seeks to prove himself after blinking first in a game of political chicken. Kebron and Si Cwan face execution on Thallon. Soleta and Lefler make a startling discovery about the planet’s increasing quakes. (Reviewed 12/2/22.) Good
Legends of the Ferengi (DS9, Misc). A collection of anecdotes that elucidate the supposed origins of several of the Rules of Acquisition. (Reviewed 12/11/22.) Terrible
Ancient Blood (TNG, Day of Honor #1). When Worf is enlisted for an undercover mission that will keep him away from the ship during an important Klingon holiday, he asks Captain Picard to assist Alexander in the boy’s first mature experience of it. (Reviewed 12/28/22.) Terrible
Armageddon Sky (DS9, Day of Honor #2). A planet in the Klingon Demilitarized Zone attracts Starfleet’s notice when a blockade led by Kor shoots down a civilian science research vessel that’s in the neighborhood to observe a rare celestial event. (Reviewed 1/23/23.) Average
The Chance Factor (VOY, YA). Cadet Janeway joins a feasiblity study as part of a last-ditch attempt to remain in the Academy, in which she must learn how to cooperate with a number of conflicting personalities and hard-to-wrangle animals. (Reviewed 2/2/23.) Bad
Ship of the Line (TNG event). Learning that the old foe he thought he had once destroyed was only stuck in a temporal causality loop and is not only still alive but captain of the newly commissioned Enterprise-E, a disgraced Klingon forms a plan to steal it out from under him. (Reviewed 2/20/23.) Terrible
Her Klingon Soul (VOY, Day of Honor #3). B’Elanna Torres and Harry Kim are captured by a race that forces its prisoners to mine for radioactive materials. Kes resolves to change a rescued survivor’s mind about not taking a vaccine that will save her life. (Reviewed 3/9/23.) Bad
Treaty’s Law (TOS, Day of Honor #4). Kirk goes to great lengths to help a Klingon agricultural colony fight off the mysterious attackers who are devastating their crops, much to the surprise of the colonists and his rival Kor. (Reviewed 4/4/23.) Good
Honor Bound (DS9, YA, Day of Honor). Worf returns to Earth to help Alexander learn how to deal with prejudice against Klingons brought about by the conflict with the Cardassians and understand the recent changes occurring in his body. (Reviewed 4/14/23.) Excellent
Quarantine (VOY, YA). Cadet Janeway is selected for a mission to deliver medical supplies to a world with a plague, but the local government quarantines her and her team when they wander into an area alleged to be contaminated. (Reviewed 5/4/23.) Average
Heart of the Sun (TOS #83). After helping an isolationist colony restore their lost database, Kirk and his crew turn their attention to an alien object that is on a collision course with the system’s sun. (Reviewed 5/16/23.) Good
Trial by Error (DS9 #21). Quark’s latest business deal brings a number of dissatisfied parties to the station, which Sisko leaves Kira to handle while he and O’Brien venture into the wormhole to solve a mystery posed by some weird, unreadable copycat ships. (Reviewed 5/30/23.) Average
Day of Honor (VOY episode). The last thing Lt. Torres wants to do after starting her day on the wrong foot and struggling to accept Seven of Nine as part of the crew is endure an annual Klingon ritual, but she realizes it may have some meaning for her after all. (Reviewed 6/13/23.) Average
To Storm Heaven (TNG #46). A dying planet’s ambassador seeks the Enterprise’s help in looking to their sister worlds for a lost plant that will help them eradicate a deadly plague, but a religious scandal complicates their search. (Reviewed 6/30/23.) Terrible
The Haunted Starship (TNG, YA). On a routine survey mission to the asteroid belt, Cadet La Forge sees the specter of the ship’s original captain—but if other sources can’t corroborate the sighting, it may get him booted from the Academy. (Reviewed 7/7/23.) Good
Marooned (VOY #14). A 4000-year-old space pirate has goo-goo eyes for Kes, but he doesn’t care much for her other friends on Voyager, and decides to maroon them on the inhospitable world where he makes his headquarters. (Reviewed 7/31/23.) Good
1998
Assignment: Eternity (TOS #84). The Enterprise crew has another run-in with the mysterious time-traveling 20th-century human Gary Seven, who has now come to their time to prevent the assassination of Spock at the Khitomer Peace Conference. (Reviewed 8/18/23.) Good
Echoes (VOY #15). Voyager must solve the dilemma faced by the planet Birsiba, whose population keeps shifting one universe over due to the interaction of their worldwide transporter with a spatial rift, resulting in three billion dead bodies every two hours (Reviewed 9/5/23.) Bad
The Best and the Brightest (TNG). Six cadets endure tough years at Starfleet Academy, starting out as contentious quadmates, forging enduring friendship and love, and eventually taking their talents to the Enterprise and beyond. (Reviewed 9/29/23.) Good
Vengeance (DS9 #22). Rumors of horrifying new alliances and technological capabilities send Sisko on a wild goose chase to the Gamma Quadrant, leaving the station open to a Klingon invasion that its leader insists is for the good of the Alpha Quadrant. (Reviewed 11/22/23.) Bad
Trapped in Time (DS9, YA). Jake, Nog, and Chief O’Brien follow a scientist who has stolen a time machine back to 1944, in hopes of stopping him from changing history in the Axis Powers’ favor. (Reviewed 12/1/23). Good
Martyr (NF #5). Theological philosophies in Sector 221-G collide with the advent of the Thallonian flame bird, including one group that identifies Calhoun as their prophesied messiah, and another that sees him as a threat to the return of their own deity. (Reviewed 12/30/23.) Excellent
Deceptions (TNG, YA). While on a class assignment, Data uncovers a plot by three scientists to smuggle ancient artifacts psychically infused with intense emotion back to their homeworld and weaponize them to cripple the Federation. (Reviewed 1/5/24.) Average
Far Beyond the Stars (DS9 episode). During a moment of heightened stress during the Dominion War, Sisko receives a vision from the Prophets in which he is a 1950s sci-fi writer trying to sell a story about a space station commanded by a Black captain. (Reviewed 1/15/24.) Excellent
Fire on High (NF #6). Robin Lefler’s mother, long presumed dead, is alive and remanded to the Excalibur’s custody. She’s eager to cut the family reunion short, but the thing she’s looking for might just come to her instead. (Reviewed 2/17/24.) Average
Planet X (TNG). Several members of the X-Men find themselves temporally displaced by technological shenanigans, but may be able to help the Enterprise-E crew with a situation uniquely suited to their talents. (Reviewed 3/6/24.) Bad
Spectre (Multi, Shatnerverse). Kirk just wants to retire happily on Chal with Teilani, but when he gets captured by rebels from the Mirror Universe, he winds up having to thwart an Alliance scheme to steal the Enterprise-E and take it back to their universe. (Reviewed 3/25/24.) Good
War Dragons (TOS, Captain’s Table #1). At an intergalactic pub that only naval captains can enter, Kirk and Sulu tell twin tales of encounters with a reclusive but vicious lizard race twenty years apart. (Reviewed 4/21/24.) Average
Dujonian’s Hoard (TNG, Captain’s Table #2). Starfleet taps Captain Picard to locate a missing officer, a mission that sees him infiltrating a band of mercenaries, crushing on their captain, and hunting for a legendary Cardassian treasure. (Reviewed 5/25/24.) Average
The Mist (DS9, Captain’s Table #3). The Defiant is phased out of normal space by people representing the many worlds of the Mist, who are hoping they can help them deal with rebels who supposedly want to conquer the Mist homeworld. (Reviewed 6/1/24.) Good
Fire Ship (VOY, Captain’s Table #4). Captain Janeway witnesses the destruction of Voyager and drifts in space until she’s picked up by the Zingara, a somewhat primitive vessel on which she must become accustomed to a new life as a lowly deckhand. (Reviewed 6/22/24.) Good
Strange New Worlds (anthology). A compilation of the winning entries submitted to the first Strange New Worlds event, a contest designed to help unpublished authors get a foot in the door of the industry. (Reviewed 7/5/24.) Excellent
Q-Space (TNG #47, Q Continuum #1). Q tries to convince Picard to call off a Betazoid scientist’s experiment on the galactic barrier, but when Picard won’t budge, Q shows Picard events from his own past to provide context for his warnings. (Reviewed 7/15/24.) Good
Q-Zone (TNG #48, Q Continuum #2). As Riker contends with the impatient scientist Lem Faal and the overwhelming bombardment of the Calamarain on the Enterprise, Q continues showing Picard his early dealings with the malevolent entity known as Zero. (Reviewed 8/5/24.) Good
Q-Strike (TNG #49, Q Continuum #3). While Zero pursues Q about the Enterprise after escaping from the imprisonment of the galactic barrier, the crew tries to earn the trust of the Calamarain in hopes of working together to dispatch the Zero menace. (Reviewed 8/28/24.) Average
Pathways (VOY event). Held hostage in a brutal labor camp, the senior officers of Voyager attempt to buoy morale by telling formative tales of overcoming adversity from their own pasts. (Reviewed 11/3/24.) Bad
Seven of Nine (VOY #16). The remnants of a race of powerful telepaths use their formidable abilities not only to accelerate Voyager’s progress through the bureaucratic red tape of a large empire, but also to hide their true intentions from the crew. (Reviewed 11/13/24.) Good
Triangle: Imzadi II (TNG event). While Riker tries to come to terms with Worf and Deanna Troi’s engagement, Sela teams up with his transporter-accident double Thomas Riker to carry out a plot against the Klingon Empire. (Reviewed 12/1/24.) Average
Once Burned (NF, Captain’s Table #5). Mackenzie Calhoun, first officer of the Grissom, must prevent his captain from enacting vengeance on an entire race after the man is psychologically broken by the brutal murder of his brother and daughter. (Reviewed 12/8/24.) Excellent
Where Sea Meets Sky (TOS, Captain’s Table #6).
Star Trek: Insurrection (TNG movie).
Behind Enemy Lines (TNG, Dominion War #1).
A Call to Arms (DS9, Dominion War #2).
Tunnel Through the Stars (TNG, Dominion War #3).
Sacrifice of Angels (DS9, Dominion War #4).
1999
Republic (TOS, My Brother’s Keeper #1).
Constitution (TOS, My Brother’s Keeper #2).
Enterprise (TOS, My Brother’s Keeper #3).
The 34th Rule (DS9 #23).
The Conquered (DS9 #24, Rebels #1).
The Courageous (DS9 #25, Rebels #2).
The Liberated (DS9 #26, Rebels #3).
Death of a Neutron Star (VOY #17).
Dyson Sphere (TNG #50).
Dark Victory (Shatnerverse).
Battle Lines (VOY #18).
Infection (TNG #51, Double Helix #1).
What You Leave Behind (DS9 episode).
Vulcan’s Heart (TOS event).
Vectors (TNG #52, Double Helix #2).
Red Sector (TNG #53, Double Helix #3).
Quarantine (TNG #54, Double Helix #4).
Double or Nothing (TNG #55, Double Helix #5).
The First Virtue (TNG #56, Double Helix #6).
The Forgotten War (TNG #57).
I, Q (TNG event).
Across the Universe (TOS #88).
Equinox (VOY episode).
Captain Proton: Defender of the Earth (VOY anthology).
The Quiet Place (NF #7).
Dark Allies (NF #8).
The Lives of Dax (DS9 anthology).
The Badlands, Book One (TOS/TNG).
The Badlands, Book Two (DS9/VOY).
2000
Gemworld, Book One (TNG #58).
Gemworld, Book Two (TNG #59).
Strange New Worlds II (anthology).
The Fall of Terok Nor (DS9, Millennium #1).
The War of the Prophets (DS9, Millennium #2).
The Valiant (TNG).
Inferno (DS9, Millennium #3).
A Stitch in Time (DS9 #27).
Wagon Train to the Stars (TOS #89, New Earth #1).
Belle Terre (TOS #90, New Earth #2).
Star Trek: Enterprise Logs (Misc.).
Rough Trails (TOS #91, New Earth #3).
The Flaming Arrow (TOS #92, New Earth #4).
Preserver (Multi, Shatnerverse).
Thin Air (TOS #93, New Earth #5).
Challenger (TOS #94, New Earth #6).
Requiem (NF #9, Excalibur #1).
Renaissance (NF #10, Excalibur #2).
The Belly of the Beast (SCE #1).
The Genesis Wave, Book One (TNG).
Fatal Error (SCE #2).
Swordhunt (TOS #95).
Honor Blade (TOS #96).
Hard Crash (SCE #3).
Cloak and Dagger (VOY #19, Dark Matters #1).
Ghost Dance (VOY #20, Dark Matters #2).
Shadow of Heaven (VOY #21, Dark Matters #3).
Restoration (NF #11, Excalibur #3).
2001
Dark Passions, Book 1 (Multi).
Dark Passions, Book 2 (Multi).
Tooth and Claw (TNG #60).
Diplomatic Implausibility (TNG #61).
Interphase, Part 1 (SCE #4).
Strange New Worlds III (anthology).
Dead Zone (TNG #62).
Forever Dark (TNG #63).
Interphase, Part 2 (SCE #5).
The Genesis Wave, Book Two (TNG).
Avatar, Book 1 (DS9).
Avatar, Book 2 (DS9).
Shadow (VOY, Section 31).
Rogue (TNG, Section 31).
The Rise and Fall of Khan Noonien Singh, Volume One (TOS).
One Small Step (TOS, Gateways #1).
Chainmail (TOS, Gateways #2).
Cloak (TOS, Section 31).
Abyss (DS9, Section 31).
Endgame (VOY episode).
Cold Fusion (SCE #6).
Strange New Worlds IV (anthology).
Invincible, Part 1 (SCE #7).
Doors into Chaos (TNG, Gateways #3).
Demons of Air and Darkness (DS9, Gateways #4).
Invincible, Part 2 (SCE #8).
No Man’s Land (VOY, Gateways #5).
Broken Bow (ENT episode).
Cold Wars (NF, Gateways #6).
The Riddled Post (SCE #9).
Being Human (NF).
Here There Be Monsters (SCE #10).
Ambush (SCE #11).