This week, we’re … saving the whales? Hold on, didn’t we just do that two weeks ago? Nevertheless, here we are, and although Deep Domain does share some themes with The Voyage Home, it travels a wildly different story path, as Howard Weinstein assures us in his Author’s Notes. How different, you ask? Missing officers, a military coup, family trouble, broken treaties, government secrets, isolated civilizations, and cetacean mutations—and those are just the ones I can rattle off the top of my head. And if that sounds like a lot for a <300pp. book to juggle, perhaps it won’t entirely surprise you to learn it’s not totally successful in that endeavor.
For the first time in recent memory, we’ve got an introduction. I think they fell by the wayside because authors realized we’re interested in our favorite crew and not their silly self-indulgent life stories, but mercifully it’s a short one. Still, even in only six short paragraphs, I found enough to give me pause (emphasis = my own):
There aren’t many roads to my heart faster than spicy food. I’ve been a spice fiend since I was a teenager, and I managed to turn my nephew into one while he was still in diapers. So when I saw 
Hot on the heels of Diane Carey’s debut Trek novel Dreadnought! comes its sequel, the similarly exclamation-marked Battlestations!. A hot new (well, not totally new) technology has been stolen, and Piper’s friend and crewmate Sarda is the prime suspect. Can Piper clear his name, wrest the technology from the hands of those who would use it for evil, and save the day once again? And will she look as good doing all of it in her non-regulation khaki flight suit as she did in her non-regulation flared black jumper?