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Many Star Trek novels are basically ‘just another episode’. An adventure happening alongside all the normal ones of the TV series. Some of them go after bigger subjects, like this one which presents Kirk’s evolution as a command officer into who we see during the first season of TOS. And it does it very well.

There’s a few problems. The novel is really two stories (with some connections) told in a jumbled-up fashion. This is generally well done, but the switching between various portions of five years can get dizzying, and while I was fine with it (at least once each section of plot got itself going, and I could orient myself), I wouldn’t blame anyone who found it too much to follow.

We get to see Kirk’s first encounter with Bones, how he gave him that nickname, and his first command of a smaller ship (USS Sacajawea), as well as his initial mission on the Enterprise.

This last is trouble, since we already have novel about that, Enterprise: The First Adventure. This novel doesn’t even give a nod to that one. Overwriting portions of it would be one thing (like the background of Kirk’s previous mission to getting promoted to starship command), it wouldn’t have taken much to step around the time frame of that novel and leave interested readers to do whatever they must to reconcile the bits around them. Instead we get completely conflicting versions. Its more of a shame since the two books have very different aims. TFA features the entire main cast, most of which have their own troubles at the start of the famous five-year mission. That is, it’s focused on the crew coming together as a whole, while Bennett’s book is focused on Kirk and how he became the commander we see on screen. This is well done, and he points out that the Kirk we get in first season is more driven and less relaxed than what we see later, and what we generally think of with the character, and the novel even points up that arc.

USS Sacajawea is from the listing of scouts in the old Star Fleet Technical Manual. It doesn’t really indicate what a “scout” is; the class is externally identical to a destroyer, but with only a fraction of its armament. Star Fleet Battles decided it was packed with extra electronics so it could detect things like fleet movements at a greater range. That would have been handy in the course of the novel, as unknown alien vessels are managing to get through the Federation’s outer sensor net undetected. I can’t blame Bennett for not going with that idea, but on the other hand, he never really gives an idea what a scout’s role is as a ship. The best guess from what’s given is that it’s simply a cheaper, lighter-duty version of a destroyer, meant for use along the unknown reaches of the frontier.

Those “gripes” aside (that’s dignifying these comments with more force than I really intend), the plot is well done. We have some truly alien aliens, with some interestingly different technology, that makes for a good sense of mystery and suspense. We have some action, we have some very good characterization, and the overall plot (once you sort it out) is good. In a way, my real complaint is that it’s better than The First Adventure, which is an old favorite of mine, which it sort of replaces.

Prime Directive came out a bit after my primary era of reading Trek novels, money was tighter, and there were just too many coming out. But, it got a fairly good marketing push at the time, as one of the early (third, I think) hardcover novels. I have to say the current cover is much better than the original hardcover version.

So, we get a bit of a confused opening, as the action is over, and the crew of the Enterprise has been scattered in disgrace for a violation of the Prime Directive that ended in the disaster it was designed to prevent: a dead world. Most of the bridge crew has resigned, Uhura is under court martial, Bones hit an admiral… and the Enterprise is a wreck in orbit around a moon, with one warp engine having been ejected, and the other ruined and evaporating, possibly into subspace.

A common idea in SF for various FTL drives is that they can’t be used too close to the gravity field of a large body; either it’s impossible, or there is a great chance of something going wrong (like going to Pluto when you meant to go to the Moon, and your FTL drive disappearing in the process). Star Trek has been largely silent on the subject, implying that any such trouble is fairly minimal at most. But here its assumed that it’s not mentioned because everyone knows not to do it—and the Enterprise is now the first ship to survive the attempt.

Once the stage is set, we get an extended flashback to the mission that caused all this. This gives us a look at how the Federation works to obey its own Prime Directive while studying developing worlds. There’s some interesting bits showing how the inevitable slip-ups are generally accounted for. In fact, this section is generally well done, and would make a good, if not great, novel even without the tension of the coming disaster looming over it.

Star Trek at its non-philosophical best can deliver mysteries. Not necessarily murder mysteries, but related, where the plot and action are bent towards figuring out just what is really going on, what is our limited human viewpoint missing, and how to bring a solution to bear to what has been learned. The bulk of this novel is exactly this. Even before disaster, it is obvious that something is not right in the Talin system, and the desire to delve deeper helps the pages fly by.

A bit of expectation setting/trivia: The intro to the novel firmly says this is set during the final year of the original five-year mission. I was wondering, with all the dramatic career bits here, if it was intended to be the end of the mission and the reason for Enterprise‘s refit. No, an early novel claimed that bit of the timeline, and the Reeves-Stevens respect that claim. Current fan theory likes to instead place the novel a year earlier, and use it to explain some changes in the bridge crew and small differences in the bridge in The Animated Series.

The worst problem is that after the highly public nature of events depicted here, it’s hard to imagine everyone picking up right where they left off, set for another adventure without acknowledging this one. Outside of that, this is good, gripping Star Trek novel, and well recommended. At some point, I’m going to have to read Federation (which was the novel the authors originally pitched for this publication slot, but Paramount took years to be talked into it).

I’m glad I came to the later part of Duane’s Rihannsu series late, as there was a six-year publication gap between the middle part (the previous pair of books) and this one, with it picking up just as things get dangerous with a state of war being declared between the Federation and the Romulan Empire. It’s also ~400 pages and allowed to be one book, thankfully.

There’s plenty of action this time, with several large actions as the war escalates. In fact, this novel is unusual for Star Trek (especially original series) in depicting fleet battles instead of smaller engagements. Kirk gets to actually act as more of an admiral for once, managing things instead of charging straight into the middle of the action. There’s a fair number of macguffins around some of this, more that I prefer to see thrown around in one novel, but at least they all fit with each other.

At the same time, the plot more revolves around finding a true way forward. Oppression and rebellion are coming even without a war, and in fact, war with the Federation is a distant thing for most of the book, which concentrates on the internal troubles. The large cast of character really shines in this type of story, as there’s no real way to present all the important facets without them. The conclusion follows very naturally from much of what has come before, and is the satisfactory ending all of this has has deserved.

There’s an attempt to paper things over at the end, to give an out to The Next Generation‘s bit where the Romulans have cut themselves off from the rest of galactic society for decades. It feels forced, and is a squaring of the circle that just wasn’t needed. But that’s a minor problem in a strong conclusion to a series that does a great job with its material.

Published thirteen years after The Romulan Way, it takes place a couple of months after that novel. There’s a lot effectively unsettled after that, and this book picks up on all the threads, and even brings in K’s’t’lk from her novel The Wounded Sky.

Past all that, other forces are in motion. Duane’s Romulan (sorry, Rihannsu) Empire is struggling economically, and with recent events, the Klingons are preying on outer colonies. The government is tightening its grip on colonies, which are getting more restless, while concentrating on Ael, who took one of the most unimaginably priceless relics of the Empire, and the Federation, which is sheltering her.

It’s a big story, which Duane tells very well. There’s a lot going on, and sadly, it does take a while to start cohering into a solid shape. There’s a good mix of action and setup at the beginning, which then settles down to get the main plot going.

Unfortunately, the determination of Pocket to keep all its Star Trek novels short gets solidly in the way here, as this is literally the first half of the book, even though the full version would be ~400 pages, which is a merely moderate sized post-70s novel. The second part was the next one released (#96), and it picks up with chapter 6. So at the end, we’re still in the setup phase.