Enthusiastically Ambiverted Hopepunk
64/2022 – ⭐️⭐️⭐️
As with many mid-points of trilogies, not quite as strong as the first, though still better than average. Some flashback scenes are written in with the main narrative and occasionally mildly confusing when scenes switch between present and past battles, and there are a few unfortunate typos swapping similarly named characters. Once those are accounted for, though, a decent enough middle chapter.
63/2022 – ⭐️⭐️⭐️
TOS events as seen trough the eyes of a disguised Klingon operative serving as part of the Enterprise’s security crew. On the one hand, it’s a combination of common tropes: the outsider/enemy coming to understand humanity through living among them and a “lower decks” view of life on a starship. On the other hand, it’s done quite well, without being too “wink-wink, nudge-nudge, remember this bit?” when the book’s events intersect with known missions. A good start to the trilogy (or hexology, I suppose, as there is another trilogy following the events of this one).
52/2022 – ⭐️⭐️⭐️
More time travel shenanigans to get everything wrapped up means more opportunity to get a little confused as to which version of each character is in which setting, but it works out in the end. And the final scene is actually a nice way to finish things off.
But once again, the back cover blurb is wrong, but has just enough relation to make me think that there were some major rewrites and the blurbs were written from the original pitch instead of the final work for some reason.
51/2022 – ⭐️⭐️⭐️
Part two of this trilogy involves a lot of time travel, or dimensional travel, or both, which occasionally makes it a bit difficult to keep track of who is where/when, but for the most part tracks decently.
The back cover blurb is somewhat closer to the plot of the book than with the first book in the series, but still has some notable differences. Maybe the blurbs were written much earlier in the planning process, before rewrites and editorial adjustments? The cover image also has no relation to the story.
50/2022 – ⭐️⭐️⭐️
Set directly after “The Naked Now”, the Enterprise decides to use their extra three days to do a low-stakes check on an away team on a boring planet. Suddenly, everything goes wrong! The first book in a trilogy, so nothing gets wrapped up here, but it’s the usual Trek adventures. Some extra points for having cave exploration scenes that were claustrophobic enough to wig me out a little.
Weirdly, the summary blurb on the back of the book (and thus, on this site) is entirely unrelated to the actual plot.
40/2022 – ⭐️⭐️⭐️
A decent Trek adventure, with some interesting explorations of the Horta. However, yet another instance of Kirk immediately falling in love with a pretty woman from the planet of the week. I know it’s Trek cliche, but I wish more authors would just let Kirk interact with women as people, instead of so predictably and pointlessly as romantic interests.
Woman in Motion (2019): ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️: A little sad that I didn’t get around to seeing this until after Nichelle died. A really nice portrait of an incredible person, and a very important period in NASA’s and America’s history.
38/2022 – ⭐️⭐️⭐️
Cox again indulges in an adventure heavily reliant on references to past canon, but it works better here due to focusing primarily on three distinct TOS episodes, rather than peppering “remember when…” moments throughout.
37/2022 – ⭐️⭐️⭐️
Another encounter with the Excalbians — those rock creatures who masqueraded as Abraham Lincoln and other historical characters. They’re back (as a new set of historical personages) and looking for asylum. A perfectly acceptable Trek adventure revisiting and re-exploring old adventures.
36/2022 – ⭐️⭐️⭐️
An entertaining adventure across two time periods, but sometimes I think Cox gets a little too clever with the constant references to other Trek adventures. Sometimes it’s fun fan service, but sometimes it’s nice just to read a story without a wink-and-a-nudge on every other page.
