{"id":53169,"date":"2026-10-07T13:41:00","date_gmt":"2026-10-07T20:41:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/?p=53169"},"modified":"2026-10-10T13:44:08","modified_gmt":"2026-10-10T20:44:08","slug":"more-beautiful-than-death-by-david-mack","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/2026\/10\/07\/more-beautiful-than-death-by-david-mack\/","title":{"rendered":"More Beautiful Than Death by David Mack"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Book 45 of 2026: <a href=\"https:\/\/app.thestorygraph.com\/books\/88e40017-05ae-4687-915a-ab82c8a5064f\"><cite>More Beautiful Than Death<\/cite><\/a> by David Mack.<\/p>\n<p>\u2b50\ufe0f\u2b50\ufe0f\u2b50\ufe0f: Reading a Trek novel set in the Kelvin universe is\u2026weird. I was curious about that when I started, as to whether the characters would feel like their Kelvinverse incarnations, or whether this would be your basic Trek adventure with different cover art. To Mack\u2019s credit, the characters do seem to match with their Kelvinverse interpretations, particularly Kirk\u2019s younger, less focused brashness and Spock\u2019s less controlled self (McCoy is McCoy, thanks to the first Kelvin film\u2019s writers and Urban\u2019s performance). The \u201cA plot\u201d adventure is pretty standard Trek adventure, while the \u201cB plot\u201d storyline is more of a direct offshoot of the particular dynamics of the Kelvin universe, even bringing in a key character we never saw in the films. A decent read, but definitely feels a bit off compared to other Trek novels, but that\u2019s likely just as it was meant to be. (It was probably an interesting exercise for Mack as well.)<\/p>\n<p>Compounding the off-kilter feeling is that all this would have been odd enough if the book had been released and I\u2019d read it back when the Kelvinverse was still an active thing. But to be reading it now, when I also have the DIS\/SNW versions of Spock, Kirk, Uhura, and Scotty front and center in my mind makes it even weirder. My mental images of the characters kept shifting among their various on-screen presentations. Definitely a little bizarre \u2014 similar to reading some of the earliest Trek fiction, actually, from before there as any real oversight of the books and authors (sometimes coming out of the early fanfic communities) were taking some real wild swings at the characters.<\/p>\n<figure>\n<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" style=\"display:block; margin-left:auto; margin-right:auto;\" src=\"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/IMG_7280.jpeg\" alt=\"Me holding More Beautiful Than Death.\" title=\"IMG_7280.jpeg\" border=\"0\" width=\"749\" height=\"562\" \/><br \/>\n<\/figure>\n<p><span hidden class=\"__iawmlf-post-loop-links\" data-iawmlf-links=\"[{&quot;id&quot;:17607,&quot;href&quot;:&quot;https:\\\/\\\/app.thestorygraph.com\\\/books\\\/88e40017-05ae-4687-915a-ab82c8a5064f&quot;,&quot;archived_href&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;redirect_href&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;checks&quot;:[],&quot;broken&quot;:false,&quot;last_checked&quot;:null,&quot;process&quot;:&quot;done&quot;}]\"><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Book 45 of 2026: \u2b50\ufe0f\u2b50\ufe0f\u2b50\ufe0f: Reading a Trek novel set in the Kelvin universe is\u2026weird. A decent read, but definitely feels a bit off compared to other Trek novels, but that\u2019s likely just as it was meant to be.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2036,2049,2047],"tags":[3216,4097],"class_list":["post-53169","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","category-photos","category-star-trek","tag-david-mack","tag-star-trek"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53169","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=53169"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53169\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":53171,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53169\/revisions\/53171"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=53169"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=53169"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=53169"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}