Teaser

Caught in a tense confrontation between Federation, Romulan, and Klingon forces, the crew of the Enterprise-B find themselves at the crossroads of history, in a tale that will become legendary . . .

Review

For obvious reasons, Star Trek is fixated on ships called Enterprise. The NX-01 featured in the show literally called Enterprise. The original was captained by Kirk in the original series, and Pike in Strange New Worlds. The A saw service in multiple films. The C was glimpsed in ‘Yesterday’s Enterprise,’ a well regarded episode of The Next Generation, in which it fought alongside the D. Picard captained both the D and the E. Picard showed us, however briefly, both the F and the G. And the Enterpise-J featured in a twenty-seventh century episode of Enterprise. But what of the B? It featured only in the opening moments of Star trek: Generations, where its achievements are limited to a) not being ready until Tuesday and b) killing James Kirk. Hardly an auspicious legacy. As you can imagine, then, the opportunities were ripe for stories in other formats to tell of those unseen adventures.

That is where The Lost Era steps in. This loose series of books fills the gap between the end of The Original Series and the start of The Next Generation. I’ve read a couple of them now, and they’re pretty evenly split between diving deeper into characters we know from the small screen, and detailing events that are known only by name in the shows. Serpents Among the Ruins is the latter, chronicling the Tomed Incident that leads to the rocky Federation-Romulan-Klingon relationship that would become important in Deep Space Nine, and to a lesser extent, the other shows. There are a couple of familiar characters (the advantage of Romulan longevity) but they are seen here in their youth, and nothing relies on prior knowledge.

When it comes to the crew of the Enterprise-B, it’s fresh faces all round. Demora Sulu and Captain Harriman have both been seen before, but here is where they are given actual personalities for the first time. Thanks to a lot of time spent dwelling on the past, a hallmark of George’s writing, there is a real sense that eighteen years have passed since Generations. Harriman in particular has a strong arc, though there is overall a little too much lost and unrequited love going around on that ship for my liking.

This is one of the first books David R. George III wrote for Pocket Books, but I daresay it’s one of the strongest. His actual prose continues to be a little on the lifeless side, but the narrative itself is strong. It helps massively that this is the first book of his I’ve read that is told in a linear fashion. There is no split timeline. No chapter-long flashbacks. Styling the chapters as a countdown towards disaster is a masterstroke of creating tension, and even though we broadly know how things shake out, getting there is still an interesting ride.

It’s not the strongest book of The Lost Era, but Serpents Among the Ruins does what vanishingly few Trek tie-ins manage. It gives us a new crew, and a reason to pay attention to them. I only wish Harriman and the others had been given a series of their own.

Book Stats

• A Novel of The Lost Era
• Published by Pocket Books in 2003
• Space Opera
• 366 pages