Teaser

The Klingon Empire has declared war on the Federation. Hundreds of lives are already lost, and dozens of ships destroyed. Yet the USS Enterprise is ordered to remain far from the front lines, and Captain Pike faces a war of his own . . .

Review

When the very first episode of Star Trek was filmed, it was a man named Christopher Pike who sat in the captain’s chair. That episode was rejected as a pilot, and later recycled into a two-parter that saw Pike return to the Enterprise at the end of his life. And that was that. Aside from the odd literary appearance and a supporting role in the 2009 JJ Abrams film, Pike was largely forgotten about. Until Discovery’s second season, where Anson Mount took to the role with such enthusiasm and charisma that he managed to get himself a spin-off show. Not bad for a rejected pilot episode some five decades earlier.

The Enterprise War occupies a very strange point in the real-world timeline of Captain Christopher Pike. The version we see here is the one from Discovery, but as the book was written prior to Strange New Worlds being announced, it relies on ‘The Cage’ from the Original Series to fill in most of the background. Thus we have Pike, Spock, Number One, Yeoman Colt, and Doctor Boyce as characters. Ortegas, La’an, M’Benga, and the like are never factored into the crew. It’s therefore a very strange experience to read about a ship and crew that are at once deeply familiar, yet so different to what we’re seeing on screen. This is an issue that could easily have been averted by reading the book when it first came out, but anyone coming to a Pike-centric novel expecting a Strange New Worlds tale will be sorely disappointed.

Having read a couple of John Jackson Miller books now, it’s clear that he is at his best when writing action. There’s spaceship-on-spaceship firefights here, as well as a fair share of fisticuffs and phaser fights. When it was the crew of Picard’s Enterprise involved, the high-stakes action felt a little at odds with the storytelling I was used to for that crew. But for the flashier, modern Discovery, Miller’s writing is spot on. The tension in this book never lets up, and it’s accompanied by an intriguing alien threat in the form of the Boundless, as well as the usual references to prior Treks to help place the events in a larger framework.

Where I feel the book stutters is in its structure. The Enterprise War takes place concurrently with the first season of Discovery, and cover a full year. But the relentless pacing and quickfire action don’t allow for any breathing space. The story would be functionally identical on a timescale of weeks, or even days. It’s good to see longer timespans, don’t get me wrong, but I don’t think enough was done with it. And as with all books written at the same time as the series they’re based on, there’s not quite enough room to develop characters, as where they start and end is dictated first and foremost by the needs of the show.

Quibbles aside, this is a solid piece of Trek-based action, and my favourite of the Discovery books that I have so far read.

Book Stats

• A Discovery Novel
• Published by Gallery Press in 2019
• Space Opera
• 417 pages