I’ve been reading a whole bunch of Star Trek this month. So far, it’s all been from the early days of the numbered Original Series novels. With these being such short books, and many having features in common, I’ve decided not to do full reviews of each one. Instead, here’s a quick rundown of five of them.

Shadow Lord
by Laurence Yep

Sulu and Spock make for an unusual character pairing, and being stranded on a primitive world is a classic trek plotline. Unfortunately, Shadow Lord doesn’t capitalise on either of these. Spock spends a lot of the novel doing very little, and the planet in question is in no way memorable. There are a few fun moments for Sulu, whose martial skills get a nice showcase, but it’s overall a dull and thoroughly forgettable tale.

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First Strike
by Diane Carey

The first book in the Invasion! quartet, this one is all about an ancient race of aliens returning to conquer the galaxy. Unfortunately, the sense of scale doesn’t really come across in such a short book. We are repeatedly told about how massive the threat is, but it fails to materialise on the page. throw in a bunch of TOS-era Klingons, and you’ve got a book that doesn’t live up to its promise of being ‘the ultimate Star Trek saga.’

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The Better Man
by Howard Weinstein

Taking place soon after The Motion Picture, this is a neat little McCoy novel, in which he discovers a daughter he never knew. The soap opera elements of the book do drag it down, but there’s some good material surrounding a genetically engineered colony in here too. It’s a little light on details, but it’s a more nuanced take on human modification than you see in a lot of Trek, particularly trek of this book’s era.

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Across the Universe
by Pamela Sargent & George Zebrowski

This is a book of two halves. The latter half is a thrilling piece of action that gives the whole crew something to do, and brings a real sense of peril. The first half, however, hints at a very different story. Introducing a magnificently fleshed-out cast of new characters, this half sees the Enterprise rescue a ship from centuries past. The rescued crew must reckon with alienation, a sense of loss, and confusion about their place in the future. Even though it isn’t fully developed in the second half, the core theme of this book is very powerful, and puts Across the Universe up there with the best of TOS.

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A Fearful Summons
by Denny Martin Flinn

From one of the writers of The Undiscovered Country comes this book, which brings the crew together for one final, final mission. It’s a refreshingly low-stakes epilogue to the original series, with a neat balance of action adventure and more sombre scenes. However, Sulu’s new role as captain of the Excelsior is somewhat under-utilised, and Kirk’s introduction in a bar full of people wanting to sleep with him feels like it could have been written by William Shatner himself. Despite some fun moments, The Fearful Summons ends up being less than the sum of its parts.