Star Trek - Mindshadow

She turned sideways in order to face Kirk directly.

"You have requested a replacement, haven't you, Captain?"  She looked from the surprise on the captain's face to McCoy, whose eyes were downcast.  "Perhaps you haven't been told the true extent of Spock's injuries."

"Are you telling me Spock will not return to duty?"  Kirk's jaw tightened so much it ached.

Her eyes were sympathetic but unyielding in their honesty.  "That's one possibility.  The best we can hope for is that it will be months before Spock is able to return to duty again."

Mindshadow (#27 Pocket, #41 Titan) (1986) is J M Dillard's first flirtation with novel writing and I guess, how she got 'outed' as a Trekker to her husband whom she had been keeping in the dark about her obsession by surreptitiously acquiring and reading published Star Trek novels.  She even wrote Mindshadow secretly and sent it off without anyone else reading it (Starlog - Issue 125).

I like the cover this time...
It's kind of clever...

I've previously reviewed Bloodthirst, Dillard's third Star Trek novel and I went back and cribbed it before I started this review.  In some ways Dillard improved between Mindshadow and Bloodthirst, but the weaknesses that reared their heads here in Mindshadow are still strongly affecting her work in later Star Trek instalments.

I'm happy I get to use a new term I picked up (from Joan Verba) to describe Mindshadow - it is to a certain extent a 'get'em' story and for once it's a 'get Spock' story instead of a 'get cinnamon roll Kirk' story.  Spock suffers a devastating injury to the left side of his head after falling down a cliff while investigating strange tricorder readings on a beautiful garden planet with technophobic inhabitants which pirates have been raiding.  The Federation has been asked to help these people protect their world and way of life however this all goes awry when the attacks do not come from above, but from below.  

Spock's recovery is not certain and McCoy sends for a specialist in Vulcan neurology to ensure his best chances.  When she comes (a petite, small, woman... doctor... very talented... excellent at hand to hand combat... everyone loves her - I'm sure I've seen this character before...) it soon becomes clear to the reader (if not the characters...) that she's not what she appears.  Unfortunately, the Federation's success depends on Spock regaining his memory and solving the mystery on Aritani, but his recovery is slow and he's dogged by saboteurs, who even go as far as slitting his wrists...

Kirk however can't just sit and wait for Spock to possibly recover, he must continue to act without his first officer, but every move he makes is countered and he soon comes to realise that he has a traitor on board when a captured Romulan pirate is killed in the brig, and unauthorised transmissions are being sent from somewhere on the ship.  Members of his crew are killed on Aritani in a devastating attack, and Scotty is framed as a murderer!

IN ADDITION to all this, McCoy has fallen in love with the new doctor - Emma Saenz - and she with him... but she also rather fancies Kirk... and he her... and everything goes terribly sour.

Kirk also has to ferry diplomats to Vulcan, which of course results in murder and general mayhem.

AND Spock ends up going home to Vulcan in order to get well again, meets another hybrid, faces an assassination attempt, gets framed with murder and gets his wrists slit... again.

To conclude the Enterprise returns to Aritani, Kirk gets the Romulan treatment (because who doesn't like Kirk with pointy ears... aside from Spock!) and things end with a bang!

I think you'll probably agree that there's a lot going on there and to be honest there are far too many things going on for a 250 page paperback.

I mean, it's a very sweet book in that there is some serious passion and love for Star Trek there... but it does feel like Dillard is trying to write her favourite episodes into her book, she's trying to do everything at once and the novel suffers for it.  For example, she obviously really liked Kirk getting pointy ears and Spock making disparaging comments about it, so that went in.  She also liked Journey to Babel, as she somehow manages to fit in the Enterprise collecting diplomats and even a murder!  I think for every element there is an analogue in the original series, and there are a lot of elements.

Characterisation is variable and my biggest disappointment was probably due to there being too much going on and too few pages to do it in.  I was all geared up for some touching K&S, you know the unbreakable friendship on the cusp of being broken because Spock would possibly never be 'Spock' again.  It looked like it was going to happen, I would be indulged and my heartstrings pulled in that bittersweet way that makes fangirls swoon... but... time passed, Spock got marginally better and the scene was never written... and Kirk apparently stopped visiting so much.  The hinted mental link?  Not really used.  Kirk knowing that Spock even in his mentally compromised state wouldn't try to kill himself - well he gave Spock the benefit of the doubt.

But where was that marvellous scene I was waiting for?!
It didn't happen.

Reunion after Vulcan...
Didn't really happen there either.

To be fair though, although I didn't see the emotional scene I was waiting for, I did get Spock related cinnamon roll Kirk angst, where Kirk didn't sleep for two days and was an irritable sod because Spock was in critical condition.  I suppose I can be appeased that way.  Plus there is quite a lot of emphasis on the 'love' between the trinity, the friendship, which I think thematically ties in well (especially with the movies...).

Characters at time seemed to be hit with ISS (inexplicable stupidity syndrome) quite regularly, including McCoy who apparently couldn't tell that Emma Saenz was Romulan... I mean come on.  Her body temperature was Vulcan high, she didn't sweat in high temperatures... and she was really strong... I don't think you can even put it down to building muscle from being on a high gravity planet...  McCoy has sexy times with her and still doesn't realise she isn't human!

Kirk was quite well characterised I think, although he did seem emotionally neutered at times... I do think we could have done without his attraction to Emma Saenz and the little love triangle that developed between Saenz, McCoy, and Kirk.  Or perhaps it was just an indication that Kirk has a preference for lovers with pointy ears (hohoho... I'm kidding, I'm kidding)?!

There was one particular bit concerning Scotty which made me quite annoyed.  It was his reaction to Kirk when her thought that Kirk had talked about his feelings over one of his engineers being killed.  His disrespect and jumping to conclusions about his captain did not sit right with me.  Again, it was a story element that didn't need to be there.

As for the original characters, there were two of note.  Firstly of course Emma Saenz, who at times is well constructed and at others utterly frustrating.  She's an interesting character, but because Dillard drops the reader lots of not-so-subtle hints rather early about her identity she's a little too transparent.  If Dillard had chosen to reveal her a little later it would have worked significantly better.  I was confused at one point about her position as a double agent and Admiral Komack's insistence of keeping Kirk in the dark,  I don't really see what her purpose was in her double agent role when she was on the Enterprise?  What benefit could she have been to the Romulans then?  It's a little bit contrived, why couldn't Spock recover, why did it have to be her?  Why couldn't they have just used another doctor?

The other character is Lieutenant Tomson, who appears in more books by Dillard and I think in one or two by other authors too.  Tomson is... infuriating but in a very fallible way... She isn't overused which is a good thing but unfortunately is involved in the erroneous murder charged levelled at Scotty.  This and the murder of one of the diplomats seem to be engineered so that Tomson can do something...  But as I've mentioned before, those elements could have been left out entirely.

Oh!  There's also Spock's replacement Varth...who is a nonentity...

The conclusion of the novel is a little weak and more than a little rushed, which could have been avoided if Dillard had kept the story a little more simple and done some serious editing.  Personally I would have cut out a lot of the superfluous bits of story in the middle and extended finale, given more details of the complex, more details of the Romulans, made more of the adventure and of Kirk and Spock working together again at the end.  As it was it ends up being a little bit flat, not terrible just a little lacklustre.

I did enjoy this book however.  Dillard proves that she can write characters well and she's especially good at dialogue, but her narrative structure is messy and she makes far too much of linking the events in the novel with events in the series and the animated series (of course, it isn't worse than Marshak and Culbreath actually footnoting all their references).

I'm going to be nice however and give Mindshadow a generous 3/5 - since a two would be overly stingy since it was a frustrating pleasure to read.

Star Trek - The Prometheus Design

He awoke strapped down, metal biting into his wrists, ankles.  Dispassionate alien probed him at him.  He was face down.  For a long moment he could see nothing.  Then he managed to turn his head and saw Spock, strapped on another table beside him, conscious of everything being done to or prepared for either of them.

Kinky.  I've totally read this in a gay erotic novel.  That was lacking in story too.

In my time honoured tradition of reading books out of sequence, I turned to The Prometheus Design (#5 Pocket, #35 Titan) (1982) by Sondra Marshak and Myrna Culbreath to avoid reading the second part of the 50th Anniversary Trilogy (I'm struggling to be interested after the first volume...).

Last month I read and reviewed Triangle by Marshak and Culbreath, it failed to impress from a literary perspective, although it is interesting from the perspective of being incredibly slashy and written by those women who are arguably considered the mothers of all slash.  It was incredibly dramatic, it often crossed the line in regards to homosexual subtext, and definitely crossed my line as far as hurt/comfort and Kirk abuse goes.  I did expect much of the same from The Prometheus Design but I was pleasantly surprised, which makes me wonder what on earth they were the playing at with Triangle?

Before I go into The Prometheus Design proper, I have a few musings I hope you'll humour me with.  Firstly, from most of the accounts I can readily find on Sondra Marshak she was a clever woman, and very driven in her... I don't know, obsession with certain aspects of Star Trek.  Most noticeably her interest in developing Vulcan lore (I'm going to assume the Vulcan supremacy obsession is primarily Marshak's contribution) and of course the Kirk/Spock relationship.  I can certainly see her cleverness in her work, there are good ideas certainly but they are not fully formed and often quite confused.  Something I have found in both Triangle and The Prometheus Design is an inability to really focus and refine ideas or, in fact explain them fully.  Of course, I'm not going to discount Culbreath's involvement, I don't know how they worked, and she is also demonstrably an intelligent woman but I can't shake the feeling that it's Marshak's touch that makes their combined work recognisable.  I would like to read something solely from Culbreath just to test my feelings here.

I guess what I'm trying to say is, although I've found much in the way of reports of Marshak's brilliance, I don't really see it - at least not in the two novels I have read.  The Prometheus Design is significantly better than Triangle but it is still very flawed.  The ideas and themes are muddled, as if half understood sometimes simple aspects of the story deliberately obfuscated to project a false intellectualism.  Certainly, I believe Marshak and Culbreath to have embraced a pseudo intellectualism, and in Marshak's case it appears to have been what impressed people within the early fandom.   I would be different if I believed that what was written they themselves understood the implications of what they were asserting, but I really don't believe it to be the case.

Another aspect to Marshak and Culbreath's work is that they heavily reference their novels.  For example they cite many episodes in The Prometheus Design that back up their assertions, however they also cite a number of previously written books / fictions including their own two previous novels published under a different publisher.  This does strike me as a little odd, especially as what they are building on somewhat stretches characterisation of Kirk and especially Spock to extremes.  This might be well and good for a one off novel, but to extend that into an extended continuity?  I have problems with that.  In later novels, there are often references to earlier authors, but only references to good ideas or events that were possible NOT the development of super sadist Spock and masochist Kirk. 

So onto the review proper, yes? 

The book might be rubbish,
but don't they look dashing!

Initially, The Prometheus Design is fairly incomprehensible.  It has a prologue which introduces us to an alien perspective, but the scenes that they are commenting on come later in the book, so the prologue means very little to the first time reader (and why you'd want to read it again unless you were reviewing it is a mystery to me) and there are still sections which remain obscure even then!  The aliens are scientists, obviously conducting some kind of test and Kirk, McCoy, Spock and an unknown Vulcan are the test subjects.  There is talk of a double blind test which will make sense, eventually... although in my opinion it adds nothing to the story at all.

The Prometheus Design removes Kirk as the captain of the Enterprise and places Spock as captain.  Kirk is allowed to stay on as first officer, all this under the order of  a Vulcan who was a pioneer of space exploration, but has been missing for some ten years.  Why is Kirk removed?  Well, this Vulcan believes that he and his bridge crew may be compromised after they were all captured and experimented on by terrifying creatures, but, surprise surprise, Vulcans may be immune to the experiments/suggestions so Spock needs to be in charge.

A portion of the novel is the dedicated to Spock being, quite frankly, a monster.  A MONSTER.  A pointy eared cruel terror who appears to team up with the other Vulcan to undermine and degrade Kirk, not just from the perspective of his removal from command, but also in terms of his personality and species.  We know Spock isn't a commander, he's a genius, yes, but he is not fit for prolonged periods of command especially not when it comes to working with a human crew.  Marshak and Culbreath emphasise that this Spock is not the Spock from the series, he has been changed by gol (this book is set between the first and second films) and Kirk and Spock did not reignite their rapport in quite the same way yet. They have psychic connection however, which is stressed has weakened Kirk's own mental defenses- this point they use in their next book 'Triangle'.  I mean, despite him being as evil as he looks (...apparently, Marshak and Culbreath just love to remind everyone that somehow Vulcans look like the devil himself - he even has horns this time!) he still comes running when Kirk is in trouble (Kirk of course does the same for him).

One thing I couldn't quite decide is whether he was actually in on the other Vulcan's plan or affected by the experiments of the aliens?  I don't really know what would be worse.  The other Vulcan 'Savaj' (which I read as 'Savage') is pretty much a self confessed xenophobe, why Spock would consider Savaj logical from this skewed view I simply don't know.  Savaj's distrust of humanity negatively impacts the crew... oh right.  I almost forgot.

VULCAN COMMAND MODE.

VULCAN COMMAND MODE.

One more time!

VULCAN COMMAND MODE.

It doesn't get any better with repetition, does it (or different fonts).  It is where a Vulcan goes into a... state of mind which requires absolute obedience (there is a Japanese yaoi sex/dating game by that name by the way - translated into English, it's really terrible, just an FYI).  I really can't believe that Vulcans would have such a doctrine, how would it be logical to not question a commander in anyway?  To stop thinking and just obey?  This is used to explain Spock's strange behaviour... I found it made him like a puppet on Savaj's strings.

Okok... so I  know I'm bitching here, and picking at bits and pieces, but honestly my confused review only reflects the convoluted mess that is The Prometheus Design.  In short it's about breaking patterns of behaviour.  The super icky aliens you're initially introduced to as the 'experimenters' are redundant, as far as I can tell they and the double blind test serve no purpose what so ever aside from confuse matters.  They have no part in 'breaking the pattern' they're just... cruel and being directed to do these horrible things by greater powers.  The greater powers can see into the future and realise that their civilisation is heading to destruction, so they are experimenting on civilisations in our galaxy by a) speeding up cultural progression b) causing trauma and pain to certain individuals because... Marshak and Culbreath wanted to cause trauma to Spock and Kirk?  I don't know, I've got nothing.  It's nonsensical.  Anyway, it becomes clear as mud that they want proof that people can break patterns and make a new future.

Naturally our intrepid trio Spock, Kirk and Savaj... oh wait.  McCoy is there too for some reason, but isn't really used...  Our intrepid foursome find the awesome fortress of the... oh wait I totally read this in Triangle...  Um... OK!  They get caught and the fire woman 'Flame' (I kid you not) screws Kirk...  even though he's just a lab animal to her.

Right so... it's in this section we get exposition of this advanced species.  We get some anti-vivisection rhetoric, and Kirk volunteers to be their eternal lab animal if they could just leave the galaxy alone thank you very much.  Spock is annoyed and COMMANDS HIM not to sacrifice himself.  What follows is two different occasions of Kirk 'breaking his pattern of command' and thus showing the super beings that doom can be averted and the future they see isn't the only possible future.  Hooray, thank God that is over.

As a side note, the xenophobic Vulcan 'Savaj' decides that actually, Kirk is a bro and he's totally cool with humans now.

Right am I done yet?  It's taken me a week to summon the desire to write this terrible review (this isn't even a review to be honest) of a terrible book.

Frankly, it's a convoluted mess.  There are some good ideas there, buried in the mire of total horse poo.  I think I said earlier it was better than Triangle.

I lied.

I've changed my mind.

It's getting a 1/5.

I mean, I won't say don't under any circumstances read it, it is interesting to me from a perspective of seeing a fandom develop and the prevalence actually of the slash fandom / authors, but keep your expectations low and don't try to understand it - it isn't worth the headache.

I am going to say there are some good... paragraphs.  As well as some hilarious imagery like naked Kirk running over the top of the shoulders of confused aliens, freely swinging in the...

1/5 - VULCAN COMMAND MODE.

I'm sorry, past a point I couldn't take writing this review seriously anymore.

Forgive me?!

Star Trek - Pawns and Symbols

Jean felt herself lowered suddenly, plunged into the dark.  She was totally disorientated.  The krelk released her into someone's arms.  "Jean!"  The whisper was Aernath's.  She clung to him convulsingly.

... Convulsingly?

It was about half way through Pawns and Symbols that I turned to my long suffering partner and said 'By God, I've found one, I've found a Mary Sue!'.  He laughed then, and we got into a discussion about the origin of the Mary Sue (he didn't realise that the term has its origin in Star Trek fanfiction) and whether this actually was a Mary Sue representation or not.  This soon spiralled into a mini -ongoing - research project, which then sidestepped into why 2009 Uhura is a poor representation of Uhura and a step backwards for female representation in Star Trek - ongoing project no. 2 - and then lept to the defense of slash ST fans everywhere.

And that was only half way through the book.

Pawns and Symbols (#26 Pocket, Giant #4 Titan) (1985)  by Majliss Larson really has to be read to be believed.  There were many times when I realised my mouth was agape, stunned by what I had just read, others where I had to screw up my face to try to release my muscles from a near constant smirk.  I gave a running commentary to my partner, complete with predictions of what I thought would happen next (it wasn't hard), and proclaimed loudly that I had found 'Twilight in Space'.  How about 'Wrath of Mary Sue'?  No? OK.

Firstly, I'm going to get this out the way.  It's definitely a woman writing, and I think the name 'Majliss Larson' is a pseudonym.  I've looked in my usual places and she doesn't appear to have an online presence or any other reference to her aside from Pawns and Symbols.  To be fair, if I was wrote Pawns and Symbols under my own name, I probably would have legally changed it by now, or invoked something like 'right to be forgotten'!

I have to be fair though, it isn't the worst Star Trek novel I've read (and that pool is increasing), but it is the most blatant Mary Sue / Author Proxy / Self Indulging one so far.  About 90% of the book is taken up by misadventures of Jean Czerny - young, botanist, amnesiac, genius, Klingon whisperer, super attractive to Klingons, can beat a Klingon in a knife fight... need I go on?  Her ridiculous romances with out of character Klingons are set within the theme of 'stranger in a strange land'.  Jean has to adapt to life as a captive in hostile territories and in the process exposes the political machinations and mentalities of Klingon society...

...While banging Kang.  Whilst falling in love with the most gentle Klingon ever with blue eyes (later they are described as amethyst as Larson forgets what she wrote earlier in the novel).  You know what?  I'm not even really spoiling it if I tell you that by the end of the novel after smexing Kang one final time, she gets with the pretty Klingon.  Why am I not spoiling it?  Because Jean is a Mary Sue, loud, proud and (probably) unashamed, and if you rouse your inner teenage fangirl she will inform you what the next 'plot twist' will be.

The tag line for the novel is deceptive:

THE KLINGONS ARE HUNGRY FOR WAR - 

AND KIRK IS CAUGHT IN A BRUTAL BATTLE OF WITS!

I actually believed that I was going to get a clever story this time!  A battle of wits!  Perhaps I was going to be treated to Kang and Kirk butting heads, out maneuvering each other with a grudging respect.   The title Pawns and Symbols sounds exciting and the cover, Kirk, Kang and a chess board, complete with 'chess piece' Jean, wheat, and the Enterprise was intriguing.  There is no battle of wits between Kirk & Kang, because Kirk gets barely any story time, the original crew get barely any story time!  There is one section where the Enterprise rescues a Romulan woman, but this feels like filler, almost as if Larson was told 'look here, this in a Star Trek story, you need to actually put the Enterprise Crew in it!'...  And she does but... it's not so much shoehorned in as crowbarred in.  Spock does have a slightly larger role in a strange episode while posing as a Romulan on a Klingon planet...

Essentially, Pawns and Symbols paints a sympathetic picture of the Klingons, and that they are are essentially a good, kind people who war with an aggressive nature.  Also they are seemingly muslims who treat women as chattel and in some areas are forced to wear clothing very similar to the burka.  Women are also written as second class citizens, forced into a subservient attitude - I'm kind of glad that TNG didn't go down this route with female Klingons!

In this story, the Klingons are in a position of desperate need.  They have caused famine on their planets with alteration of their grain strains but do not wish to seek help because they do not want to bargain from a position of weakness.  This is why they keep Jean Czerny as a hostage, as both a bargaining chip and a resource.  Afterall, she is a genius botanist and will be able to help them use a new resistant type of grain succeed on the various affected planets.  Jean is held captive out of necessity for about 6 months, and in that time, makes enemies, becomes Krang's consort, falls in love with Aernath, adopts a Klingon orphan...

Memorable(?) moments:

- Kang cutting her clothes off her the first time they met.
- The 'I'm too scared to write fallacio so this will have to do scene'.
- The it's not rape, it's coerced sex scene.
- 'I'm screwing Kang, but I sure do hope Aernath is jealous' moments.
- Jean seriously scolding herself in the shower and Kang coming to the rescue.
- All the times we didn't have to know Jean needed to go / went to the toilet.
- Mara (Kangs estranged / now not estranged) wife being totally cool and sisterly about Kang screwing Jean.  Surprised she didn't suggest a menage a trois, all the other Klingons love her.
- Jean being made to strip for Kang after being seriously injured.
- All the teeth grindingly terrible variations of 'speaking another language' through sex.
- Injury is this author's kink.
- A bizarrely long episode about Klingon colour blindness that has no actual bearing on the plot, except perhaps making Aernath look more fragile and adorkable.
- Tribbles.

Luckily, this whole debacle is easily written off, as much of its musings about possible Klingon culture and such is smashed a couple of years later with Next Generation in 1987.  As such, Pawns and Symbols has not aged well.  I feel that this book got published 'under the radar' as it were, since we know that Roddenberry (or at least his team) cracked down on the novels after being triggered by Killing Time's homosexual tendencies.  Killing Time was number 24, Pawns and Symbols is number 26, there would have been only a couple of months between them, I doubt whether the editorial mess would have been cleared up in time for this book to have been filtered out or had any editing.  Actually, I'd be surprised if this book had any proofreading or editing at all.  There are so many typing errors and sentences that make absolutely no sense littered throughout, at times I found myself wondering what had just happened.

Frankly I found myself wondering how this book ever saw print.

I've got to give credit where it's due though.  Whoever Majliss Larson is, I think she really cared for this story; I think it meant a lot to her, I think she tried hard.  That doesn't change the fact it's bloody awful, but you do get a sense that it wasn't a throw away novel for her.  In fairness, she tried to show more of the universe by putting a new character in a difficult situation and was able to increase the time passing in the novel as part of that - I haven't had another ST novel in which the event spanned 6 months... yet.  She did try to add a quite a complex society to the Klingons, which could have worked, but her vessel - Jean 'Mary Sue' Czerny - was not the best choice.  Frustratingly, I could see ways in which the narrative could have been improved, she had good ideas that if told more from the perspective of the Enterprise crew could really have worked.

Consequently, I really don't think this is a recommended read unless you're interested in strange OOC Klingon centric stories, and even then you've got to have a high Mary Sue tolerance to reach the end (I was struggling!).

1/5 - Kang bang...?

Star Trek - Dreams of the Raven

'When the deck tremors began, the first officer was already braced for the movement but McCoy immediately lost his balance.  Above the whine of the ship's engines came the shatter of glass hitting a far wall and the crack of bone against metal.'

Dreams of the Raven (#34 Pocket, #3 Titan) (1987) by Carmen Carter is a strong character driven tale which also has a well crafted plot, if at times arguably cliched. Although the book's focus is McCoy there is also a great deal of character development for Kirk, Spock, and even Nurse Chapel.

Carmen Carter is better known for get Star Trek TNG novels, having penned three.  She has also written a few short stories and a good many Star Trek themed essays!  I think some will be easier to get hold of than others (Vulcan as a Meritocracy (1986)) but I want to at least read a couple!

Carmen Carter on isfdb

I didn't really know what to think when I (belatedly) picked up Dreams of the Raven for the first time, but the blurb intrigued me and the cover is unusual... though not 'pretty' by my definition!  However, I do like the expression on McCoy's face... but I am a little confused with what Kirk is doing here, since it has zero bearing on anything in the story.  The ships in the background kind of  illustrate a scene in the novel... kind of.  I did think that Dreams of the Raven was going to be another 'supernatural' type story like Ghost Walker... I was fooled!  Well, it seems if you're like me and choose Star Trek novels by their covers, you'll always be surprised by the content!

I've often wondered what kind of briefs were given to the artists for these covers (as you know) because sometimes they are somewhat offbeat, but also who comes up with the tag lines?  The editor?  The author?  Someone paid outrageous sums of money to read books and come up with exciting but usually inaccurate statements?  And do they also write the mostly inaccurate blurbs?  I'll ask an author friend of mine and get back to you!

I feel obliged to inform you first that I didn't like this novel, I LOVED IT.  From the first page of the prologue to the very last page of the final chapter and when I finished it, even though I knew the story had reached it's conclusion and tied up all its ends neatly, I wanted more.  It ended too soon.  Dammit Carter, why did you only write one TOS book?!  I could have read a series of books by her, she has a real gift for writing characters, she can write suspense, she handles combat scenes with consummate ease and she manages to make it look easy.

The story on it's own was rather good.  The Enterprise is docked at a civilian station when they receive a distress call from a Frenni merchant ship.  The Enterprise goes to the aid of the civilian ship but instead is ambushed.  The civilian ship rams the Enterprise - which is only saved by the virtue of its shields - crippling a nacelle and effectively disabling the ship's warp capabilities.  Low on power and hobbled the crew of the Enterprise must fend off alien attacks whilst trying to work out what these new and terrifying aliens are and what they want!

Meanwhile, McCoy suffers a head injury which seemingly causes him to suffer from amnesia, making him forget the last twenty five years of his life!  However, the true cause of his reversion to his twenty four year old self is not as simple as a bump on the head, and relates more to the terrifying new aliens than anyone (even he) realises.

That's it.  That's all I'm going to tell you story wise, because it'll be truly spoilt otherwise.  It's worth reading - do it.

Carter manages to tap into the rhythm of the characters - she doesn't miss a beat for example when Spock and McCoy are having a tiff you just know what is going to come next and she isn't afraid to show the effect of McCoy's absence on Kirk, or even Spock whose emotional response is keenly observed by his friend.  Dreams of the Raven presents a broken trinity in a way that simple death or belief of death doesn't manage, because McCoy is alive an well in front of them but is unreachable.  The palpable sense of loss from Kirk is heart breaking, especially as the McCoy in front of him hasn't matured enough to respect him as a Captain, let alone ever consider him close friend material.  I think Kirk suffers more here, isolated as he is from his confidante, friend and sounding board.  Carter implies something touching, that Kirk's strength is drawn from his two friends, when one is missing he is plagued with doubt.  Kirk of course isn't so dependant that he can't function under the circumstances, we know his will is greater than that, but we can see that his victories come with more of a struggle, and his confidence in his own decisions wavers, even with the acceptance of his first officer.

Spock's loss is tacit, not characterised by emotions like Kirk's roiling sea, but instead calm and still... too calm and still.  Kirk sees it, his understanding translating the slight hesitation and the unspoken question.  I was tempted to say that Spock is lonely without McCoy there, but that's not quite right since Kirk really is his anchor and I don't think he could ever be lonely with his t'hyla beside him, it's more... ripples in his calm sea.  A motionless sea reflects like glass but ripples reflect and distort and make things interesting.  That's the imagery that came into my head anyway.  I love extended metaphors.

McCoy hasn't lost a thing by his estimation, only gained a second chance to live his life without regret.  I've got to commend him for his quick acceptance that he has lost the memories of 25 years of his life, but then, adaptability is the power of youth, eh?  Some people have bad things to say about this novel because they don't like the characterisation of McCoy, that he's too different or unlikable, but that's the point isn't it?  It took 25 years from that point for McCoy to become the man he did, wouldn't it cheapen him to be the same man at 24 as he is at 49?  The other thing people complained about was that Carter used the 'amnesia' plot device and that it made the whole situation too 'cliched... have they watched TOS?!  Anyway, it transpires that the whole 'amnesia' thing wasn't really caused by the fall at all but his own subconscious trying to remind him of a patient he had seen as a young doctor who had encountered these aliens but had been considered insane.

Some reviewers have also said that Dreams of the Raven is mainly concerned with adding more backstory to McCoy, I'm not really sure that is true.  Carter dips her feet into his history just enough to show character growth which ultimately makes him essential to the Enterprise.  I guess I feel this story is more an analysis of how and why Kirk and the Enterprise succeeds where others have failed and gives credit where credit is due.

ANYWAY - although I love this book, I really don't want to write anymore about it because I'd end up spoiling it, and the suspense will be ruined if I say anymore.  So read it dammit and enjoy it!

5/5 - I'm a doctor not a xenobiologist!