Chapter By Chapter (usually) features me reading one chapter of the selected book at a time and reviewing it as if I were reviewing an episode of a TV show or an issue of a comic. There will be spoilers if you haven’t read to the point I have, and if you’ve read further I ask that you don’t spoil anything further into the book. Think of it as a read-along book club.
Our last chapter was rather short, but it had McCoy telling Spock what Theris and later Korsal found out about the plague. Spoiler-free version: Spock can’t go anywhere near it.
We’re somewhere around a quarter of the way through the book, maybe more, and I’m realizing that so far the Enterprise crew has barely been part of it. Most of the story has taken place on Nisus with original characters, and when we have been on Vulcan or the NCC-1701 we focused on Jorrah’s original characters, both from the previous novel and this one’s newcomers. If I were to make an early criticism that would be it. We have more of the usual crew involved in the early chapters of The Vulcan Academy Murders but even the characters from the previous novel have taken a backseat to the Ninus characters, notably from Korsal’s perspective.
The previous novel’s doctors are characters she’s familiar with, so I understand using them again, maybe showing Daniel and T’Mir’s first years of marriage (well, first weeks given the timeframe), but this feels more like a story set in the Star Wars universe and the classic timeline 23rd century period rather than a story with the usual crew. I’m not against that, but the three characters prominent on the cover have done little more than exposition. Even Kirk’s fight in the gym was part of introducing Sendet’s faction more than involving the story. I’m still enjoying the story personally. It was one of the first novels I got from Star Trek if not the first (it’s in better shape than my copy of Enterprise: The First Adventure) and I enjoyed it enough to get the earlier novel that you’re not supposed to need. From a personal critic perspective, however, I have to bring it up as a flaw in the book. Hopefully they’ll feature more as we continue, but this chapter is focused on Korsal and his son, Kevin. Let’s see what they’re up to.
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