Pros and cons to this book.

Pros: Pretty decent exploration of Captain Kirk's character and mental state after his encounter with "the planet killer".

Audiobook narrator did a good job capturing the voices of the various characters, particularly Kirk's Shatnerisms, Sulu's broad, friendly California accent, Chekhov, and Scotty.

Massive con and a minor spoiler here, but I'm not going to tag it as such because people should know: the landing party under Spock's command ends up committing mass murder of the people indigenous to the planet where they're searching for a lost scientist who's been doing dangerous research. Spock's acceptance of the logic of this decision comes far too easily, and his remorse about it seems pro forma. If the author wanted to write a scifi tale with some truly cartoonish mass violence against hordes of spear-throwing natives (it's OK! They're green, not brown! And they're fighting against their will!), perhaps he should have used another franchise to do so.