The gap of time between the launch of the Enterprise B (and supposed death of James Kirk), and the launch of the Enterprise D spans a solid 60 years. There are a lot of stories to tell in that time. The first novel to focus specifically on it has Sulu, Checkov, Janice Rand, and Christine Chapel from the original series serving on board the USS Excelsior, on a diplomatic mission with the Tholians. There are a host of assorted other characters that make up the crew, including the Denobulan chief engineer and science officer Tuvok. Also on board for the mission is the Federation’s Tholian specialist, Ambassador Burgess.

Complicating issues are the echoes of WWIII and the loss of the L5 O’Neil stations just prior to Cochrane’s first warp flight, and a new alien species.

It was an interesting premise with a fair number of moving parts that mostly kept it interesting, but it never came together, and I had 2 main gripes about it. First, the authors never managed to capture the voices of the characters. I had to work to hear Sulu and Checkov’s voices in my head when reading their dialogue. These iconic characters have very clear voices, and while it would be easy to make caricatures of them, the authors managed to avoid that. But I think in trying to avoid that, they corrected too hard, and lost their unique voices.

My second issue is with Ambassador Burgess. She was introduced in a way that made you feel for her, a character you’d be able to relate to, someone who started life with dreams and wanderlust, and after years of experience, is mostly jaded and cynical. Almost right away that’s trashed, when this experienced diplomat turns out to be a hot headed, reactionary, and undiplomatic menace to everyone around her. There is no way that the Federation Diplomatic Corpse sends her to negotiate with anyone, let alone the xenophobic Tholians.

On top of all that, this didn’t need to be a 400 page book, and in some ways felt like 2 books that the 2 authors stitched together.