This is the first book in the Vanguard series. Set in the early days of the original series at the very beginning of Kirk’s command of the USS Enterprise this series focuses on Vanguard, a huge space station perched at the very edge of Federation territory in an area of space known as the Taurus Reach, located between the Klingon Empire and the Tholian Assembly.

As a means of introducing Vanguard and it’s crew to readers they bring the Enterprise limping into base after the events of the episode “Where No One Has Gone Before”. In spite of the fact that this was written well before the re-imagining of Star Trek by J.J. Abrams, the portrayal of Captain Kirk as a skirt-chasing hothead seems to fit very well with Chris Pine’s Kirk.

There are certain parallels between Vanguard and DS9, including the fact that it’s a big space station at the Federation’s edge, with a diverse cast of characters that is introduced by bringing the flagship there and having the crews mingle. On the other hand, in some ways it’s even darker than DS9, while at the same time retaining a bit of that... something special that made a campy tv show from 4 decades ago still a driving force in the cultural and media landscape.