So if I’m counting A Christmas Carol as an “original” story, as in “not a licensed property book”, I can do another licensed property book. That was my shortest book review and I’m pretty sure nothing will top Seduction Of The Innocent, and that book can die in a fire. Batman: Knightfall was rather long but this should be normal for a paperback novel.

It’s time to return to Star Trek and the original crew, and I’m hoping this isn’t a disappointment like the last two that got the Chapter By Chapter treatment. Enterprise: The First Adventure suffered from giving everybody a dark backstory while Prime Directive was a good story that nothing to do with the Prime Directive, save for an attempt to use it to force the Federation to fix their mistakes. This one is a bit promising, but that’s because of the personal history with this one.

I picked up The IDIC Epidemic and very much enjoyed it at the time, and someday I’ll cover that one with fingers crossed. I liked Enterprise: The First Adventure when I first read it, though apparently my mind just forgot the parts I didn’t like. In the open of the novel it mentions being a sequel to a previous novel by the author, taking place just after that story, but that I didn’t need that one to enjoy the one in my hand. However, and this is how it’s done for those of you creating shared universes, while I followed events just fine without it I enjoyed the book and references enough that I eventually picked up the first book with these secondary characters taking place on Vulcan. This is what we’re going to review first, to follow the proper order, even if we don’t need it to get to The IDIC Epidemic. As it turned out I was happy to have picked up book #20 in the Star Trek novel series (the other book was #38, so the sequel took awhile) and #23 in the Chapter By Chapter review series….

Star Trek: The Vulcan Academy Murders

by Jean Lorrah

Depending on the version you have this could also be #12. Mine is the paperback by Pocket Books while the other is from the Titan Books printing. So that should clear up any confusion if you make a run for this novel. What’s it about? We actually have a back of the book to look at.

Kirk and McCoy accompany Spock to the Vulcan Academy Hospital, seeking experimental treatment for a badly wounded Enterprise crew member. Spock’s mother is also a  patient in the hospital, and Kirk soon becomes involved in the complex drama of Spock’s family.

I wonder if we’ll hear about the stepbrother and that human girl they adopted who became savior of the universe. Oh wait, they didn’t exist in the franchise yet. The novel came out in November of 1984. So we don’t have to worry about them at all! Good times. Good times.

Suddenly, patients are dying, and Kirk suspects the unthinkable–murder on Vulcan! But can he convince the Vulcans that something as illogical as murder is possible? Until the killer is caught, everyone is in danger!

Considering the Enterprise crew aren’t the only non-Vulcans here and it’s not like we haven’t seen a warped sense of logic before (it’s been years since I’ve read this but I’m not going to be surprised if Vulcan Jack Kevorkian shows up), I wouldn’t think it would be that difficult. This isn’t the jerky Vulcans from the Enterprise show because they also thankfully didn’t exist yet. I miss those days. That’s when the only jerks were supposed to be jerks.

Jean Lorrah has written four Star Trek novels, two based on TOS and two based on TNG…and I seem to have three of them (I think I read the last one, probably borrowed from the library, but I’ll have to double check my own home library because the cover looks familiar), so we’ll be seeing her again. According to Memory Alpha she also turned in a script for season three of the original series but it was rejected. I wonder if she ever considered reworking her script into a novel? Apparently she’s still active (unless her official site is in need of serious updating, and there’s at least one link that needs to be fixed), with her latest project being a novel tied to the video game Sime-Gen, which I’ve never heard of. She’s also created a few novel series, Memory Alpha specifically calling out the “Savage Empire” series. She also is or was a Professor of English at Murray State University in Kentucky at the time she wrote this book, her first Star Trek novel.

Join me next time as I begin looking at this novel to see if it lives up to my memory. There’s 35 chapters in all, so we’ll be here a while. And remember….

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.

I’ll keep the spoilers out of the intro as best I can, in case you decide to read along. And if you do, let me know what you thought of the chapter. It’s not much of a book club if I’m the only one talking about it, after all. See you then!