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.
Last time the epidemic hit. How it connects to IDIC is still a ways through the book.
Now we move to the Enterprise and our main characters. In the show the cold open would have started with the crew arriving just in time to witness the tragedy. This not just true of the original series and it’s animated spinoffs, but other shows in the franchise, though I’m not fully exposed to Kurtzman Trek. (What I’ve been exposed to is bad enough.) It is the usual pattern of the show. We join in on the crew, with a Captain’s Log (or one of the other characters) telling us what we need to know going in, and some episodes didn’t even need that, then we’re there with them when the inciting incident begins.
This isn’t always true in the movies. Some films started without the crew, following someone else as they get killed before the usual group arrives to reduce further death. Not completely stop because we have to raise the stakes by killing off some extra. So you could make the case that Lorrah was inspired by the movies, starting with the council on the science colony and not even a mention of the famous crew of the starship Enterprise. Then again, this isn’t a show or a movie. It’s a novel, and we’re getting to them rather quick. I just have this thought in my brain when it comes to adaptations that I want to feel like I’m reading an episode of the show, whether it’s a novel or a comic, or playing through one in a game. It’s one of the reasons I reject the adultified reimagines of my childhood Dynamite is putting out lately. It’s not completely new. Even the in 1980s there were comics that felt nothing like the show they were based and the DCAU tie-in comics often leaned more towards the regular DC comics universe than the shows they were based on.
This is an observation of myself more than the work at hand. Lorrah did what she needed to do for the book, to set up what the rest of the story is going to be about, a mystery plague attacking the colony. Putting the focus there without the crew allows the readers to already see the stakes are going to be desperate so that this chapter we’re seeing how the crew are going to feel about the news and how they’ll be drawn into the events. Not every observation is a critique or pointing out a negative. To understand story choices you need to understand the good, the bad, and the neutral. The neutral is unavoidable so you push for the good and avoid as much of the bad as possible. As we head into chapter two, the fun is finding out which is which.
I guess technically we’re learning how they’re getting involved, as the last few paragraphs has Kirk called about incoming orders from Starfleet, and I doubt they’re being sent to judge a pie eating contest given what the book’s about and the circumstances of the previous chapter. Instead we’re given context of where this happens after the previous novel and how it might affect events. The novel takes place just after the events of The Vulcan Academy Murders. We’re told they were there for a month, enough time for Kirk to get used to weather and gravity of Vulcan before returning to the ship, which is based on Earth gravity and temperatures given the make-up of the crew, even in cartoons and comics featuring non-Earthlings, tend to be a human majority.
This also introduces one more element from that story that will most likely play a part in this story, or they wouldn’t be on the ship at all: the Followers Of T’Vet, a sect of Vulcans who decided not follow Surak’s teachings of pacifism. A side effect of the murder investigation revealed that they were planning to overthrow the government and return to the old ways, rather than follow the Romulans’ method and just leaving to form a new homeworld and start the Romulan Star Empire. Spoiler for the first book: they were a red herring, not responsible for the murders. I guess Lorrah wanted to explore this group more so the Enterprise was charged to be their taxi service.
Kirk gets called to the larger gymnasium because two members of the group chose to fight with the same weapons from the episode “Amok Time”, a lirpa. There’s a weighted stone on one end for clubbing and a sharp blade on the other for slicing. It’s deadly on both ends, like a bo staff that wanted to prove it was a man. The bo staff is my favorite melee weapon so I kind of like the lirpa. It’s a bias. Granted, you can fight with deadly weapons whether sparring or making a point. However, nobody wants to clean up the blood and these guys haven’t shown an unwillingness to reduce their own population the hard way in the past, so Kirk puts a stop to it.
Kirk has only been to Vulcan once in the series and once in the movies. The first time was the events of “Amok Time”, which was not a fun experience, but he knows the weapon and the Vulcan word for “knock it the #$% off already”. When he only stops the fight for a moment he manages to disarm both T’Vet youths rather easily, annoying who is probably going to be a main supporting character in this story. Satat, chief of the Clan T’Vin, is basically holding everyone together until they get to their own world, the Followers having chosen exile over reprogramming, and even Kirk agrees with that choice. I don’t remember him even having a bit part in the first book, but odds are he’ll be a factor here. Satat and Kirk have an exchange of rule interpretation until Kirk convinces him that a deadly weapon fight (non-deadly sparring is okay–introduce him to anbo-jyutsu from the TNG episode “The Icarus Factor” and see if they can make it less silly looking) is not going to fly on the ship. Once they drop them off they can kill each other all they want.
I like the security chief stating they didn’t get involved because Kirk looked like he was handling it until one of the youths tried attacking him and took a phaser nap. This breaks the stereotype that women writers can’t write a good fight scene. Though short, this was pretty good. Kirk held his own unarmed for a while but the limits are still there. Kirk isn’t a badass, he’s just used to this based on previous adventures. He ultimately wants to settle it peacefully but sometimes you just have to remind them who’s in charge. The situation is handled just before he gets the call from Starfleet–and he’s hoping it’s the desk jockey commodore who set the rules of this trip so he can tell him off.
The chapter’s off to a good start. If you haven’t read the previous novel, we get an introduction to the Followers of T’Vet and how they got here without bogging us down in information we don’t need. No homework or boring exposition required. We now have two potential threats: a plague that keeps evolving and a bunch of throwback Vulcans who probably won’t have a chance to be dropped off. I don’t know what it is about them Jean Lorrah finds so interesting that they keep showing up, but not interesting enough to be the sole antagonist in their own story. Maybe we’ll see why next chapter?
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