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 we managed to save and doom everybody in one chapter. Just another day on the Starship Enterprise.
We’re now halfway through the book, the point where I often start to run out of non-spoiler ways to pad out the intro. I can say that, while I’ve been more critical since this is a review and I’m a critic, overall I’m still enjoying the book. Minor remembrances from the first time I read this book have crept in a bit, but who knows what I’m misremembering? The book seems to be piling on problems, but we mostly resolved two of them, and it could have put people where they need to be for the story. There’s still the big plague and the social fallout, the two big issues of the story. One is the plot and other the character drama Star Trek used to be known for. It will be interesting to see what I remember as we continue on.
So…let’s continue on. We’re still on the ship, but potentially so is the plague.
We have two scenes in this chapter, continuing what’s become tradition in this series of me wondering how one decides when to break a chapter. The Op-Center books seemed to do it every time the clock changed a minute, The Black Stallion’s Ghost I could never pin down, while others either change by scene or, like here, have more than one scene to fill the…time? Page count? I wonder if there even is a set formula for chapter breaks?
Anyway, our first scene focuses on Spock. First he’s talked by Uhura into getting his Vulcan harp to join in a session with her and a violinist, but he turns the harp over to his father. However, Sarek soon ends his part of the session to talk with Spock alone, with Amanda subtly hinting her husband will be telling her everything later. It’s here that Spock has to tell Sarek about the Klingons, the latest reports of the plague, and why the ship is still orbiting Nisus. In turn, Spock learns from Sarek that Sendet was hanging around the transporter room, which Sarek wrote off as him trying to talk to T’Pina while everyone else was saying their good-byes and well wishes to the rest of the medical team going down. This makes Sendet the prime suspect for the mysterious transporter targeting Scotty saw while bringing Korsal and Kevin aboard.
Yeah, I remembered he was the idiot, and Kirk confronts him in the second scene of the chapter. He denies beaming anything up, but I’m pretty sure it’s him. Kirk isn’t able to find the right question to learn what Sendet beamed up, but I think I remember. Then again, he’s not the most intelligent, just the most self-interested. He gets no answers, but they were already in orbit anyway to ensure the Klingons weren’t carriers. Spock notes that if it’s in the ship now, confining anyone to an already full sickbay quarantine would be a waste of time.
One more thing about the earlier scene. We learn one of the possible reasons for Sendet’s pursuit of T’Pina is how few females there are among the T’Vet followers. That means, since mating is literally the barrier between life and death for Vulcans, a third of them are probably going to die out. I don’t think we’re talking physical bonding. Having a Vulcan whore isn’t going to benefit anybody, though with this group that’s more likely than your typical Vulcan society. (Maybe the Romulans.) They need that mental bonding when the pon farr hits. Remember Spock’s reactions when it hit. We did also learn that events can allow the danger to pass, as Spock went through, and nowhere in the franchise is a need to mate or die ever brought up with Spock, so it’s possibly a one-time thing, or we missed it in all those years. The only other time it matters is when his body redoes the life cycle in The Search For Spock. Bodies are going to be hitting floors, whether we’re talking the life cycle or the fights over mates sure to come.
I would feel sorry for him, but given what Sendet pulled in the last book, trying to forcibly break Daniel and T’Mir’s bond (which oddly wasn’t addressed for more than a few seconds), I kind of want to see him among the bodies. He’s kind of earned his fate for being a scumbag.
The stakes have been raised, and we’ll see how high next time. Based on what I accidentally skimmed in the next chapter, it’s not going to go well.
