Marth Muffins
Spock Must Die!
I largely read this book because it's the first original adult Star Trek novel released telling a story that wasn't first broadcast as an episode of the show, which as a fan of Trek and tie-in media I was very interested in seeing the origins of original Trek books + it kinda acts as the origin of original tie-in media, as such a thing didn't really exist until Trek started putting out licensed books inspired by the fanfic culture that was built around the series in the 1970s. So from that perspective the book is a really interesting piece of literary history, but how is it as an actual reading experience?
Look, it's not great alright. It's aged incredibly poorly in a few ways, especially when it engages in some casual what I would call "liberal racism" whenever Uhura is on page or has this weird aside about why white women wanna fuck Spock which is kinda interesting in that it's lampshading the fandom but also just becomes weirdly racist at the end. The series also just makes weird, out-of-left field "scientific" claims like people only develop stutters because they were forced to go from being lefthanded to right which, huh? And whilst I do think the character voices are fairly well realised (well, the Scotty dialogue is very painful to read due to all the fake Scots gibberish but anyways) their internal logic just doesn't match up a lot of time and they make dumb decisions in service of not resolving the plot too quickly.
However I did enjoy some aspects of the book, specifically how weird it got in the back third which felt very in keeping with Star Trek as a whole and was a fun read. I also love how bold the ending is, it puts it way out of ever being actually worked into Trek continuity at all but it's very fun in how it just changes up the whole universe.
Anyways, a fun book to check out, and one I do not recommend.
Spock Must Die!
I largely read this book because it's the first original adult Star Trek novel released telling a story that wasn't first broadcast as an episode of the show, which as a fan of Trek and tie-in media I was very interested in seeing the origins of original Trek books + it kinda acts as the origin of original tie-in media, as such a thing didn't really exist until Trek started putting out licensed books inspired by the fanfic culture that was built around the series in the 1970s. So from that perspective the book is a really interesting piece of literary history, but how is it as an actual reading experience?
Look, it's not great alright. It's aged incredibly poorly in a few ways, especially when it engages in some casual what I would call "liberal racism" whenever Uhura is on page or has this weird aside about why white women wanna fuck Spock which is kinda interesting in that it's lampshading the fandom but also just becomes weirdly racist at the end. The series also just makes weird, out-of-left field "scientific" claims like people only develop stutters because they were forced to go from being lefthanded to right which, huh? And whilst I do think the character voices are fairly well realised (well, the Scotty dialogue is very painful to read due to all the fake Scots gibberish but anyways) their internal logic just doesn't match up a lot of time and they make dumb decisions in service of not resolving the plot too quickly.
However I did enjoy some aspects of the book, specifically how weird it got in the back third which felt very in keeping with Star Trek as a whole and was a fun read. I also love how bold the ending is, it puts it way out of ever being actually worked into Trek continuity at all but it's very fun in how it just changes up the whole universe.
Anyways, a fun book to check out, and one I do not recommend.