The Ashes of Eden

The most disappointing thing about sifting through The Ashes of Eden is that, at the core of it, there's an interesting plot idea: that, after the Federation and the Klingon Empire have signed a peace treaty, there are elements within both governments that wish to upend the peace process, and try to bring Starfleet and the Klingon navy kicking and screaming back to the brink of war.

That could have been an interesting story. Instead, what we get is some of the most amateurish, unrealistic author-insertion fan fiction that I've ever read. A certain amount of that is to be expected, because the author spent 25 years, off and on, playing the main character, but there's so much more than I would have assumed. It's rumoured that Shatner had the book ghostwritten, but it's such slavish “Kirk is TEH AWESOME” that I can't believe that anyone other than him wrote it.

Star Trek VI, the final one featuring Kirk and his crew, is my favourite of the Star Trek movies, and it's a perfect send-off to those characters. I think they should have let that stand as a final journey for them, and never referenced them again after that.