Looking for Your Next Book

 Una Chin-Riley is the poster girl for Starfleet: smart, driven, and dedicated. She's a by-the-book student, not afraid to ask questions and to quote the manual when she thinks something is being done incorrectly.  And like all really good students, she's also active in extra-curricular activities.  She's often the lead in the Academy-produced opera and she has sympathies for displaced peoples and works with groups to help people seeking asylum. Christopher Pike is an ensign, having only recently graduated from the Academy, he's back at Starfleet waiting for a hearing for an incident during his short tenure on the ship.  He's asked to give a lecture to students ... he's closer in age to them  (compared to the usually retired people who lecture) and yet he's got actual starship experience. Pike takes a liking to Una, despite her being so by-the-book and his realizing 'the book' doesn't have all the answers out in space. 25 years later, Christopher...

STAR TREK WEEK  It's never been told before, but finally we can read about the final mission of the Starship Enterprise . It's been five years and Captain Kirk and his crew have encountered many new life forms and discovered many inhabited worlds but will this mission bring about the end of the Federation itself? The mission brings Kirk full circle as they head to Archernar IV, where Kirk had his first mission as the Enterprise captain. The natives here are essentially giant, intelligent spiders, and their beasts of burden are centipedes. The story mostly looks at character growth.  How much have Kirk and Spock and bones matured, as people and as Starfleet officers during the past five years. I found this to be a well-written, interesting story and the art was generally okay (I miss the work of Gordon Purcell who worked on a number of different Star Trek comics) but there are enough oddly drawn scenes to take me out of the story. I've randomly opened to a couple of page...

STAR TREK WEEK In 2024, investigative reporter Melinda Silver tries to track down whatever happened to Gillian Taylor, an influential marine biologist who walked away from a great job at Sausalito’s Cetacean Institute, never to be heard from again. Slowly, Melinda begins to put together a picture of the people she had been with - people for whom there is no other searchable data. The only possibility it too far out there to possibly be true. In 2268, Captain James T. Kirk must delve into unknown, and off-limits territory in order to rescue and recover a Federation scientist whose secrets are wanted not only by the Federation, but by the Klingon Empire as well. In 2292, the Klingons, Romulans, and the Federation come together for a joint mission when the Osori, a race so ancient that they consider the other three races 'young.' But the mission begins to unravel when an Osori enjoy is killed and each believes the other is responsible. Author Greg Cox weaves each of these three st...