Next Trek review

The Wounded Sky

So the next book I read is The Wounded Sky, by Diane Duane. It was released in 1983 but written sometime before that so is chronologically before The Wrath of Khan movie. I give it 3 1/5 stars. I usually don’t rate of review anything I can’t give 4 stars, but even though I gave it less than 4, it is a solid read and well worth the time for both Trek fans and even non fans. The story doesn’t venture over any really new ground as far as the main character’s relationships, but portrays then as expected and with more depth than most other stories have given them. The new characters are generally not even races or societies that Trek fans are familiar with, they are totally new. This is one of the reasons I feel it would work for non Trek fans. Matter of fact without the known characters and setting of Star Fleet, it could easily be its own stand alone science fiction universe. For me it even felt a little like Niven’s known universe stories.

Being a novel the story would have been too long to be in one movie, but would have made a decent one. Actually some of it reminds me of Star Trek V, but much better story line, more developed new characters, and without the corny humor. OK maybe it isn’t really like Stat Trek V at all. One of the things I like the most about it was the way we saw more of Sulu’s dedication to being the best pilot the Enterprise could have, and the trust Kirk had in him. This was especially poignant and fitting after reading Enterprise and Sulu’s background that was built there. This is interesting as Enterprise was written three years after The Wounded Sky. This just shows that both Diane Duane, and Vonda McIntyre are very knowledgeable when it comes to the Star Trek universe and characters.

I can definitely recommend this book to anyone that likes science fiction and has even a passing interest in Star Trek.