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Synopsis:
With Kirk and some extras trapped on a planet with huge man-eating plants, Spock (who's been stung by one of the man-eating plants) has to take the Enterprise to rescue some colonists, who're being attacked by vicious space pirates - the same band of vicious space pirates Spock defeated once before, under the command of Christopher Pike...
Review:
This ain't bad. The aliens obviously desperately want to be Klingons (and it's not as if he couldn't have used Klingons - they were still at war with the Federation at this point, so wussy little Federation colonies probably would've been fair game. Maybe he was being original), and all the Pike/Vina/Talosians bits aren't really necessary or relevant, but then this is the only attempt I've ever read to explore Pike's life with the Talosians, which is nice. If a little boring.
Although I can't, on principle, approve of splitting up Kirk and Spock, this pretty much works. Kirk gets to boss a load of little ensigns and suchlike around, and actually look like he knows what he's doing (and gets to climb a cliff. Mmm, continuity...), and Spock gets to be all Vulcan and stoical about slowly and painfully dying, and then knock out McCoy when he tries to help. So the characterisation's pretty accurate.
All in all, it does what a good tie-in novel should do - be an episode with unlimited budget. It's a good few hours entertainment, if you like that sort of thing.
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