Trek to Madworld.

By Stephen Goldin.

Synopsis:
Including spoilers, I'm afraid, as all the important stuff happens in the last half of the book. Fortunately, this is just a Trek novel, so I'm sure no-one'll mind.

One of the Trek staples, a godlike alien (in this case, a mad Organian) nicks the Enterprise along with a Klingon and a Romulan ship, and promises to give a wonderful reward to the first guy who can tell him what's missing in his life. Only problem being, Kirk and co. are on their way to a Federation colony planet to evacuate all the colonists as they've just realised that their planet's atmosphere is poisonous. The colony's founder's daughter (or something like that) is on board at the time, and she doesn't want to piss around playing with aliens, she wants to go and save her friends. Kirk won't leave, however, because he's afraid that if he does, the Klingons or the Romulans will figure out what the mad Organian wants, and then he'll give them the Ultimate Weapon or something.

Review:
This was kinda fun. It was written way back when Trek novels didn't come only in huge thirty part epics that spanned all four and a half series' and envolved labyrinthian twists and devilish plots that had dire consequences for the very basis of the Federation. This is just a nice, simple little story that takes advantage of being a book and gets away with some things they couldn't have on the show. (They talk about (gasp) sex, and also have heooooowge set peices and dragons and monsters and giant crowds and stuff) But it still tries to feel like a forty five minute (or sixty minute, if you're watching it with adverts) episode, within which all the problems are neatly solved, and by the end the status quo is nicely restored. And to my mind, that's a good thing. That's why I buy Trek novels, after all - I've seen all the episodes they made, and I'd quite like to see some more.

The colonist woman (whose name I've forgotten. Sorry) ended up with one of the Romulans (bitch) in a touching gesture of inter-species' solidarity. However, I'm not sure I buy him abandoning his entire culture and defecting to an enemy with whom his species has been at war for hundreds of years, just for the sake of a rather dippy girl he's known for six hours at the most, who he met while she was trying to blow up his ship.

A brief word or two about the title - what was he thinking? It's daft, and sounds like a Stingray episode.

The foreword was wierd and kinda cool, and I'm sure I've read it before somewhere... I've read a couple of books his missus wrote (Kathleen Sky, she's very good), so maybe it got used in one of them... I might go look it up sometime.

So, anyway... Conclusion - Good.