Spock's World

This is from the middle of a line of Star Trek Original Series novels, and is definitely one of the better entries. The prologue is fairly poetic, from many characters point of view. It is set after the original series, referring to the events of at least one episode, and is somewhat cataclysmic in scope. It was also a fun and quick read!

Chapters alternate between a Vulcan perspective history and current events, first on the enterprise and later on the planet. Despite being Spock's World, McCoy has the best parts of the narrative. Knowledge of Spock's former fiancee is kind of important, though we are getting hints of that in the newest television series, Strange New Worlds.

Earth trends of the late 1980s also factor in, as the Enterprise has an electronic Bulletin Board - for the younger of you, that's a kind of forum. The starship BBS hasn't appeared in books before or since, that I know of. Still, it was an excuse to bring in different opinions - and an AI.

Other trends related to our time include religion and corruption and racism - and all this on Vulcan. I joked with a friend that this book was Vulcan Brexit. This of course doesn't match with other books about Vulcan written before and since, and the same with Sarek's history. Another problem was the Vulcan history parts - starting with cosmological, they were sometimes interesting but rarely seemed connected to the present narrative. I think I see what the author was doing there, but it needed to be a bit more obvious.

This was a fun and quick read, and one of the better novels in a series of 80+ (though I've only read 40+ of these so far). Recommended!