Strangers from the Sky

Star Trek: Strangers From The Sky by Margaret Wander Bonanno, "the second giant Star Trek novel" is not so good. A time-travel story about Vulcans arriving on Earth 20 years too early and the Enterprise crew's attempts to set the timeline straight, this novel is profoundly mediocre. The characterizations are flat; big and important story elements happen in a cursory way, often 'off-screen'; and large portions of the tale read like a boring, weak, Cold-War-era spy novel. Containing little vim, little vigor, Strangers From The Sky reads more like a treatment or an outline than a novel proper. It was drudgery to get through this book. The Vulcan commander was written relatively well, and there were a few passages near the end of the book that were nice, and so because there a few slender elements of enjoyment in it, the book gets an 'OK' rating, but that's me being generous. There are lot of good Star Trek novels; this was not one of the better ones.