The Higher Frontier

There is much to love about this book, especially if you’re a hard-core Original Series fan. I used to think I was such a fan, until I read this book and realized how much I’ve missed. Bennett incorporates elements from TOS itself, the Animated Series, numerous novels (even those penned by other authors), and even some comic books. On one hand, I enjoyed the attention to detail. On other hands, though, it sometimes felt like the effort to align all these different threads, some of which would seem to contradict each other, dragged the book’s pacing down. I wish the story had been a bit shorter, but then, I’m glad it wasn’t rushed. This epic takes place over a year, and so, deserves some room to breathe.

Unfortunately, even the epic nature works against this story in at least one way: There are catastrophic events depicted herein, but by story’s end, many of them have been “fixed.” I didn’t care for this in “Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker,” and I didn’t care for it here. If actions have consequences, those consequences should stick. I was blown away by what I thought were great risks being taken, only to find that they really weren’t taken at all.

Still, this is an engaging read. I would have given it 3.5 stars if possible, but since it isn’t, and since I did find the amount of threads woven into this tapestry impressive, I opted to go with 4 stars instead of rounding down to 3.

If you love TOS, you will at least really like this book. Wish I could heap more praise on it, and if some of the events had been allowed to play out as they lay, while the story would’ve had to be much different, I think it would have made for a much more epic ... epic.

Parts of this novel were actually pretty good, especially when the old crew got back together, but 2/3 of it was fairly dry and boring. Disappointing compared to most Star Trek novels I’ve read.