Rating: 
Summary: Tarot cards?!!! This can't be Star Trek...
Review: "The Lost Years" starts 'The Lost Years' series, wich tells us the tale of the crew of the original Enterprise in the years between the original five year mission and "The Motion Picture". "The Lost Yaers" the novel is very well written by Jean Mary Dillard and contains great characterization, but lacks seriously in terms of plot developement. The book begins with the crew leaving the ship behind, an overly long phase with painfully uneventfull scenes, that contribute nothing important to the story, and offer frustratingly few character insights. This phase is followed by the unsuccesfull introduction of some of the characters' (mostly Kirk's) new lives after Enterprise. The story kicks in far too late, and is as predictable as expected from a plot that only covers the latter half of a book. The biggest problem with this book is the fact that almost all characters involved in the story just happen to be the familiar characters of the Enterprise crew who are introduced to the story via ridiculously unbeliavable coincidences. Mix that with two-dimentional additional characters, magic, Tarod reading and prophesies, you get a slightly entertaining book with no credibility to back it off. A waste of a good premise.
Rating:
Summary: All Over the Place
Review: A difficult audio book made enjoyable only by the readers (Nimoy and Doohan). The book is easy to follow and stays pretty true to the original Star Trek characters, but I found the plot hard to follow (swallow) sometimes. The audio is nice and clear (even the special effects) in a noisy car environment. Nimoy and Doohan are the only redeaming factors in a otherwise unmemorable book. 3 hours.
Rating:
Summary: All Over the Place
Review: A difficult audio book made enjoyable only by the readers (Nimoy and Doohan). The book is easy to follow and stays pretty true to the original Star Trek characters, but I found the plot hard to follow (swallow) sometimes. The audio is nice and clear (even the special effects) in a noisy car environment. Nimoy and Doohan are the only redeaming factors in a otherwise unmemorable book. 3 hours.
Rating:
Summary: One of Weakest Star Trek Books of the 80's era
Review: A weak entry for this line of
Star Trek books. It is sluggish out of the gate,
picks up a little speed, then collapses. Not
quite as bad as some of the stories from the
1970's and early 1980's, but not that much better.
It contains too long an introduction to the main plot as it attempts to stitch together a series
of links between the end of the TV series and the
first film. The book, Prime Directive, did it better with a better story.
Spock, McCoy, and Kirk are merely spectators as
the action swirls around them. Kirk's role could
have been excised completely. As far as I can tell,
all he did was turn off a containment field in
a Romulan ship's brig. That could have been replaced
by a power fluctuation caused by the Vulcan magician
showing off how powerful he was.
The author got so desperate after creating an
exceedingly powerful villain that she resorted to
a contrivance, a new character who was immune to
his powers.
Nitpick time: At some point the warning of the
auto-destruct of the Romulan ship mentions danger
in the area around the soon-to-be-damaged area. The
area of effect is one square parsec. First, that's
a mighty huge area. Second, it's an area rather
than a volume (why would it only affect two
physical dimensions?).
There's not much here to like.
Special note for the audio cassette version:
Having 2 voice actors reading the part of Spock
was, at minimum, jarring. At its worst, it
was distracting.
Rating: 
Summary: Filling in some of the blanks in Star Trek lore
Review: As a Star Trek fan, I had often wondered how, exactly, the five-year mission of the Starship Enterprise had finished. Had it ended with a dramatic confrontation with either the Romulans or Klingons...with Enterprise limping home scarred yet proud? Why did Jim Kirk accept promotion to the Admiralty? Why did Mr. Spock and Dr. Leonard McCoy leave Starfleet? At least some of the major questions posed above were answered in 1989 when J.M. Dillard's Star Trek: The Lost Years was first published. With superb writing and storytelling skills, Dillard (perhaps now best known for writing all the novelizations of the latter half of the Star Trek feature films) paints a materpiece of Star Trek lore, blending the untold story of the breakup of the most famous crew in Starfleet with a tale of an ancient Vulcan mind-lord's revenge upon the "weak followers of Surak," the Vulcans who chose to follow the path of logic and non-violence after centuries of war. The Lost Years (which was the first of a four book series set in the two and a half year period between Enterprise's return to Earth and the events of Star Trek: The Motion Picture) captures the essence of Kirk, Spock, McCoy, and the rest of the crew so well, you can almost see and hear the original cast members acting out their most famous roles as you read this wonderfully crafted novel.
Rating:
Summary: Filling in some of the blanks in Star Trek lore
Review: As a Star Trek fan, I had often wondered how, exactly, the five-year mission of the Starship Enterprise had finished. Had it ended with a dramatic confrontation with either the Romulans or Klingons...with Enterprise limping home scarred yet proud? Why did Jim Kirk accept promotion to the Admiralty? Why did Mr. Spock and Dr. Leonard McCoy leave Starfleet? At least some of the major questions posed above were answered in 1989 when J.M. Dillard's Star Trek: The Lost Years was first published. With superb writing and storytelling skills, Dillard (perhaps now best known for writing all the novelizations of the latter half of the Star Trek feature films) paints a materpiece of Star Trek lore, blending the untold story of the breakup of the most famous crew in Starfleet with a tale of an ancient Vulcan mind-lord's revenge upon the "weak followers of Surak," the Vulcans who chose to follow the path of logic and non-violence after centuries of war. The Lost Years (which was the first of a four book series set in the two and a half year period between Enterprise's return to Earth and the events of Star Trek: The Motion Picture) captures the essence of Kirk, Spock, McCoy, and the rest of the crew so well, you can almost see and hear the original cast members acting out their most famous roles as you read this wonderfully crafted novel.
Rating: 
Summary: An enjoyable read with good insight
Review: Dillard does what so many have done since with the TNG gaps between the episodes and the movies, but of course her job is much harder since there were so many character changes between "The Turnabout Intruder" in 1969 and "The Motion Picture" in 1979. Dillard's insights into the characters are three-dimensional and fit very well into what we would expect on the screen. McCoy acts like McCoy, Spock acts like Spock (with an internal view at the emotions he hides from the world), and Kirk acts like Kirk. The author does spend many pages tying up the 5-year mission before entering into her main plot for the book, but the storyline gently flows from one aspect of the book to the next. The book follows two seemingly separate storylines: one following McCoy and Spock, the other following newly-promoted Admiral Kirk and his newfound friend Lori Ciana (the girl who screamed and died in the transporter accident in The Motion Picture). The end of the book brings us about 6 months into the 2-year stint between the series and first movie, leaving plenty of room for the next three books in this saga. Overall, I enjoyed The Lost Years. It did not overwhelm me with greatness, but it was definitely one of the more enjoyable of the Star Trek books.
Rating:
Summary: The Lost Years,,, now covered
Review: Ever wondered what happened when the Enterprise returned home after its 5 year mission. Captain Kirk gets promoted to Admiral. Spock goes home to Vulcan. And McCoy haves some Medical Lectures. But All in all the crew reunites and this story has 2000 years in the making rather then 5. I enjoyed this tale. It keeps my attention span. A good edition to the star Trek Library.
Rating:
Summary: Departure from the "dark" Star Trek novels for Dillard.
Review: Gaps in the future history of Star Trek have always loomed for the devoted fan. The Lost Years, as it's title implies, is an attempt to fill in some of the lost time not covered by the series or movies. Since this novel was issued in an hardcover edition, you can take the "facts" revealed in it as part of Star Trek Lore.
Rating:
Summary: The title is a misnomer. The book covered 6 mos.,not 1 year.
Review: I wondered if the intent of this novel was to explain how Kirk became Admiral, McCoy acquired his beard, and Spock went into his Kolinahr. If so, then the book achieved its purpose in 2 out of 3 ways--Kirk became Admiral after lots of convincing by Nogura, and Spock entered Kolinahr after experiencing lots of adventures. But how did McCoy decide to grow a beard--he looked good in it in the first few minutes of STTMP. The subplot involving the Romulans and the kidnapping negotiations was rather interesting, especially the stuff about the old wizard who possessed a Kolinahr's disciple's mind. I thought the fight between the wizard (or was it wa warlock?) and Spock's fiancee (she harbored the warlock's opponent) was great. All in all, a good novel, but it should have been renamed something else, like After the Five-Year Mission Ended...
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