Rating: 
Summary: for juvenile trekkies only
Review: I hoped these books would be good, but Cox is just plain awful. Full of cute little references to every Trek series, plus inane pop culture references for every time period covered... I sighed many times, and often had to put the book down in disgust. If you are an insufferable trekkie nerd or just have very low expectations, maybe you can stomach this drivel. If you want intelligent sci-fi, look elsewhere.
Rating: 
Summary: STAR TREK: THE EUGENICS WARS
Review: I REALLY ENJOYED THE BOOK. THE WAY THAT MR. COX INTERWOVE READ LIVED EVENTS, WITH THE EVER EVOLVING WORLD OF STAR TREK WAS EXCEPTIONAL. KEEP YOUR EYES OPEN FOR CAMEOS AND INSIDE JOKES FROM THE SERIES, AS WELL AS RELATED MATTERS(REDJAC, GILLIAN TAYLOR, AND THE BIONIC WOMAN, JUST TO NAME A FEW).
JUST AS THE WORLD WE SEE IS NOT ALL IT APPEARS TO BE, THE BEHIND THE SCENES WORKINGS OF THE EUGENICS WAR, WHICH COULD HAVE CLANDESTINELY HAPPENED RIGHT UNDER OUR VERY NOSES, IS A FANCIFUL AND CREATIVE "WHAT IF" EXERCISE.
I HIGHLY RECOMMEND ANY TREK FAN TO PICK THIS BOOK UP. IT IS WELL WORTH THE READ!
Rating: 
Summary: OK read, but too conventional
Review: I really liked the first volume. It was steeped in lore and "fictional history" with enough real history folded in to set the stage. Unfortunately, I felt that volume 2 worked too hard to fit Trek history into real history. It's an OK read. Not terribly thought provoking. I was expecting to see events unfold as described in historical references to the past when mentioned in the Trek franchise, to see how real history differed from Trek history.
Rating:
Summary: As good -- or BETTER than Volume 1...exceptionally fun.
Review: I was really blown away by The Eugenics Wars volume 1...big time. I just wasn't expecting a Trek novel to be SO different, so creative, so GOOD. This was an exceptional example of creative juices on overload. Kirk and Spock take a backseat to a few characters from the past, that normally wouldn't command even a 2nd glance -- but Greg Cox's fertile imagination has brought new life to the Trek Universe in ways that brought many smiles to my face as I read through book's 1 & 2. Volume 2 picks up shortly after vol 1 left off, plus a few years.
Gary Seven failed to stop the Chrysalis Project from creating a few genetically engineered children before he was able to derail the Project from progressing further...but some damage had already been done. Gary & Roberta scattered the children all over the globe in hopes of keeping them from some supreme scheme to take over the world. Gary even attempts a valiant effort to recruit Khan to assist him and Roberta in helping us wayward earthlings from killing ourselves prematurely. A noble idea, but with Khan's impossibly overblown ego, a gesture which was destined to fail...miserably. Before we know it, Khan has himself an island near the equator and has regrouped the children of Chrysalis and has devised a plan to force the world under his iron rule, which he is convinced is the best way to save mankind. What I found most interesting aside from the clever way Mr. Cox managed to take existing history and mix it up with Trek Lore, was how he managed to give Khan's character depth. We have to remember that he isn't responsible for his own existence, we can thank the Chrysalis Project for that. I never would have thought that his character could be as deep as he was written in these two novels. We all know that eventually Khan and his minions end up aboard the SS Botany Bay, which The Enterprise will encounter a few hundred years in the future, and again in Star Trek II, The Wrath Of Khan (still one of the best movies). This book fills in the gaps of his life on earth and how the Eugenics Wars started, how they end, and how events we have come to know about have a connection to Star Trek that at times evokes outright laughter, not because they are silly, but mostly because of how clever they have been woven into the plot. Greg Cox has written an amazingly creative story that shows his obvious love of the series. Aside from Judith & Garfield Reeves-Stevens' who write on a level that just about nobody can reach, Cox has gone in another direction which has made this series fresh in a way I never would have thought possible. You have many choices in the world of Trek, and some would say most are not worth the price of a paperback, but The Rise And Fall of Khan Noonien Singh Volume's 1 & 2 are most definitely worth the price, even in hardback. Pick this one up and savor the incredible journey that Mr. Cox has pieced together for us. It is a journey well worth taking, and worth taking more than once.
Rating: 
Summary: Many pro's but also some Kahn's...
Review: I would actually give this a 3.5. I find the first audiobook to be better and I gave that a 4. The reason for this is primarily as follows: Pro's: Well, for starters we get a further look at everyones favorite Star Trek villian, the backstory, the scope of his making is done very well. Getting to see the creation (I see it in my mind!) of the DY-100 class starship that launched Kahn is truly a great moment. All the little interjections from the past truely spark some great memories(Gary 7, Roberta, etc). The sound on the audiobook is also done well, ie; effects, music, etc. I liked the reader from the first audiobook more but the "new" reader here, Rene Auberjonois does an good job. Kahns: Right away I wonder, why not get Ricardo Montalbon to read the Kahn parts? Or at least give cameos like Nimoy does in other Trek audiobooks? It adds TREMENDOUSLY to the feel of these books. And Ricardo has one of the best and most recogniseable voices around plus the fact that the voice of this particular character (Kahn) is practically a character in and of itself! Coupled with the fact that, while I think Rene does a good job overall, the ONE voice he never really hits is Kahns. I find it difficult to picture Kahn when he speaks, the voice is very un-Kahn. The story on this book also flounders MUCH more than the previous book. Zig-zagging between Amazon women and hill-billy generals with mirrored sunglasses I find it hard to keep track of whose-who and what precisely is going ON! And there are always many new people popping up that you have totally forgotten about or have no idea who they are, and after the story is over have difficulty remembering what happened to them... I would have preferred less characters and more character development. In "Shadows on the Sun" by Micheal Jan Friedman there was much more emphesis on a small number of characters (McCoy vs. Shrill Androcis? Great sparring), here it is the opposite. All tolled, this is a good story set to great artwork and far above average sound with a very endearing ending. Even though I feel there is a hole in the middle where a story could have been, I give them an A for effort but it's fairly rough around the edges at times. However, the question is: Was this worth my money? I say doubly so.
Rating:
Summary: Definitely the lesser of the series
Review: I'm a firm believer that the only real Star Trek is the original series, so I was really excited about this series and bought the first volume the day it was released. Due to some issues I had with the first book, I wasn't as keen on buying this one right away, but I did anyway. So much for voting with my wallet. <G> There is the same pointless bookending with Kirk and crew from the first volume that frankly could have been dropped all together. The setup for the Eugenics Wars by Greg Cox was well thought out and believable (within the context of Star Trek). The use of Gary Seven was a very good idea and Cox does a good job with his characterizations of both Mr. Seven and his agent Roberta. The major failing with the book is that, inexplicably, there are a number of references to characters that weren't created until TNG/DS9/Voyager, etc., are introduced. This was terribly distracting, though I expected it after the experience with the first book in the series. Even worse, the author decided that we couldn't possibly differentiate between reality and science fiction and tried to hide the events of the Eugenics Wars in our modern milieu. So everything just kind of peters out, leaving one to wonder how, if the Eugenics Wars (was there a war somewhere I missed) were as non-impacting as shown here, there was even a record left for Kirk's time period. Very disappointing.
Rating:
Summary: Superman Vs. Supermen
Review: In his final installment of the adventures of genetically bred superman Khan Noonien Singh and extraterrestrial secret-agent nemeses Gary Seven and Isis (and human helpmeet Roberta Lincoln) in the late 20th Century, Greg Cox as brilliantly incorporates Trek storylines with contemporary headlines as in his previous volume, if to slightly more scattershot effect. Now in his twenties, Khan has become a successful dictator in India, with technological resources invented, bought or stolen that, if not the envy of world superpowers, are at least a rival to them. His dream of uniting the world under the leadership of his fellow genetically engineered superman brethren from the 1970's Chrysalis Project is dealt a fatal blow from the outset, by the simple fact that the fragmented ubermenschen refuse to cooperate with one another, and suffer from their own poisonous paranoias. One has become the leader of a Star Brothers doomsday cult; another has isolated herself on an island away from the world, with a few of the others; a third is a Bosnian ethnic-cleansing warlord; a fourth has left the United States military to head a white separatist homegrown terrorist organization. The rest are as badly disorganized, either as ruthless and dangerously effective as Khan himself, or chaotically destructive to themselves and others. Once the supermen have met and failed to come to any cooperative agreement, the next logical step follows: civil war among them. Each views his fellows as a rival, and assassination attempts and military skirmishes erupt between them behind the scenes. Their violence spills occasionally into public view, and claims increasing numbers of innocent civilian lives among the populaces in which they live. Gary Seven and his Intelligence operatives of the benign alien Aegis sometimes pit the supermen against one another simply to keep them from becoming too strong and deadly, their attempts at reasoning with the various factions failing. This book is much more an action-adventure saga than the preceding Intelligence game, focusing far more on Khan and the mad Supermen than on the operations of the Aegis. It is as involving, suspenseful and engaging as the first volume - and Cox's other Gary Seven/Roberta Lincoln novel, Assignment: Eternity - but suffers somewhat for the comparative lack of the Aegis operatives' presence as opposed to those other titles. Still, it's a great read, with a number of surprises, and Cox has wisely left the door open to continue further adventures about the Aegis - which I hope he gets to writing, sooner rather than later. Any story with Gary Seven and/or Roberta Lincoln is a welcome discovery, as you'll soon discover if you pick this one up. And if you like it, don't neglect the other titles, either.
Rating:
Summary: Always Mentioned But Never Explained
Review: In the classic episode "Space Seed", Khan mentions The Eugenics War and how he and his men were transformed into "Supermen" and at the same time were the only ones to survive it by being put into stasis. Centuries later, Kirk and crew find that "ship" and mistakenly awake Khan and his crew. Khan was a great foe to Kirk. Always could outsmart Kirk and never was able to be defeated until that is Kirk set a trap for him and left him and his men on a desolate planet to die (Star Trek 2: The Wrath of Khan happens because of this) Greg Cox, likes writing long long chapters but is nevertheless a wonderful writer. Although I'm quite curious as to how another seasoned writer (Peter David perhaps?) would have imagined this war.. All in all it is about time that it is being explained in Star Trek Land though it would have been better had it been explained on one of the Trek series. Why it wasn't is beyond me... Archer and crew are you listning?
Rating:
Summary: Excellent backhistory.
Review: In the original "Star Trek" series, one of the most famous and powerful episodes was "Space Seed", in which the crew of the Enterprise met and came into conflict with Khan Noonien Singh, a survivor from the "Eugenics Wars" of the "distant past" of the 1990s. Now that we have, in fact, bumbled our way through those 1990s without an apparent destructive struggle with Khan and his crowd of genetically engineered supermen, the standard wisdom says that the "backhistory" of the Star Trek universe has become dated; what seemed like a possible future in the late '60s has failed to come to pass. What this book (and its predecessor) attempt to do is to reconcile the facts given in that episode (and its movie sequel) with the actual history of the previous decade. This might seem impossible, but in fact is managed quite nicely; the machinations of the genetically enhanced would-be world conquerors mostly happened behind the scenes, and was kept out of the mainstream press, in a way that seems far more plausible than might be expected. Further, the characterizations were handled well, and the writing style is excellent. The only reason that I mark the book down a star is that the "frame story" format, in which the first chapter and the last detail a minor adventure of Kirk and the Enterprise, simply to provide a bit of "face time" for the major characters who some fans might feel cheated without, was basically irrelevant to the main story. I'd have preferred to see the main story told as a stand-alone, with the secondary story fleshed out and given its own book. As it stands, it was just a distraction.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent backhistory.
Review: In the original "Star Trek" series, one of the most famous and powerful episodes was "Space Seed", in which the crew of the Enterprise met and came into conflict with Khan Noonien Singh, a survivor from the "Eugenics Wars" of the "distant past" of the 1990s. Now that we have, in fact, bumbled our way through those 1990s without an apparent destructive struggle with Khan and his crowd of genetically engineered supermen, the standard wisdom says that the "backhistory" of the Star Trek universe has become dated; what seemed like a possible future in the late '60s has failed to come to pass. What this book (and its predecessor) attempt to do is to reconcile the facts given in that episode (and its movie sequel) with the actual history of the previous decade. This might seem impossible, but in fact is managed quite nicely; the machinations of the genetically enhanced would-be world conquerors mostly happened behind the scenes, and was kept out of the mainstream press, in a way that seems far more plausible than might be expected. Further, the characterizations were handled well, and the writing style is excellent. The only reason that I mark the book down a star is that the "frame story" format, in which the first chapter and the last detail a minor adventure of Kirk and the Enterprise, simply to provide a bit of "face time" for the major characters who some fans might feel cheated without, was basically irrelevant to the main story. I'd have preferred to see the main story told as a stand-alone, with the secondary story fleshed out and given its own book. As it stands, it was just a distraction.
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