Rating: 
Summary: Only one problem; this stuff didn't happen
Review: This second volume goes into the future history that Spock quoted in the episode "Space Seed"; a history in which Khan Noonian Singh and his genetically engineered followers simultaneously take over "some forty Earth nations." There is only one problem with this story. This stuff didn't happen. It is fiction of course and I didn't expect it to be anything else. But the afterword, which pretends to claim the events in this book happened, relegates the events to behind-the-scenes events reported only in tabloids.
If a small group of people took over a fourth of the world, I think we would hear about it. Yet the story settles for Khan's followers simply acquiring high positions in the governments of nations covering a quarter of the world with the event going unnoticed by the general public. This is one of several examples of the writer stretching actual news to fit this story.
I would have told the story of an obvious major war even though we know this didn't happen in the 1990's and let this story be an alternate timeline.
Still, it is a pretty decent adventure story.
Rating: 
Summary: Still Fun to Read
Review: This sequel is an enjoyable book and is a nice "back fill" of story from the ever-popular Khan of Star Trek: The Orignal Series and Star Trek 2: Wrath of Khan. Cox does a good job of fitting real world events into the little pieces of back story that were already known and making it all feel natural. What he doesn't do as well is work in the cultural references to try and set the timeline for the reader. Instead of feeling natural, his tendency to slip in references to Sharon Stone, Lorena Bobbitt and the like feel more like a mallet to the head. Ok, ok we get it--this is all happening in the 90s. The date at the beginning of the chapter made that clear as did the first seventeen little references you gave us.
I'm a Star Trek fan but haven't read many of the books, so I can't compare but I enjoyed the use of existing Star Trek lore, I liked the way real world events are woven in to account for the fact that all of this which was the "future" when the show was on, is now in fact our past without having to create everything from scratch. I could have just done with a few less Tonya Harding references.
Rating: 
Summary: Tired of overpriced hardback books
Review: This sould have been a paperback book. It was not interesting enough to be hardback!!
Rating:
Summary: Subpar writing marred further by flawed premise
Review: To start with, the writing was poor. Tending to cutesy, attempting to be clever, Cox wrests boredom from fertility.The premise flaw is that Star Trek must exist in our universe. Since the EWars happened in our (the reader's) real past, they must be unknown to the world at large. Unfortunately, this doesn't fly at all. In Space Seed, the Eugenics Wars were common knowledge and clearly horrific. If I recall correctly, another character was also pivotal, Colonel Green. No mention here. Kahn is a failure, losing again and again. His villianous brothers and sisters are superior jokes who are equally ineffectual. Instead of the grand danger to Earth, they are clowns wallowing in ineptitude. This is the guy who challenged Captain Kirk TWICE! He can't even beat Terri Gar? Please. With such amazing potential, Cox manages to blow it, big time.
Rating:
Summary: Good, for Trek Fiction
Review: Trek books are a guilty pleasure, bubblegum for the brain, a good book for a plane flight or train trip. Cox's book fits into that pattern. Nothing challenging, but worth the read. Geeks will enjoy spotting the plethora of Star Trek, comics, tv show, and movie homages scattered through the book. I suspect I didn't get more that 60% of what's there. On the downside -- the author wears his politics on his sleeve, especially when dealing with one of Khan's brethern, a paranoid American who creates a militia "cult". While a distaste for conservate politics and for law-abiding firearms owners is likely good Trek-politics, the book takes gratiutious slams by lumping all firearms owners in with a few over-the-top folks. This is especially grating when Gary Seven gives a speech about trusting to ordinary human ability and judgment and the risk of folks who think that because of their DNA they are "better" than others. The same should apply to those who think that just because they are alien-spy-agents they are more responsible with firearms than average folks. Some of the global political material was also shallow, but one should go not to Trek books for deep thinking on current events. I would have liked it better with less modern politics and more allegory.
Rating: 
Summary: Now we get to the meat of the story...
Review: Volume One was the set up, the cheese and crackers, but in volume two we finally get to the beef and potatoes, the main course. We watch as Khan goes up against Gary Seven, Roberta Lincoln and the rest of the planet INCLUDING his own super-brothers and super-sisters who refuse to follow him. What will Khan do when he realizes that he won't be allowed to rule the Earth? And how can anybody stop him?
Khan is shown as a ruthless, reckless, yet thoughtful leader, who cares for his own people and, at first, most of the world. But he, like most of us, slowly comes to the understanding that Earth's problems are not easy to solve and its people are not easy to handle.
Better than the first volume!
Rating: 
Summary: Full of Surprises and a Wonderful Climax
Review: Volume Two of the Eugenics Wars starts off where Volume One ended. The reader is treated to events of the 1990s which are explained as if Khan and his superhuman, genetically-selected brethren were the cause. Such things as the hole in the ozone layer and a myriad of others were "created" by these enhanced humans. There are a few memorable light moments (such as a passing referance to the Nancy Kerrigan/Tonya Harding scandal, but nothing like the pop-culture lesson in the previous book. We again read about guest-stars from the various series and movies (Dr. Nichols from ST IV, not to mention Gary Seven, Roberta Lincoln, and Isis who plays a huge role in this one). Seven even time travels to assist Kirk in his decision to recommend a planet which employs human cloning for membership in Starfleet. Only one thing bothered me. The way in which Seven dealt with Khan seemed too much like he way in which Kirk dealt with him in the original episode "Space Seed." However, I thoroughly enjoyed the series.
Rating:
Summary: Bad man rising
Review: We get to see the continue evolution of Khan from wide-eyed kid to evil super freak. In this story Khan is building a shadow kingdom and is bent on world conquest. His biggest obstacle is Gray Seven and and his other super being sibilings.
You see how Khan wants the world to be a better place but naturally in his own image. He will do whatever is necessary but in the end things go wrong.
We see some cameos of various people from the Trek world. People that appeared from TOS to Voyager. During this story we also have a side story where Kirk is trying to figure out if the Federation should accept a new world that is involved in making humans superior.
Overall a great story and I enjoy how Cox gets current events that happen in the 1990's and make it part of the story. I can't wait for his 3rd story in this Khan adventure.
Rating:
Summary: There's No War in This War
Review: When Star Trek originally aired, the millennium seemed infinitely far away. Trek writers liberally seasoned the late 20th century with tantalizing historical convulsions. As time goes by, however, we catch up with these events and disprove them. The hardest concept for Trek writers to grasp, it seems, is that Trek takes place not in the future, but in an alternate universe. This universe has its own timeline, including a 20th century that is similar to our own in many ways but also very different. For example, there is no Star Trek in the 20th century of the Trek universe. How could there be?
Unfortunately, Trek writers have a habit of trying to maintain Trek as some sort of extrapolated present, which necessitates ever more squashing and squeezing as Trek's own past becomes better established. Greg Cox, unwilling to accept that Trek's 1993 is not our own, recasts the Eugenics Wars as something that took place "under the radar," camouflaged by religious and ethnic strife around the world, such that no ordinary citizens were aware of it. To the greatest extent possible, Cox tries to render the events of his book as something that could have happened in our own world, while we weren't looking. The fact that this isn't, after all, possible doesn't bother him. He's forgetting what the point really was: This was not about the rise and fall of a single megalomaniac. It was about humanity's catastrophic flirtation with genetic engineering, and the reason such engineering is still banned in the Federation "today."
It's sad that the Trek franchise has felt it necessary to rewrite so much of its own established history, one that is every bit as exciting and complex as our own 20th century has been. From the depredations wrought by Voyager and Enterprise to this book, the universe of Trek has been rendered watery, inconsistent and uneventful. At this rate, we'll never get to World War III, let alone the invention of warp drive. At some point, we have to acknowledge that Trek is not about the future. It's just a story. And if the franchise is to survive as Paramount obviously hopes it will, they will either have to deal with that or allow it to balkanize into dozens of mutually incompatible individual storylines. I'm not holding out much hope.
Rating:
Summary: Well written, interesting story but suffers
Review: While enjoying the books, I found the constant references to all manner of things Trek to be an annoyance. The Roswell business was one of the few appropiate uses of linkage. I found most of the rest of the linkages to TOS, TNG and even DS9 were pulled out of the hat simply to keep reminding the reader that this book is indeed a Star Trek novel. The novels were easily capable of supporing themselves without having to drag any possible Star Trek character into the pages just for the sake of having them in the book.
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