Recovery (Star Trek, Book 73)

Rating:
Summary: Kirk versus aliens and mind control.
Review: Each mini series of Star Trek novels needs its action, romance, and dark mind control novels.

Dillard applies her insight into the demented mind to the Lost Years saga. If you like her other books, you will probably like this one.

Rating:
Summary: Recovery: Why?
Review: The last book in the Lost Years-series is definitely the worst one.

We get a book, that unlike it's predecessors, doesn't use the potential of the characters being out of a starship, in their own separate ways and situations.

The plot of "Recovery" might as well have been used in any other TOS novel. It offeres nothing but un-beliavabilities by introducing a 100% automated "hospital-ship", that would be a technological marvel even in the era of Enterprise-E and Voyager in the year 2272.

The story is boring and predicteble. Beyond saving by the good writing of Jean Mary Dillard, who has written so much better book in her career that it's a real surprise to find her ending the series like this. We get only one important original character. The one we've seen a hundret times already: the young and eager cadet, who thinks Captain Kirk is a god and perfect in every way, and finally get's to meet him.

The book isn't really closely related to the other books of the series, but it can't hurt to read it as a bad ending.

At leas not much.

Rating:
Summary: Copies Wrath of Khan's plot, but great characters.
Review: The plot of this book is essentially a copy of Wrath of Khan: a madman converts something designed for peace, in this case a hospital ship, into a weapon and Kirk has to stop him while commanding a ship run by cadets. To complicate matters, the rogue ship is full of civilians, including Dr. McCoy, and Kirk's aide Kevin Riley (a major character in the Lost Years series). Unlike Wrath of Khan the book is a thriller, with McCoy and Riley trying to catch the madman and/or stop the ship, while the madman hunts down civilians and eventually (of course) comes after McCoy. The characters, old and new, are excellently depicted. The writing in general is very good. There is a real feeling of tension, and the occasional, good humour scenes are never done to detract from it. The scenes featuring the two cadets with each other come off pretty clichéd, but their interaction with Kirk or Riley is very well done.