This book is so good! Honestly. I originally read it on digital, and liked it so much that I sought it out in hardback to add to my collection. The thing I find so satisfying is that it takes the Prime Directive seriously in a way that the series doesn't really. You have a real sense of the damage that could be done to a culture if Starfleet mucks it up—and also the problems with the whole concept of the Prime Directive. Also, includes a running joke about BLACK FIRE, another earlier Trek novel! Great, great Trek book.

Captain Kirk and his bridge officers stand accused of destroying an entire planet and only a Hail Mary gambit will clear their names. For fans of the original Star Trek series this novel, set towards the end of the Enterprise's five-year mission, will be a fond reunion. The authors have captured something of the camaraderie between characters (or playful enmity in the case of Bones and Spock) while the story itself is certainly grand enough to warrant 400 pages. And it all moves along at a good clip even with a couple of eye-rolling plot twists.....a stint aboard an Orion pirate ship is more comedic relief than genuine peril especially after Dr. McCoy shows up. ( )

What happens when the Prime Directive is violated? This is the premise of the story. Talon 4 is a world much like ours with 2 major and hostile powers armed with nuclear weapons. Star Fleet has a base on its moon to study its inhabitants. But something is odd. The Enterprise is called to investigate. Shortly afterwards the two powers go to war. Is the Enterprise to blame? Is an outside power involved? Read the story and find out. ( )

This is one of the Star Trek books where you really can't imagine the main characters undertaking the actions the authors have them doing. It is noticeable that Paramount allowed new starring characters with more open story lines

Apart from this, the action is reasonably gripping and the pages kept turning

In this particular case, Kirk and the command crew of the Enterprise have been deemed to have caused the destruction of civilisation on the planet of Talin when the two main societies on that planet destroy each other in an unanticipated nuclear exchange. The action alternates between the past of the mission to Talin and the present where the bridge crew have been forced out of Starfleet (as if that's all that would have happened to them!!). ( )

'The fate of an entire civilised world and the fate of more than two billion beings rests in your hands, sir. What will you do?'

I'm giving this TOS adventure four stars for the promise of the plot, rather than the execution of storytelling, and for the characters. Gotta love a Star Trek writer who gets the characters (almost) right. Captain Kirk is the ever curious leader who is 'genuinely interested in just about everything', Spock the half-human Vulcan who 'decides that 'his home was space', and the crew are the loyal band of Starfleet's finest who 'make the Enterprise so special'. The whole set-up is so nostalgic and heartwarming, I could even overlook the cliched use of catchphrases - Bones gets in the best line with 'I'm a pirate, not a doctor' - but BUT. My one annoyance would have to be Kirk's flirtation with Carolyn Palamas, the blonde lieutenant who had to give up the chance of becoming a goddess in 'Who Mourns for Adonais?' First of all, Kirk would never get involved with a member of his crew - maybe I should qualify that with 'female' member of his crew, haha - and his attitude towards Carolyn in Adonais was 'Man up, soldier, you have a duty to Starfleet and your crewmates!' So there isn't even a canon suggestion that he would have gone there - although Scotty tried in the same episode, and failed. Secondly, WHY? The whole dalliance served no purpose whatsoever, apart from being incredibly out of character. I was equal parts confused and annoyed by that.

Anyway, The story does what is says on the tin - Kirk and the crew are accused of breaking the Prime Directive, Starfleet's Number One Rule of noninterference with alien civilisations, and destroying an entire planet in the process. Oops. The opening chapters, catching up with the 'Enterprise Five' (or the bridge crew) are the best, especially Scotty raising hell on the damaged Enterprise, and I love how fiercely loyal the gang are to Kirk, but the rest of the tale, about the aliens on 'Kirk's World' and how much they had to do with the destruction of their own planet, not to mention the blather about the Prime Directive, could almost have made this a TNG novel in disguise. I may have been guilty of speed reading after a point. And the reunion of the crew with their captain was strangely underwhelming too. But still better than a Greg Cox novel! ( )