Liked this "new to me" crew and the plot set-up was interesting, but I had a lot of trouble getting into the story and found myself wishing for a better resolution at the end. Enjoyed the use of some obscure TOS episode references along with the use of the Tholians as a major antagonist. ( )

Captain Hikaru Sulu deserves more attention and he gets it in this novel by Michael A. Martin and Andy Mangels. Traversing a razor’s edge between the Tholian Assembly and the Neyal, a new and deadly enemy, Sulu and the Excelsior crew buckle their swash with distinction. Kirk would be proud of his former navigator if he weren’t dead.

Published in paperback by Pocket Books. ( )

From the new Star Trek Lost Era series this story is mostly set a few years after Kirk's death and 'stars' Sulu and a flock of familiar background faces aboard the Excelsior. They're attempting to make peace with the Tholians (them of Web fame that are apparently gonna appear in an Enterprise episode at some point soonish) and find the entire thing complicated by a 3rd alien group that the Tholians are at war with. There's a series of flashbacks devoted to the development of this group charting how they came to be at war. This backwards approach was quite interesting at first, looking at how unique circumstances converged to this 3 way face-off. While an interesting story and moderately enjoyable read I felt this book was too ambitious - introducing so many new characters, 2 entirely new races and a wide range of time periods that aren't previously featured in Star Trek meant that none of them were very well developed. I never really got a very good sense of life onboard Excelsior or amongst her command team, I would have preferred devoting more time to showing how Sulu's command is different to Kirk's, how he and Chekov work as captain and first officer, how Chapel runs a sickbay, more insight into Tuvok. I thought the point of the Lost Era novels would be to develope things we've only glimpsed at before and I think this was a rather missed oportunity. If you want to read a better story about Excelsior, try L.A. Graf's War Dragons, part of the Captain's Table series. ( )