As a voracious reader, I have ecclectic tastes including Nameless Detective mystery novels by Bill Pronzini, period pieces, politics, comics books, select sci-fi, and select Star Trek novels. I particularly enjoy Peter David‘s Star Trek: New Frontier series, Christopher L. Bennett’s new Department of Temporal Investigations (DTI) series, Mirror Universe books, and the post TV finale DS9 novels.
Simon & Schuster doesn’t put out as many Star Trek novels as it did in its boom years in the mid-late 1990s and early 2000s, but they really are trying to put more fandom-friendly titles out that also has a pull for casual fans who may only be familiar with the TV and movie properties.
To that end, I was pleased to see a solicit for a new Star Trek novel coming out on July 26th featuring disgraced Vulcan Lieutenant Valeris, played by a pre-Sex and the City‘s TV star Kim Cattrall of Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country movie infamy. While a lot of Star Trek novels have explored half Vulcan and half Romulan fan fave Lieutenant Saavik (originated by Kritie Alley in film, but replaced with Robin Curtis in future films over a salary dispute) in novels, not a lot has been done with Valeris in prose.
That changes this month with James Swallow’s 368 page Star Trek: Cast No Shadow.
James Swallow is an up-and-coming Trek novelist and despite the vague solicit as it relates to Valeris, I really am curious about Valeris’ continuing story foremost.
What say you?
Book description:
Seven years have passed since a catastrophic explosion on the Klingon moon Praxis touched off a chain of events that would result in the assassination of the reformist High Chancellor Gorkon, and the eventual creation of the historicKhitomer Accords. Now, as part of the ongoing efforts to undo the disastrous fallout from the destruction of Praxis and with the help of aid supplies from the United Federation of Planets, reconstruction is in progress, and after years of slow going hindered by political pressures and old prejudices, headway is at last being made. But the peace process begun by theKhitomer Accords is still fragile just as the deadly plans of what is believed to be a hard-line Klingon isolationist group violently come to fruition.
Yet the group thought responsible for the deadly attack has been dormant for decades, and its known modus operandi doesn’t match up to the manner of the strike. And further investigation leads to an unexpected revelation connected to the Gorkon conspiracy of 2293, and in particular one disgraced and very familiar Starfleet lieutenant…
I am intrigued.
