#I think if Diane Duane wrote a book where somehow Kirk and the Enterprise crew wound up on a tall ship I would probably never recover

[lichqueenlibrarian]

From The Wounded Sky. I can’t express how much I love the way Diane Duane writes Kirk, there’s something so loveable about him.

[radicalbears]

Fun fact: I've started reading Star Trek TOS books this year, and they are a TRIP.

I've read six of them so far: The Vulcan Science Academy Murders by Jean Lorrah, Doctor's Orders by Diane Duane, Strangers from the Sky by Margaret Wander Bonanno, Spock's World by Diane Duane, Sarek by A.C. Crispin, and The Motion Picture novelization by Gene Roddenberry (and also Harold Livingston and Alan Dean Foster since they wrote the screenplay)

I have some Thoughts but this may be long so opinions below the cut!

I can't pick an absolute favorite, they're all so much fun for their own reasons. Objectively, Spock's World and Sarek are the two best, with Spock's World being my favorite of the two. I love any story that takes a long look at the Vulcans- either individual characters or them as a group- and these two do a fantastic job.

The Vulcan Science Academy Murders is not objectively good- the mystery is so easily figured out, some of the book is just a little bit insane, and there's way too many exclamation points- but it is a LOT of fun. Also has a very sweet perspective of Vulcans and the way they care for eachother.

Doctor's Orders is literally just this: Kirk, thinking he'd only be gone an hour, makes McCoy acting captain. Kirk proceeds to go missing. Due to Starfleet regulations, McCoy is stuck as acting captain until Kirk or Starfleet relieves him. (It's very funny watching both McCoy and literally every bridge officer be stressed about this)

My least favorite is probably Strangers from the Sky. It's extremely convoluted- there's a plot where Kirk is having nightmares about a suppressed past memory (a memory that, is being remembered because the events of this memory were recently published as a book), and half of this book is us just. Real-time reading this past memory? Either way, the memory is of the Actual first human-Vulcan meeting- when a Vulcan ship crash landed on Earth before the official first contact. The surviving Vulcans were rescued by a couple kelp farmers, and the story surrounding them is actually really sweet. The Enterprise crew has almost nothing to do with this story, they're only there because of a time travel incident. It really just feels more like the author wanted to tell this story, but because it didn't have any known characters in it, they were forced to involve the TOS cast. Still a decent read, just Very convoluted.

Finally, the Motion Picture novelization. Boy, this really reminded me that there really is not much that happens in this movie, though somehow it's more interesting than the movie. This is not to completely dump on said movie- I don't hate it, but it certainly is my least favorite. The novelization is really cool though because it adds a LOT of context for what Spock is dealing with. We get more of his inner monologue- something I actually wish we could witness better in the movie. V'ger is a really good character foil for Spock- the way V'ger is was Spock's end goal, yet Spock realizes that V'ger nothing like how he actually wants to be.

The word T'hyla is also just. Casually invented in this novelization, with the explicit purpose of describing the relationship between Kirk and Spock. This book ALSO acknowledges rumors of Kirk and Spock dating in a footnote, and has Kirk "address" these rumors (aka make some weird statement that doesn't actually clarify anything). Beginning of this book is a Wild time for Spirk fans.

Anyway I'm waiting on my library to get in the novelization for Wrath of Khan and Search for Spock. I also just picked up the first two volumes of the Year Five comics. Idk how deep I'm gonna get into Star Trek novels, but I'm at the very least still going strong.

Oh yeah I also tend to take photos of passages/lines I enjoyed from these books, lmk if any of y'all want a deeper look into any of these books- I can post the photos of my favorite bits!