#i dont know whether the fish person plot line was necessary or not

[lichqueenlibrarian]

I liked Deep Domain, there were several moments I thought were carried off terribly well, but I think the latter part of the book suffers a bit from So Much happening.

The setup with Captain Kirk feeling worn out and giving serious thought to going home after they finish up with Akkalla I thought was well done. You do get this great sense of tiredness and doubt in himself, carried over from the Motion Picture where he wonders if he’s gone stale, if his reactions aren’t what they would’ve been before he took the promotion to Admiral. Akkalla’s crisis is interesting- they have a guérilla band of activists, a rival planet disregarding the treaty they have and rampantly poaching sea life, and a corrupt government whose ineffective Publican is being manipulated by his closest aide/lover/brigadier. The brigadier is actively plotting the overthrow of the government to put herself at the top.

Midway through the book the brigadier’s plotting feels like it just drops away? The focus shifts to one of the Akkallan scholars, Llissa Kkayn and her estranged father Zzev who happens to be a member of the Cape Alliance (the aforementioned guérilla environmentalist types), and the Enterprise is drawn into solving the mystery of the wwafida, a mythical species of sentient aquatic life whose fossils are strangely similar to the land dwelling Akkallans’ bones.

I think after setting up an ineffectual government head and giving him an evil but sexy brigadier who is manipulating him AND the Akkallan people, dropping that plotline so McCoy can turn a man into a wwafida (conveniently they're revealed to be telepathic so they can communicate with Spock), is a bit strange. I was more invested in the political mess, and how they were going to exonerate the scholars and scientists after all the misinformation from the government.

The threat of the other planet and the brigadier’s scheming are both wrapped up almost as an afterthought? The Enterprise intercepts a harvest team, fires some shots across the mothership’s nose and tells them to quit it. The Publican gets a call from Kirk that’s basically “we have enough evidence of the wwafida to convince the Federation that your planet needs an investigation” and the Publican just… folds. The brigadier who until now has been murdering, manipulating and fucking her way to power (I love her for it honestly) gets a call to stop her military action against the harvest ships/the Enterprise’s shuttle, and NONE OF HER SOLDIERS BACK HER?? They fuckin knock her out and go back to the mainland for trial without batting an eye.

I was expecting a little more drama out of that, if I’m going to be frank. It felt a bit rushed, which is sad because there were so many cool parts. Jim and Llissa explore an underwater cave and find a cache of bones and artefacts implying the existence of the wwafida and that they have some sort of culture. Spock and Chekov are kidnapped and then are held prisoner by the government and used in a trumped up trial to defend the actions taken by the Publican. The brigadier is so delightfully amoral I wanted to see more of her being the villain.

I liked this book, I just feel like it could’ve had less going on and still been good.