markk

This was a deeply frustrating book to read. In many respects, Garfield and Judith Reeves-Stevens's contribution to the Pocket Book series — their first of what proved a long and fruitful involvement with the franchise — has much to recommend it. A sequel of sorts to the third-season episode "The Lights of Zetar," it returns to the concept of a central information archive for the Federation and expands upon it with the introduction of artificial intelligences called Pathfinders. Their addition fills a noticeable gap in the franchise's vision of the future, especially given their increasingly-discussed likelihood within our own lifetimes. Yet this is just one of a number of richly imagined inventions for this book, in which the Enterprise transports several distinguished scientists and scholars to Memory Prime for the awarding of the most prestigious prizes in the Federation. Among their number, though, is an assassin whose mission, if successful, could unravel the entire union unless James Kirk and his crew can stop him in time, adding an element of suspense to the story.

 

Or it would if the authors had been more successful. In this respect this book underscores yet again the inability of contributors to the franchise to construct a decent mystery. As with Jean Lorrah's The Vulcan Academy Murders, it's obvious far too early in the story who the murderer is, depriving the book of any real sense of suspense. While the plot is redeemed somewhat in last chapters with a final twist, this isn't enough to compensate for what is another disappointing attempt to blend together genres in the franchise. Perhaps some other author has solved the problem of writing a good mystery in an Original Series novel, but at this point I'm wondering if the two just don't mix.