STAR TREK: THE BRAVE AND THE BOLD, BOOK 2

Keith R A DeCandido concludes his multi-TREK saga

By Chris Wyatt     January 03, 2003

The second book of STAR TREK: THE BRAVE AND THE BOLD has a lot to live up to, but it delivers superbly. By way of recap, in the first book the starship Enterprise, under the command of Captain Archer, located the ruins of an ancient civilization called the Zalkat Union. The ruins seem indicate that the planet currently under investigation is the Zelcat homeworld, a world which until now has been considered lost. Documents on the planet describe four incredible weapons which have been scattered around the quadrant. Archer reports the information back to Earth, issuing a warning to future ships that might run across the artifacts.

From those humble beginnings, DeCandido launches a multi-TREK adventure which uses the scattered artifacts as a bridge, linking the different TREK TV characters. The first book depicted, in different stories, Captain Kirk picking up the first artifact on an outlying colony, and Commander Sisko finding the second on a Bajoran moon.

The second book continues the novella-style storytelling, covering both VOYAGER and NEXT GEN, as Captains Picard and Janeway find the third and fourth artifacts respectively. So, the two novels taken together are more like four short novels.

The VOYAGER segment is probably the most successful because of how skillfully the author is able to expand upon the TV characters without stretching them beyond believability. Set before the beginning of the VOYAGER series it depicts Tuvok's original attempt to infiltrate the Maquis. The Maquis have come into control of the artifact and intend to use it against the Cardassians.

The fourth and final tale follows Picard and the NEXT GEN as they try to track down clues to the disappearance of key officials in the Federation and on the Klingon homeworld. Sure enough...the disappearances are linked to the final artifact. If the VOYAGER tales was the best at giving us new views of old characters, the NEXT GEN tale has the best plot. As added seasoning it includes an appearance by Spock.

Overall, the second book is actually better than the first and can be recommend highly to TREK fans. The only problem is one of closure. The final vignette attempts to draw the thematic strands of the four stories (five counting the Archer opener) but isn't entirely successful. Still, these two books remain relative high water mark for TREK fiction.

There was a time when TREK novels were lifeless...then Peter David came along and brought them to a new level. In recent years the novels have been up and down, with some decent entries, but also some major crap getting into the system. DeCandido is like the second coming of Peter David. He knows the characters so well, and expands them so perfectly that it will be a shame if he never writes for on-screen TREK. Maybe if John "Let's kill Data" Logan isn't doing the 11th film, Berman could give DeCandido a call...but, that probably won't happen, because what are the odds that Berman reads the novels?

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