Star Trekkin'
Review: Star Trek: Legacy by Michael Jan Friedman
I thought I had all of the old Pocket Star Trek novels, but it turns out I was wrong.
Legacy is a fairly standard offering by a solid workhorse author, Michael Jan Friedman, who handles the characters and their relationships well.
He throws in some flashbacks to Pike's tenure that are interesting (and may have been ideas he couldn't use or that got turned down), but the main plot interweaves two situations.
Kirk joins a planetary survey in which Spock is stung by a creature...that makes him very sick.
He's beamed back, but before Kirk can return, he and two crewmembers are caught in a cave collapse.
And Scotty has to take the Enterprise to deal with an emergency...a raid on a colony by a pirate with a grudge against the Enterprise.
But the Legacy in the title is not that - it's all about the influence of Pike, who stands as a shadowy figure.
It adds little new to the canon, but the stationary creatures who use humanoids as pollinators is a nice twist.
Review: Star Trek: Renegade by Gene Deweese
A lot of the old Pocket books are sequels or follow ups to TOS episodes. This one sees the return of LtCmdr Finney...and the old, untrustworthy Klingons, before Klingons and Romulans were accidentally switched. Oops.
The Klingons are up to their usual shenanigans, trying to destroy a promising civilization that may be a Federation member in the future.
(For some reason, Deweese says the inhabitants are human, even though there's no indication they're a lost human colony. Human enough, I suppose).
As usual, Spock has to be got slightly out of the picture otherwise we would have a Vulcan Ex Machina. Because somebody is sabotaging the Enterprise's computer and they're so good nobody else can spot what they do. So he has to go to the planet to get accused of murder along with McCoy.
I don't feel that Deweese has the depth of these characters as well as some authors - this is very much a plot-based story and if it was filmed, there would be a lot of scenery chewing, especially from Premier Kaulidren. I can think of quite a few actors who would have entirely too much fun with that.
It's not one of the better ones, but still entertaining.