Author: James Swallow
Pages: 336
Format: Hardcover
Published: April 29, 2025
Publisher: Gallery Books
View on Goodreads
Date Completed: May 13, 2025
My rating: 
Thoughts
I love it when a tie-in author understands the assignment. James Swallow always seems to and this book is no exception.
What we have here is our Strange New Worlds crew on a somewhat classic Star Trek adventure. This story probably could have fit in several of the different Trek shows, but was tailored to fit nicely with Pike and crew.
And really, this isn’t as much of a Pike story as it is an Erica Ortegas story with some La’an Noonien-Singh growth thrown in for some good measure. Pike, Number One, Spock, and the others get some good time but I really appreciated the Ortegas story the most.
Some classic Trek elements we get are a ship/crew out of time, the crew split up on various aspects of the mission, ages-long promises kept, and Klingons, just because. But also no less Trek are personal growth stories, which we get with Ortegas and Noonien-Singh.
Ortegas is confronted with a family legacy not living up to expectations; sort of a “don’t meet your heroes” situation. But the way Ortegas handles meeting this hero is done so well that she grows into a better person because of it. And for Noonien-Singh, she’s confronted yet again by judgments of her based on her name and ancestry alone. She must continue to fight the battle of proving herself as her own person and not just Khan’s descendant.
There’s so much more to the story than that and you can listen to our interview with the author on Literary Treks episode 387! Overall, I would give this 4.5 out of 5 stars. This book pushed all the right buttons for me and once again makes me long for new Trek novels.
