Spoilers Spock: The Fire and the Rose Review Thread

I could not find any preexisting thread specifically about Spock: The Fire and the Rose, so I decided to add one in the current format. (Or, at least tried to.)

(Copy of review posted on my Facebook page on 7/9/19.) Finished reading Star Trek: Crucible book two, Spock: The Fire and the Rose, and very much enjoyed it, even more so than the first book in the trilogy (McCoy: Provenance of Shadows).

Author, David R. George III, does an excellent job at capturing Spock's voice and personality at the various times of his life depicted here, from his earliest voyages on the Enterprise into the years following the apparent death of Captain Kirk aboard the USS Enterprise-B (from Star Trek Generations).

Spock struggles with the loss of his friend and also with an ever growing loss of control over his own feelings, a struggle he had once managed to keep in balance with his rational and logical Vulcan side but which now threatens to overwhelm him. And, as in the McCoy book, key moments leading up to this point include his and his fellow crewmates' uses while serving aboard the Enterprise of the mysterious Guardian of Forever.

I found the jumping around from one time period to another and back again to be a bit less distracting and disjointed in this book than I did in the McCoy book, although there were times that this book would overlap with scenes from the McCoy book but then not fully develop those scenes again here (which I would think would confuse readers if they read this book first; better to read the McCoy book first, as originally released). As with Provenance of Shadows, I also give The Fire and the Rose four out of five stars.

The Crucible trilogy finishes with Kirk: The Star to Every Wandering (which I've read some reviews say is not as good as the first two books but I guess I'll find out if I also feel this way soon as I plan not to wait very long before starting on that one).

It should be noted that the Crucible trilogy was written to intentionally not refer to the events of any of the other Star Trek novels and only those of the original series (which the trilogy was released to coincide with the fortieth anniversary of) and its subsequent films. It actually contradicts some of the other books and should be read as its own continuity, separate from the others.

 

I never got to this book, as I found the previous McCoy book ran out of gas less than 100 pages in.

 

If you do any more review threads, would you mind making the results viewable for people who haven't voted? I tend to use the results of the polls as one of my determining factors for whether or I'm going to buy/read a book.

 

Sorry, I thought I was following the established format for the polls. It let me change the poll settings so you should be able to see it now. (Funny, when I “swipe” typed “should” the first time, it mistakenly put “Sirtis” instead. A rather odd yet very appropriate mis-correction for the this particular venue!) :-)

 

Cool, thanks.

 

I became much more interested in the “alternate” McCoy story once he got away from New York City and established himself in a new life. The “real” McCoy (wow, did I just type that?) story interested me pretty much throughout.

 

Just finished re-reading this, and the fact that Sarek and Spock's life circumstances reversed was a huge revelation. It made me appreciate how Sarek acknowledges his son in a way we never got to see on the screen.

I did find other literary analyses on the trilogy, and posted them in the McCoy thread. Here is a link to them, rather than reposting all of them here:
https://www.trekbbs.com/threads/having-trouble-with-mccoy-provenance-of-shadows.274499/page-3

 

More novels by DRG III please S&S.

 

I haven't reread this one since it originally came out, but I remember not liking as much as the McCoy book. I think largely because it was more grounded in the continuity of the movies than in TOS. I had the same problem with the Kirk book.