It's an old one, but I really have a soft spot for the novel Black Fire, which has Spock moving from one bad situation to the next - badly injured, going against orders, committing treason (albeit for a noble cause), in prison, escaping prison, becoming an outlaw and then teaming up with an enemy of the Federation. We get a fair amount of insight into Spock through his own thoughts and those of others.
Black Fire is totally crazy and perhaps the most fan-fictiony professional Trek novel ever published; indeed, it cycles through so many distinct episodic stories that it feels like a compilation of a multi-part fan-fiction novella series. It's a love-it-or-hate-it kind of thing, but it can be a wild and entertaining ride if you don't take Trek too seriously.
It's been quite a few years since I last read it, but yes, from my recollections, your description fits it perfectly, especially the beginning and end, as quoted above. Kind of a "guilty pleasure."
Yeah, I just recently read it again, and I was just amazed at how fast things jump from plot point to plot point. Characters are introduced, have a few lines of dialogue that seem significant, and then they exit the story almost entirely. The part revolving around the title only takes up like about a chapter’s worth of content. I’d have been happy for another hundred pages to expand the material, because the ideas were interesting. Just thrown at the reader at a breakneck speed to where it’s just as you’re starting to digest one thing, two more come at you.
200 pages into it now and I’ve noticed a continuity mistake. Spock mentions that he has spotting a few Ferengi marauders in space but in 2320, they shouldn’t know what a Ferengi ship looks like. A new one as well with them saying Pike aced everything at the Academy which we know watching Discovery, isn’t true.
Yeah I enjoyed the Kirk bio much more than the Picard one. But both are pretty good. Speaking of the Picard bio, I actually wrote recently a magazine-type interview where Pulaski responds to what he "wrote" about her in the book. Just for fun. Also cause #TeamPulaski.
I thought both were generic connecting of canon dots with nothing of substance added. Burning Dreams was vastly superior, IMHO.
This isn't the first book to make that mistake. I read another Pike era book the other day, The Children of Kings, and someone mentions the Ferengi Commerce Authority.
Well, there was a hell of a lot more to discover about Pike. All we had to go on with him was one two-part episode of a television series 40 years previous. So pretty much 90-95% of what we learned about Pike in Burning Dreams was new information. Kirk and Picard both had so much development over the years, that there were a lot more points to hit.
It's looking forward from where we saw him on screen instead of going backwards, but The Sorrows of Empire is a very in depth look at Mirror Spock.
Interestingly, tonights episode provided info on Pike’s father, which really contradicts one of the main story threads of this novel.
Somewhat, but with all the Trek coming our way, I’m just going to have to accept it as the main story again after all these years of Treklit being the biggest thing going on in the Star Trek world. And if the last two episodes have been any indication of the quality of what will continue to come, I’m thinking it will be great!
...Yeah, that’s gonna be a tough one to reconcile. But lots of good stuff in this episode, on the other hand.