Blurb: An all-new Star Trek adventure—the first novel based on the thrilling Paramount+ TV series Star Trek: Strange New Worlds! When an experimental shuttlecraft fails, Captain Christopher Pike suspects a mechanical malfunction—only to discover the very principles on which Starfleet bases its technology have simply stopped functioning. He and his crewmates are forced to abandon ship in a dangerous maneuver that scatters their party across the strangest new world they’ve ever encountered. First Officer Una finds herself fighting to survive an untamed wilderness where dangers lurk at every turn. Young cadet Nyota Uhura struggles in a volcanic wasteland where things are not as they seem. Science Officer Spock is missing altogether. And Pike gets the chance to fulfill a childhood dream: to live the life of a cowboy in a world where the tools of the 23rd century are of no use. Yet even in the saddle, Pike is still very much a starship captain, with all the responsibilities that entails. Setting out to find his crewmates, he encounters a surprising face from his past—and discovers that one people’s utopia might be someone else’s purgatory. He must lead an exodus—or risk a calamity of galactic proportions that even the Starship Enterprise is powerless to stop.... About the Author: John Jackson Miller is the New York Times bestselling author of Star Trek: Picard: Rogue Elements, Star Trek: Discovery: Die Standing, Star Trek: Discovery: The Enterprise War, the acclaimed Star Trek: Prey trilogy (Hell’s Heart, The Jackal’s Trick, The Hall of Heroes), and the novels Star Trek: The Next Generation: Takedown, Star Wars: A New Dawn, Star Wars: Kenobi, Star Wars: Knight Errant, Star Wars: Lost Tribe of the Sith—The Collected Stories; and fifteen Star Wars graphic novels, as well as the original work Overdraft: The Orion Offensive. He has also written the enovella Star Trek: Titan: Absent Enemies. A comics industry historian and analyst, he has written for franchises including Halo, Conan, Iron Man, Indiana Jones, Battlestar Galactica, Mass Effect, and The Simpsons. He lives in Wisconsin with his wife, two children, and far too many comic books. https://www.simonandschuster.com/bo...er/Star-Trek-Strange-New-Worlds/9781668002384 _______________________________________________________ The first Strange New Worlds novel is here! Just a reminder: John Jackson Miller doesn't read the review threads, so if you have any questions for the author, please feel free to post them in this thread. Please note that thread is not a spoiler thread, so any spoilers will need to be appropriately spoiler-coded. Thank you.
Wow, seriously? It's been a long, long time since I was the first one here to finish a Trek novel. I thought this one was absolutely outstanding. I had a feeling I'd like it when I thought I'd made it through most of the novel, and saw I was only a third of the way through. It was a dense adventure, with a lot of twists and turns that built on each other and developed into something really special. By about halfway through, I was thinking about how this novel was what I thought a modern Trek series should look like; three or so long arcs for every season, six to eight episodes focusing on visiting what would've been a planet of the week, getting the chance to really dig into it. The novel really zeroed in on all the characters in their SNW incarnations, and set them up in situations that played to their strengths. I also really enjoyed how the situation of a planet where electricity can't work forced a lot of technological improvisation and old-school problem solving. Something as tactile as paper maps being a key element was refreshingly hands-on after Trek's gotten so hologram-happy (though I only just realized that, while the eBook meant I couldn't just dog-ear or leave a thumb in place to check back to the provided maps, I could've taken screenshots so I could swipe back over to them. Or used the bookmarking feature).
I'm about 20% in. Really enjoying this so far. It feels to me a lot like some of the better novels of the early Pocket and even Bantam eras when authors worked up their own story with their own ideas and interpretations of the characters that sometimes were only loosely tied to what was on-screen. (Please note, I'm not suggesting that JJ Miller's take on these characters is different than what we've seen on screen, just that he's not trying to follow-up or continue story-lines from any of the episodes and he's felt free to create back-stories for some of the characters when it suits his story.) Instead of the TOS characters, we get the SNW characters (some of whom are the same, of course). It also spurred me to watch an episode of Enterprise last night, something that hasn't happened for a LONG time.
That reminds me, I was already in the mind of that episode even before it started being directly referenced in the novel as foreshadowing/table-setting, because whenever someone mentions Hodgkin's Law I always remember Archer dismissing him as a quack in the Five-Minute parody.
Outstanding! I listened on Audible while on a road trip. I could envision it all on the TV screen. Too tired from driving to go into more detail...
It felt like a fun 250 page novel drawn out to be a 400 page novel. A bit of a slog. Just my opinion.