As for what you have there, does Kirk get shot by Soran in the back? Or does he fall and get crushed by the metal bridge he’d been fighting with Soran on. It’s possible that he still had that last conversation with Picard even after getting shot, if it didn’t kill him right away.
That could be it. I didn't go far enough back in the book to see one vs. the other, but that's certainly easier (and less time-consuming) to check than digging out the DVD and replaying the scene while following along in the book. I'll try and remember to look again this evening.
The movie, and the book, are over 30 years old, and it's been quite a few years since the last time I saw the movie or read the book. And I forget details even of books I've read dozens of times, like DD's most revered ST classics. I remembered that somebody had written a throwaway scene in a ST novel about an Enterprise crew member whose metabolism was fueled by ethanol, and who got drunk on organic acids, but I had to do a fair amount of research before I uncovered that it wasn't (as I'd initially thought) ADF in one of the
Star Trek Logs, but rather Joe Haldeman, in
Planet of Judgment (probably the only comic relief in a book that had an otherwise very serious tone).
And
yes, it
is the first edition hardcover. Purchased while the movie was in first-run. And the copyright page says as much.
*********
And yes, Soran shoots him in the back in the novelization. Then again, I've been used to odd differences between what's on the screen and what's on the page for a long time. Since Blish adapted a script for "The Trouble With Tribbles" from before Chekov was given all of Sulu's lines (because George was off filming
The Green Berets).
