(Copy of review I just posted on my personal Facebook timeline.) Just finished reading Agents of Influence, a Star Trek novel by Dayton Ward that just came out earlier this year (2020). (And I do discuss the plot some, so moderate Spoiler Warnings.)
For those only vaguely familiar with Star Trek (the original 1960s television series), Captain Kirk, first officer/science officer Spock, Doctor McCoy, and the other Starfleet officers aboard the USS Enterprise were serving out a “five year mission to explore strange new worlds, seek out new life and new civilizations, to boldly go where no man has gone before”. The tv series was cancelled after only three seasons (although they did come back a few years later to do a couple additional seasons of stories in “Star Trek: The Animated Series” which can be considered to represent some of “years four and five” of the mission.
There have also been loads of Star Trek tie-in novels (as well as comic books) set explicitly during that original five year mission time frame. Agents of Influence is another of those. However, of some small interest, Agents of Influence has been counted by at least one longtime fan to be the one hundredth original Star Trek tie-in novel published to take place during the five year mission time frame of the original tv series. (I will take his word for that. And there have been lots of novels released over the past few decades starring Kirk, Spock, and company that take place after the original five year mission, all the way up to and beyond the movies, as well as some that take place prior to the five year mission.)
All of that said, what did I think of Agents of Influence? It was all right. A bit slow at times. Dayton Ward begins the story on three undercover Federation agents that have been living in secret as spies on the Klingon home world surgically as altered to appear as Klingons. They are extricated and picked up by the USS Endeavour (a ship and crew featured in another couple sub-series of Star Trek tie-in novels, the Star Trek: Vanguard and Star Trek: Seekers series, both of which Ward contributed to). The Endeavour becomes heavily damaged in an encounter in an asteroid field with the Klingons and the Enterprise is routed to assist them. Over the course of the novel, the focus constantly shifts not only between the Enterprise and Endeavour captains and other notable crew members like Spock (left in command of the Enterprise while Kirk is away from the ship) but also 1) the reactions back on the Klingon home world to the discovery of the escaped spies and what vital secrets they may have taken with them, 2) another group of Klingons operating in secret within the asteroid field developing an new energy draining weapon to be used against enemy vessels, and 3) a group of Orions “space pirates” that are in league with the Klingons in the asteroid field.
The jumping around keeps the story from building up as a lot of the non Enterprise and non Endeavour scenes seem expository and not as interesting (and they also were a bit repetitive at times, reflecting someone else’s reactions to events that had just transpired in the previous scene). I felt at times like this should have been a book entirely focused on Captain Katami and the Endeavour working to hold off the Klingons until assistance from the Enterprise can reach them rather than having it jump so much from one set of characters to another.
I liked the inclusion of Admiral Nogura, a character mentioned briefly in Star Trek: The Motion Picture (1979) as the one who gave command of the then completely refit Enterprise back to Kirk to confront the threat of V’ger and used in many of the Star Trek tie-in novels. As in the Vanguard and Seekers novels, here again Nogura is head over covert and highly sensitive Starfleet Intelligence actions. In this case, he accompanies the Enterprise in its mission to find and assist the Endeavour and to recover the three Federation spies (although once the bulk of the novel’s setting shifts to the crippled Endeavour, Nogura’s role and “screen time” is greatly diminished from that point forward as he remains with Spock aboard the Enterprise).
One thing that bugged me a bit as someone who has not yet read the Star Trek: Vanguard or Star Trek: Seekers novels is the “spoiler” (mentioned not once but at least three times, I think) of the fate of an important member of the USS Endeavour’s crew in those previous novels who did in one of them, leading to one of the other characters serving in their present position in Agents of Influence. From a standpoint of character background information, it makes sense that this character might reflect back on how he or she got to this point. However, again, as someone who plans to eventually read the Vanguard and Seekers novels I can’t help but think to myself that when I eventually do that I will then remember, “Oh, here’s that character who is going to die at some point”.
That’s only a minor quibble, though. Again, I found the pacing of this one to be a more uneven and that a lot of time went to peripheral characters that turned out not to be very important, story time that could have been focused on further developing the lead characters aboard the Endeavour (or on Kirk and the Enterprise regulars, although much of the time they seem only there to reflect upon the events transpiring around them, Kirk and his team assisting the Endeavour and Spock, McCoy, and Nogura back aboard the Enterprise).
I enjoyed Agents of Influence well enough, though not as much as I have some of Ward’s others (From History’s Shadow, Drastic Measures). I found it to be a pretty average quality Star Trek novel. I give it three stars on GoodReads.
