The Lost Era: The Sundered (Star Trek) [Mass Market Paperback]

The Sundered is first class science fiction regardless that it's Star Trek. For me that's the icing on the cake. Some of the original characters are with Captain Sulu. Chekov, Rand, Chapel, and a young Tuvok. This is truly an involving story and I gave it five stars without reservation.

While the known characters are done well, what about the rest of them? The new crew members are top notch as well, though they are relatively few. Only two of them actually have much to do, but they are great characters as well. This is marred by only one thing. The authors decide to make use of a situation from an old episode, where two of the crew are about to get married, but then one of them is killed in battle with the Romulans. Not only does this happen again (except no Romulans, of course), but it's foreshadowed so bluntly, that the episode is actually referenced *before* it happens! Rand thinks back to the last time two crew members were going to get married and remembers what happened to them. The authors don't even change much of the story, having the death happen in the same place on the ship as the previous one. While I appreciate the fact that Mangels and Martin took this story further (and actually tell a little sub-plot about revenge), the fact that none of the details are different is very lazy.

Another problem with the book is the awkwardness of the story-telling. The book is broken up into parts, alternating between the current time and history (both of the ambassador and of several Earth historical points). While I understand that the Neyel have a lot of history that can't just be infodumped, I found that the way it was done destroyed the tension in the book. It didn't help that the characters within this history weren't that interesting. I found myself wondering when the history lesson would end so we could get back to the actual story. Just when the Sulu story really started to get interesting, they would switch back to the history. They even include a scene in this history with Zefram Cochrane (the creator of warp drive) discussing things with the Next Generation characters that helped him in the movie First Contact. This scene seemed entirely gratuitous, as it didn't seem to matter anywhere in the plot.

Other than that, though, the plot of the book is very intriguing. The Tholians haven't been used much in Trek fiction, so it was nice to see them. The current-day story is well-told and intriguing, though it's brought down by the cliché of Sulu fighting a trial by combat with the Tholian commander is really a groaner. Thankfully, Mangels and Martin end it in a distinctive way, at least.

The Sundered is a flawed first book in the Lost Era series, but it's certainly worth reading if you're a Trek fan. The series has an intriguing premise, and if subsequent books can keep up the quality of this one (without the annoying bits mentioned above), then it should be a winner.

David Roy

In terms of filling us in on the lost era, I can't really say that beyond exploration of Tuvok's problems with serving in Starfleet, you don't learn anything substantive. And we already knew about Tuvok's problems with being around emotional beings, so although it was nice to read into that a little more, there was really nothing else which I personally felt qualified this as answering questions about a 'lost era'. It would have been nice to know something more about Chekov, whether he intended to command his own ship, as suggested in William Shatner's 'The Return'. Filling us in on an era, to me, should consist of books that cover more than a few weeks in 2298.

We learnt plenty about a human off-shoot race, which was the creation entirely of Martin and Mangels, but little about the characters we want to know about. But don't let my dismissive words fool you, though this book may not be entitled to be a 'Lost Era' book, it certainly stands alongside, say, Peter David's 'The Captain's Daughter', as a post-kirk's-death TOS novel. It does get pretty exciting and fast paced, always a bonus, and yes the molecular-blade fight between Sulu and Tholian Admiral Yilskene is CHEESE, but well enough written cheese. So much so that when the battle ended prematurely, I was pretty angry.

In a nutshell, you won't learn about a lost era, but you'll enjoy a worthwhile read.