One of the cornerstones of the original Star Trek series was its underlying commentary on Cold War politics and attitudes.  When the Cold War ended and the world seemed to be taking a different direction, Star Trek as a whole evolved into new directions as well.  But with political tensions rising once again in all-too-familiar patterns, the Star Trek novels have followed suit, bringing back those old Cold War staples in a new arrangement.

The preceding Typhon Pact novels set up the formation of the Khitomer Accords, the alliance that emerged between the Federation and its remaining allies in the wake of the departure of the Andorians.  It’s essentially NATO and the Warsaw Pact all over again, and that historical touchstone allows the authors to skim over some of the foundational elements that might otherwise drag.

The tone of the novel is similar to many of the Cold War thrillers that come to mind, but it deftly mixes a tense diplomatic situation with a story about a deep cover agent in Tzenkethi territory.  It’s surprising to say, but the nuances of the situation with the Venette Convention and the diplomatic standoff are more gripping than much of what made it to screen in the heyday of The Next Generation.  This would have been one hell of a solid two-parter script, to say the least!

The standoff covers all of the best story beats: questionable intelligence, cultural barriers, countless hidden agendas, and on top of it all, an operative with serious psychological issues.  That alone would be more than enough to carry the novel, because it’s clear from the very start that a stray comment or unguarded action is all that it might take to take the tension between the Khitomer and Typhon powers into open conflict.  The stakes are never far from the reader’s mind.

For a good part of the novel, the deep cover agent’s plot thread seems to be extraneous, and if it hadn’t been for the author’s talent at using this opportunity to flesh out the Tzenkethi society and culture, it might have felt like page-padding.  As events spiral out of control at the negotiation table, however, the potential for the agent’s story to have a major impact on the outcome.  A clever twist towards the end actually brings the two sides of the story together in an unexpected but logical way.

Buried within the story is an exploration of how a deep cover agent can become seduced by the culture that they are hidden within, and how that can cause unforeseen complications.  Given the overly draconian social structure of the Tzenkethi, it might seem impossible to imagine anyone wanting to submit to proscribed roles and genetically engineered stunted awareness.  But the agent in question is Cardassian, and as longtime Trek fans are aware, Cardassian society emphasizes the will of the state above all else.  In other words, the character’s temptations and decisions are grounded in the depth of Trek lore, which makes all the difference.

With the film franchise about to drop a much-anticipated sequel in the “alternate” Trek universe, the novelists have been given a surprising amount of freedom to carve out their own vision of where the “original” timeline would progress.  It’s a compelling counterpoint to the current state of the Star Wars Expanded Universe, which might be rendered meaningless by the new Disney regime.  Peaceful coexistence between old and new is working extremely well for Star Trek right now, and novels like this prove the point.

Released: Sept 2012
Price: $6.83 (Kindle version)
Acquisition method: Amazon.com