F/SF

I started out pretty resistant to this, because it is about Spock and Saavik and I have been spoiled that in some later novels they get married etc, and the way this starts off it is like an old fashioned romance novel where Saavik is Spock's ward and all that. And, I mean, it IS that, and I am not super comfortable with it, despite thinking that it makes absolute sense for Vulcans and for Spock especially to go down those paths, given their ideas about logic and personal development and all these things, and their childhood betrothals etc. But I have to admit I found the book pretty engaging and wasn't even mad at its portrayal of Saavik's struggle with her Romulan heritage. Still not sure it's ever going to be a favorite, but I ended it a lot less irritated than I started, which is something.

Carolyn Clowes is an author with exactly one book to her credit. Considering how good it is, we are all poorer for the lack of more works from her pen.

Clowes’s focus in the novel is Saavik, Spock’s protégé from the second and third Star Trek movies. It’s a prequel that takes the scant details from the films and uses them to construct an excellent origin story about a Vulcan/Romulan child who is one of a group of near-feral orphans on Hellguard, a dismal planet in Romulan space. They are rescued from their miserable conditions by a secret Vulcan mission, one that goes in search of the crews of Vulcan science ships that have disappeared over the years near the Romulan border. Though the Vulcan crewmembers are nowhere to be found on Hellguard, their children – products of assault and abuse by Romulan guards – remain behind.

As a member of the mission, Spock convinces the others to rehabilitate the children and give them the option to join Vulcan society. And Saavik he takes under his wing, educating her and preparing her for entrance into Starfleet Academy. She is just beginning her first year there when the Enterprise encounters a drifting Romulan warbird with a dead crew and a game-changing new secret. The discovery leads the Enterprise to bring the warbird to Earth to be studied by Starfleet’s best and brightest. As they soon discover, however, the real threat lies not with the warbird, but with the seemingly innocuous cargo it contains – one that threatens to bring about war between the Federation and the Romulans.

Though the novel is rich in plot, Clowes never loses sight of her characters. They’re a careful mix of the familiar faces (Kirk, McCoy, Scotty, etc.) and new ones created from Clowes’s fertile imagination. Yet Saavik and her relationship with her mentor are at the heart of the novel, and it’s one of the most richly rewarding ones to be found in any Star Trek novel. With it we get to see Spock as a parent, not of some long-ago relationship (such as David Marcus) but of someone he consciously chooses to make part of his family. Clowes’s genius comes in making the parallels between the two – mixed Vulcan parentage, emotional struggles – implicit rather than overt. It’s one of the best imaginings of a Vulcan relationship that I have ever seen in the Star Trek franchise, and it’s one that anyone writing about Vulcans should consult. It also makes me mourn the fact that this is the only novel Clowes ever wrote for the franchise, though I can easily accept the argument that she decided to stop while she was ahead. It certainly would have been difficult to follow this novel, which is among the best of the classic Pocket Books series. ( )

Ah, I love this one. The history Spock and Saavik share is a tender side of Spock that is usually well hidden. I find subtle little things in this book on re-reading that I missed the first (or fourth!) time around. ( )

An interesting and well-written Star Trek story which features Saavik from the second movie, in a prequel that brings the Enterprise and Saavik back to the nightmare world of Saavik's birth, Hellguard. Here we learn much more about this fascinating character's upbringing and personality, and a crackling good adventure to boot. ( )