I Wasn’t the One Living in a Nightmare

John Jackson Miller returns to the outer reaches of space in another original Star Trek: Strange New Worlds novel. Captain Christopher Pike is in command of one of the first exploratory vessels, the Starship Enterprise. His crew is called in to investigate the missing starship Braidwood, which was last located heading toward the planet Epheska. When Captain Pike, First Officer Una, Cadet Nyota Uhura, and Science Officer Spock approach the planet they are separated when all technology ceases to function. trapped on a planet without means to escape, Captain Pike must find his crew and solve this baffling mystery.

This is not a usual space adventure, as it is primarily set on the planet Epheska. Where technology is stuck in the age of old westerns by the mysterious Baffle. This is an interesting book about the purpose of the Prime Directive, and the difficulties between different planetary races. John Jackson Miller builds a world with a mixture of old-world planetary beings. Some are recognizable Star Trek groups, such as the Vulcans, and the unfamiliar Skagarans. All caught up in a complex philosophy that technology ultimately leads to destruction. A great read for those who enjoy the new Star Trek tv series, and of course, space traveling horses. ( )

I wanted to like this more than I did. It struck me as more by-the-book and ordinary than anything else. There's nothing inherently wrong with that but it didn't meet expectations and I tend to believe that a new book series like this needs a stronger start than this provided.

The genesis of the story comes from an Enterprise episode [S03E9~North Star] that I have either never seen (or don't remember) so there was that to deal with. I think I would recommend anyone give that a look before starting the book.

Plot summaries are well covered in the other site reviews. ( )

Before the famous five-year mission, but still exploring strange new worlds the USS Enterprise finds a world where the laws of physics don’t work and strands four of the crew including Captain Christopher Pike on the surface in this first tie-in novel for the newest live action Star Trek series. The High Country by John Jackson Miller takes place late in the first season of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds as Captain Pike, Number One, Spock, and Cadet Uhara are trapped on the planet Epheska on which no electricity works.

During a search for a missing vessel and testing a new type of shuttlecraft, Pike and crew encounter a planet in which the laws of physics appear to not apply and need to be transported to the surface of the planet as the shuttle crashes. Separated on the planet, the four crew members each encounter elements of the mysterious culture of numerous species including humans that were abducted from their home planets and deposited there to live on a planet that can’t have electronics to create the perfect society. Inevitably the crew of the Enterprise find out not everything is as it seems as Pike finds those who want to create machines, Spock eventually finds Vulcans who are the perfect society’s scourge in their independence from “the system”, Number One finds herself amongst the society’s leadership, and Uhara ultimately finds the reason what’s happening with the planet’s physics. The overall narrative and the Enterprise character depictions from Strange New Worlds are top notch, however the book does go into cliché with the society’s leader depiction slowly sliding towards authoritarian after apparently benign introduction and a childhood friend of Pike’s from current Earth who is on the planet and turns out to be a villain with a tragic past. Yet it was a fun, engaging read that made me satisfied with picking it up.

The High Country is the first of hopefully many tie-in novels connected with Star Trek: Strange New Worlds as John Jackson Miller not only gets the vibe of the show and the characters but puts together a good story. ( )

John Jackson Miller provides the first Strange New Worlds tie-in novel—only he also wrote the earlier The Enterprise War, which was a SNW novel in all but name. I really enjoyed The Enterprise War, and have been really enjoying SWN season 1 (as of this writing, I am up to "Spock Amok"), so I was looking forward to this book quite a bit.

I'm not attempting to diminish the book by saying it ought not to be a hardcover, but a mass-market paperback. That is to say, this book has to do what Star Trek books always used to have to do (but didn't do very much after Nemesis brought a halt to screen adventures for the twenty-fourth century) and slot in between existing episodes. Yet those old novels often  struggled to feel like novels, coming across more as inflated episodes. The High Country threads that needle nicely, giving us events big enough to merit a novel, but not so big that they feel like they disrupt the narrative of the tv show. A strange phenomenon causes Pike, Spock, Number One, and Uhura to be scattered across a strange planet, out of reach of the Enterprise. The novel follows the four of them as they explore this planet and reunite with one another, with some side scenes about the Enterprise crew. What initially seems to be a simple Prime Directive situation soon reveals itself to be part of a complicated, ancient undertaking that could threaten life throughout the quadrant.

The biggest strength of the book is its character voices; I felt that Miller particularly captured Pike, (Ethan Peck's) Spock, and Hemmer. The book is filled with good twists and turns and interesting imagery and cool concepts and neat side characters. I liked the Menders, I liked who rescued Spock, I liked Hemmer's plan, I liked the clever ways the Enterprise crew penetrated the strange phenomenon around the planet. I had a lot of fun with it, and it reads quickly.

I have two complaints, really. One is that a lot of the book hinges on a relationship between Pike and a guest character, and I wish we had more of a sense of it. I usually wouldn't advocate for such a thing, but a prologue flashing back to them in younger days might have been a good idea, and there's one weird bit where we're told they eat dinner together but don't actually get to see it. We're told what they don't talk about, but under the circumstances it's difficult to imagine what they do talk about, and it would be nice to see more of these two old friends. The other is that at the end, things got a bit fuzzy and drawn out, first with lots of talk of rondures, and then with what felt like a few too many epilogues, like watching The Return of the King.

But on the whole I enjoyed this. It captures the spirit of the parent show while also doing something it could never do, spend a protracted span of time exploring a single planet, its culture, and its population.

The first Star Trek book set in the universe of Strange New Worlds gets off to a fast start with The High Country by John Jackson Miller. Captain Pike, along with Spock, cadet Uhura and Number One, Una Chin-Riley, is testing an experimental shuttlecraft while searching the last known location of a civilian Federation ship that went missing a year earlier near a planet with a pre-warp society.
As they attempt to take a closer look, the systems on the shuttle begin to fail, sending them hurtling toward the planet on a crash course. An assist from the Enterprise gets them off the shuttle but leaves the four crewmembers scattered in different parts of the planet. The Enterprise is frustrated in its attempts to return as the same energy field that crashed the shuttle threatens to do the same to them.

Una finds herself stranded in the wilderness, Uhura in a volcanic wasteland, Spock lands in the water and Pike winds up near a settlement filled with mostly humans. Sophisticated technology won't operate on the planet and technology of any sort is not allowed, either by the ruling Skagarans or the mysterious fire creatures who are apt to descend from the sky and destroy it.

The first half of the novel is primarily focused on Pike and Una, as she makes her way to civilization and Pike learns the ways of the settlement that shares some similarities with the old west. In typical Star Trek fashion, idyllic settings are seldom truly idyllic, the motivations which brought people from other worlds to this planet may or may not be benign, and dangerous secrets threaten not only the planet but the federation and worlds beyond.

Once Pike gets a feel for the situation, he leads a group of people who resent the technological restrictions placed on them on a quest to find a way off the planet and prevent disaster from striking. "It's a wagon train to outer space!", as he describes it, in a nice nod to Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry's original description of the show. At this point, the pace and the action really start to pick up. Pike leads his ragtag group toward the sea, while Una is learning more secrets about how the world came to be as it is. Uhura and Spock reappear with crucial roles to fill and information that further informs some of the darker aspects of life on the planet. The Enterprise, meanwhile, continues to search for ways to rescue their stranded crewmembers and provide what scant assistance they can while doing their best to follow the prime directive.

The action remains tense as the opposing factions rush together. A thrilling chase over land, sea, and ice leads to a final confrontation that could lead to either triumph or unimaginable disaster. John Jackson Miller has demonstrated in the past that he has a firm grasp on Star Trek characters and he does so again here with the characters from Strange New Worlds. He creates new characters which are likewise fascinating. He also throws inventive scientific concepts into the mix and devises an intriguing and perplexing mystery.

I have enjoyed Star Trek novels since first reading James Blish's novelizations of the original series episodes. Miller has a grasp on these characters that takes me back to the thrill I felt when first reading those Blish books. Miller's take on this universe is sure to entertain fans of Star Trek in any of its iterations.

I was provided a copy of this book by the publisher. ( )