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gingerreader99's review
3.0
There's Good, Less good/sad and the interesting in this story. Kirk is good why wouldn't he be? Seeing a young Commander Kirk making a name for himself was enjoyable and as fun as I expected it to be. Then there's the battle of the leftist progressives! Carol Marcus and her team that wants to eradicate hunger in the UFP and Kent + Redpeace and the radical Whole Earth! Environmental leftists who want to preserve nature. This is exactly what I'd expect from the UFP not necessarily the "left eating itself" but debates and ideological entanglements coming from a progressive and Noble position, as opposed to the economic neoliberalism and conservatism that constrain and hinder us today. But god is this book also depressing, you just know the end result of the relationships portrayed, both Leila + Spock, Kirk and Carol, it all HAS to end in a bad or sad way and while the author does an excellent job conveying these emotions I just found it more depressing than the hopeful tone that Trek typically embodies.
djwudi's review
adventurous
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
3.0
Set in the pre-TOS era, this explores some early relationships touched on later in the saga; one for Kirk, and one for Spock, who have yet to meet, though both end up involved in the framing story about the risks of environmental damage during technological and societal expansion.
wai's review against another edition
2.0
I picked this book up on a whim since I just happened to stumble upon it at my local library. To be honest, I expected far more of a plot than I received. The actual plot of the experiment on Mars headed by Dr. Carol Marcus and the controversy it garnered by environmental groups such as 'Redpeace' (the Mars equivalent to 'Greenpeace') and its extremist counterparts 'Whole Earth', seems to be nothing more than a device to propagate the romance between Carol Marcus and Jim Kirk, as well as the unrequited feelings that Leila Kalomi felt for Spock.
While these relationships are written in accordance with canon, the undue focus spent on them was not particularly of interest. Everything seemed to take a backseat to Carol's issue of her accidental pregnancy (with the baby who would later grow up to be David Marcus from 'Wrath of Khan'), and Leila's obsession over Spock, a Vulcan she happened to meet in the gardens of their embassy after a bad break-up. This makes both characters feel a bit...two-dimensional, despite their obvious intelligence and expertise in their field.
As for Kirk and Spock, don't let the cover fool you. They're not the central characters of the story. They are both in a substantial amount of the text, and they do play a crucial role in the plot, they're certainly not the focus and no interaction, as this was set before Kirk had taken command of the Enterprise with Spock as his first officer. They seem to exist more as plot devices, and the reader tends to instead view them more through the eyes of Carol and Leila, giving them both a decidedly romantic air about them throughout the whole book - making the story feel more like reading about someone's fantasies about Kirk and Spock than anything else.
It was an easy read, but nothing much more than that.
While these relationships are written in accordance with canon, the undue focus spent on them was not particularly of interest. Everything seemed to take a backseat to Carol's issue of her accidental pregnancy (with the baby who would later grow up to be David Marcus from 'Wrath of Khan'), and Leila's obsession over Spock, a Vulcan she happened to meet in the gardens of their embassy after a bad break-up. This makes both characters feel a bit...two-dimensional, despite their obvious intelligence and expertise in their field.
As for Kirk and Spock, don't let the cover fool you. They're not the central characters of the story. They are both in a substantial amount of the text, and they do play a crucial role in the plot, they're certainly not the focus and no interaction, as this was set before Kirk had taken command of the Enterprise with Spock as his first officer. They seem to exist more as plot devices, and the reader tends to instead view them more through the eyes of Carol and Leila, giving them both a decidedly romantic air about them throughout the whole book - making the story feel more like reading about someone's fantasies about Kirk and Spock than anything else.
It was an easy read, but nothing much more than that.
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