Scan barcode
A review by jonwesleyhuff
Star Trek: Strange New Worlds: The High Country by John Jackson Miller
4.0
I read a lot less media tie-in books these days. Mostly, it's just because there's so much I want to read. So reading stories about characters I can watch in another media feels like an indulgence, it that makes any sense. Plus, a lot of tie-in books can be well done but ultimately feel a little light on substance.
All that being said, I love Strange New Worlds, and the characters we've gotten to know over the first series. So, I snapped this right up, eager for another story with this crew. If you're looking forward to seeing the great chemistry of the cast on display sparking off one another you're... uh, not going to get much of that. Not because Miller doesn't write the characters well. Just the opposite, when they do get to interact, or just the time we spend in their heads here, they all feel on-point. I'm excited for Miller to write another SNW book with the full crew for that reason. In this book, however, the crew is splintered early on. It's mostly a Pike book, with Number One and Uhura getting secondary spotlights. This is not a bad thing.
Getting Pike back up on a horse and leaning into the "Wagon Train to the Stairs" roots of Star Trek makes sense for the first book (of what I hope are many!) and Miller plonks the crew in a situation with no easy answers. I enjoyed getting to know the characters and world of Epheska. It's an intriguing premise, building off Trek history in a fun way, and allows Miller to give the adventure a large globe-trotting scope.
The scope maybe gets a little too big toward the end, as character-work (and characters we've gotten to know well) get a little pushed into the background so that the mechanics of the story can clatter toward resolution. There's a sense this almost could have been a two-book story, as we're told about very exciting things after they happened a couple times. All that being said, I'd rather a book be too ambitious versus playing it safe, and I thought it was an incredibly fun ride. I remember, as a kid, reading the first TNG original novel (Ghost Ship) and being so excited to read more adventures of the characters that had come to mean so much to me so quickly. The High Country did that for me again.
All that being said, I love Strange New Worlds, and the characters we've gotten to know over the first series. So, I snapped this right up, eager for another story with this crew. If you're looking forward to seeing the great chemistry of the cast on display sparking off one another you're... uh, not going to get much of that. Not because Miller doesn't write the characters well. Just the opposite, when they do get to interact, or just the time we spend in their heads here, they all feel on-point. I'm excited for Miller to write another SNW book with the full crew for that reason. In this book, however, the crew is splintered early on. It's mostly a Pike book, with Number One and Uhura getting secondary spotlights. This is not a bad thing.
Getting Pike back up on a horse and leaning into the "Wagon Train to the Stairs" roots of Star Trek makes sense for the first book (of what I hope are many!) and Miller plonks the crew in a situation with no easy answers. I enjoyed getting to know the characters and world of Epheska. It's an intriguing premise, building off Trek history in a fun way, and allows Miller to give the adventure a large globe-trotting scope.
The scope maybe gets a little too big toward the end, as character-work (and characters we've gotten to know well) get a little pushed into the background so that the mechanics of the story can clatter toward resolution. There's a sense this almost could have been a two-book story, as we're told about very exciting things after they happened a couple times. All that being said, I'd rather a book be too ambitious versus playing it safe, and I thought it was an incredibly fun ride. I remember, as a kid, reading the first TNG original novel (Ghost Ship) and being so excited to read more adventures of the characters that had come to mean so much to me so quickly. The High Country did that for me again.