A review by octavia_cade
Black Fire by Sonni Cooper

1.0

This has an excellent beginning but that's about all that can be said for it. I've never read anything from this author before, but it's clear she is very fond of Spock - this entire book is basically a panegyric to his supreme wonderfulness. It gets so over the top in places that it borders on the ridiculous - Spock as a pirate with a jewel in his ear and a fancy cloak, saving maidens and having famous (terrible) poetry written about him, and all of this is a too-lengthy blind for a very obvious twist. Basically, this book relies on the idiot plot - people not figuring out what's going on because they've suddenly and inexplicably lost half their IQ. There's Spock, who suffers heroically from an untreated injury, for which I felt no sympathy because he had the chance to get treated and chose not to - it's not as if the treatment time would have lost him much. After the wound is exacerbated almost unto death, it takes 3 days after McCoy has healed him for Spock to be up and about, which tells me if he'd only followed medical orders when they were given his recovery time would have been significantly less... and would not have affected his mission, but there's that suffering heroically like a numpty to show off with. (Idiot.) There's the court-martial panel, which is blatantly and obviously having their own agenda, which no-one picks up on. (Idiots.) There's the fact that Spock and Scott go missing and none of the Enterprise crew really bothers to tell Kirk, or even give that much of a shit, frankly. (Idiots.) I could go on, but this is mostly cringe-worthy romanticising of Spock interrupted with idiot plot, and you are better off going to read The Wrath of Khan.