Another Star Trek novel. With these novels that were written around when the show was still on it had to be an interesting balancing act. On the one hand staying true to the canon of the show, but the story had to be interesting too.

What the good Star Trek novels vs. the bad ones come down to (other than the obvious bad writing which this book did not have, it was well and smoothly written), is the plot and the interesting new characters.

This one had both, after all, everyone loves a pirate story. Okay, that may be overstating it, but, combine an overlord and a space pirate and you get an interesting and surprising plot. add to that Romulans and this book becomes a rare four star Star Trek Novel.

The only thing that was a bit annoying was the fact that like so many other people for some reason the author, editor or whomever came up with the idea that they wanted to make yet another ace that 'looks like Vulcans and Romulans' or 'shares the genetic structure with Vulcan and Romulan'. It's sort of an annoying storyline that seems to be present in way too many of the Star Trek novels. ( )