A very enjoyable fill-in novel explaining what the Enterprise was doing in Discovery season 1, filled with very Trek concepts.

The U.S.S. Enterprise is on a yearlong mission to chart the Pergamum Nebula when they receive word that the Federation is at war with the Klingon Empire. Yet despite commanding one of the most powerful vessels in Starfleet, Captain Christopher Pike is ordered to continue with his mission. While exploring an M-class would within the nebula, however, the Enterprise is drawn into another and very different conflict when an unknown group abducts the survey teams on its surface. As the Enterprise searches the nebula for them, the kidnapped crewmembers find themselves impressed into an ongoing conflict against an alien foe – a conflict that threatens to draw in the Enterprise at the cost of their ship and their lives.

While the Star Trek franchise has spawned an enormous number of television shows, novels, short stories, and comics, the material that served as the genesis of it all – the adventures of the Christopher Pike-captained Enterprise – remain surprisingly under-explored. While the original series that it helped spawned was what captured the imagination of viewers and provided the source material for everything that followed, the diversity of works in the decades since have largely bypassed the material that Gene Roddenberry originally developed. With the Star Trek: Discovery series this has begun to change, while the announced Strange New Worlds series promises to take these elements further still. In this respect John Jackson Miller’s novel offers a glimpse of what that will look like, with a distinctly different captain and crew of the Enterprise in a universe that fans have come to love.

There’s a lot to like about what Miller does in the novel, as his setting is an imaginative one and his characters well-developed and nicely realized. His story suffers somewhat with the requirements to conform to the plot elements in ST:D’s second season, but fortunately this is a minor aspect of the book and doesn’t inhibit him from entertaining the reader. A far greater problem, though, is with the novel’s antagonists. To develop them, Miller reaches from outside the Star Trek franchise, bringing in elements from such classic works as Heinlein’s Starship Troopers and Steakley’s Armor to depict his war within the Pergamum Nebula. Not only does this feel derivative, it introduces technology wholly lacking from the franchise, requiring some effort on his part to explain why it never reappears. In the process, the work feels less like a true Star Trek novel and more of a non-franchise story adapted for it. The overall result makes for an entertaining read, but it’s not something that coheres into something that feels like an adventure that’s true to the franchise as a whole. ( )

The Enterprise War fills the gap between seasons one and two of Star Trek Discovery by showing us what happened to the Enterprise during the Klingon Battle. The writing is good, tight plot, decent characterization (Spock is Spock and Captain Pike is Pike) with some humour, nail-biting moments, delightful character interactions and original aliens. Just what StarTrek novels should be. ( )

Nice tie-in to Discovery - interesting world-building.

The Klingon war is raging and Captain Pike is chomping at the bit to leave an extended mission exploring a nebula and get into the action. Request denied and, oh boy! There are consequences.

An interesting multi-species world, and eternal war, piracy and press-gangs ensue. ( )

The most recent Star Trek: Discovery novel once again has no scenes aboard the title ship. Instead, this book follows a year in the life of the USS Enterprise, showing what it was doing during Discovery's first season, leading up to its appearance in the season one finale, and retro-foreshadowing some of season 2.

I've always been a fan of Captain Pike's Enterprise-- I used to have a website on a shitty free hosting platform devoted to it-- and I was disappointed that the first Discovery novel, Desperate Hours, didn't quite lean into its Pikeness more. So of course I enjoyed this. At first it's a pretty action-y novel, as the Enterprise explores a dangerous region of space and ends up beset by aliens who kidnap a big chunk of the crew. Fun but disposable. But about halfway through, something dramatic happens, and the novel gets contemplative and atmospheric. I loved the difficult situation everyone ends up in, and I loved how they all handled it, and how it reveals so much about these people. Great big set pieces, awesome visuals of things I surprisingly can't remember being doing in Star Trek before. But also nice little touches, such as Nurse Carlotti's problem, or the role of shipwreck narratives. There are also some nice moments where the book joins

Miller also does a good job with the characters. His Captain Pike captures everything I liked about Anson Mount's portrayal, his Spock is excellent, and he does a strong job with other mainstays like Number One, Yeoman Colt, Nhan, and Doctor Boyce. I also really enjoyed the original character of Galadjian (I hope we see more of him somewhere, but I know by Discovery season 2 he's not around), and I was surprised by he journey Miller took Connolly on. At first the guy annoyed me just as he did in the season 2 premiere, but by novel's end, I understood and liked him and felt bad about how he was depicted in "Brother." Which, I guess, is what a good prequel does!

I'm not totally convinced by every aspect of the joining up, and some of the continuity-smoothing moments are groaners, but overall I really enjoyed this. I've been reading John Jackson Miller's Star Wars comics for over a decade, but this is the first prose fiction and the first Star Trek work I've read from him. He nails it in this universe as much as he did in that one.