F/SF

*grins*

Tactical, and not centered on the usual suspects. Has tactical issues, but not terribly distracting ones. ( )

Not a Star Trek book, but a Piper adventure.  And a mess.

Carey's second outing with Lt. Piper reads a little more smoothly than the first (Dreadnought!), but it's still very rough around the edges. This one at least has a recognizable and marginally logical plot arc, although some of the individual scenes don't quite fit in with it. In general Carey spends too much time telling us that her characters are undergoing profound internal conflicts, instead of developing them to a depth where we can empathize with those conflicts without help. Piper, Sarda, and Scanner still mostly seem like Kirk, Spock, and McCoy in disguise, but they do start to develop slight traces of individuality.

Like its predecessor, Battlestations! has a relentless pace that covers some (not all) of the plot holes, plus more of the author's one-liners, which are usually worth a giggle even when they're cheesy. ( )

An excellent Star Trek novel which reprises the guest crew of Lt. Cmdr. Piper and Sarda, her Vulcan first officer and best friend as they help Kirk and crew fight off an attempt to steal the new transwarp propulsion system. Piper and her crew are an original bunch of roguish heroes, the action and strategy are fine, and the relationship between yet another human commander and Vulcan "thyla" is intriguing and well-handled. ( )