A Star Trek: The Original Series: A Flag Full of Stars [Mass Market Paperback]

Unfortuantely, there are two major problems with it: one is that I find the basic concept to the "Lost Years" stories somewhat dubious; if, during the time between the end of the five-year mission and the first movie, there continued to be major, exciting things going on involving Kirk, it seems doubtful that he would have become the bored and boring paper-pusher who was so desperate to get out of his admiral's office and back into a captain's chair. It seems far more likely that nothing of note happened during those years, which is WHY he became so dissatisfied. So for that reason, among others, I find that I have difficulty accepting the story here (and in its predecessor, "The Lost Years") to be canonical.

Secondly, there is a related issue: it may satisfy the curious to read stories told about the "Lost Years", and it has some of the same morbid fascination as watching a train wreck, but it really isn't my idea of entertainment to read stories about the years during which Kirk became a boring and bored pencil-pusher. It is enough to know that this HAPPENED, and that that explains why he would actively pursue a demotion in order to regain command of a ship later. This was an effective cautionary tale about the dangers of the Peter Principle, accepting promotions to your level of incompetence, but it seems to me it worked better as an off-screen, behind-the-scenes story. It loses some of its effect when examined closely.

"A Flag Full of Stars" doesn't live up to the expectations of "Traitor Winds", wich is, without a doubt, the best of the four.

"A Flag Full of Stars" comes second, though, due to the boringness and not-beliavability of "The Lost Years", and the simple meaninglessness of "Recovery".

The Biggest strenght of "A Flagg Full of Stars" is that it's an unconventional Trek novel.

Taking place mostly on Earth, the novel centeres around original, and more-or-less succesfully constructed characters. We have a story of a Klingon scientist, living on Earth, teaching, and a tale of one of his students.

As so often, the youngsters act at least five years younger than expected, are shallow and underestimated as characters.

The Klingon scientist on the other hand is written extremely well, but even he can't measure up to his pet kitten, who is clearly the best character of the entire spectrum of the characters introduced in this novel.

The setting is exellent, the writing good, characterization decent, but the plot leaves something to be desired for.

It's bases are ridiculously devoid of credibility, introducing a machine that can create energy out of nothing. And most ludicrous is the fact that it's created not in some top secret research lab, but at the inventors home, vithout the inventor even knowing what's being created. Whatever happened to the laws of physics and common sence?

All in all the kitten, the writing, and the use of good characters elevate this book into a decent one, that might have been exellent, if it had had at least a slightly intelligent plot.