I can't take "Kailyn" seriously as there was a girl the year below me at college named that. Also, McCoy makes awfully heavy weather about being too old for a beautiful young girl - heavy enough weather that I feel like it's ridiculous they don't end up together. Not good, overall.

Howard Weinstein is a prolific author of Star Trek franchise novels, and if his first one is any guide it's easy to see why. In it he provides an efficient tale of a planet whose Klingon-sparked civil war is winding down and who needs their exiled king to return to cement the peace. Due to his personal connection with the king James Kirk is ordered to transport him to his homeworld, only to arrive to find the monarch near death. To salvage the mission, Kirk must retrieve the all-important crown and convince the king's reluctant daughter that she has the strength necessary to assume the throne — all while dealing with a Klingon battlecruiser and Klingon intelligence operatives who are determined to do everything within their power to stop the Enterprise crew form fulfilling their mission.

The plot of Weinstein's book is not that different from that of an episode of the original series, which often had the Enterprise crew intervening in the planetary politics of strategically important worlds. What Weinstein does is put Leonard McCoy at the center of events and expand the scale beyond what was ever possible in the series by making it a truly interstellar tale, with journeys to multiple planets, spaceship pursuits, and struggles with alien fauna. While Weinstein does not draw any great moral from the tale, he does nonetheless provide readers with an engaging adventure, one that is fresher for its scope and its concentration on a previously under-utilized character. ( )

Kirk, Spock and McCoy help a young monarch assume her throne. A good short read. ( )

A fairly forgettable, but competent and decently written, Star Trek novel in which our intrepid trio attempts to foil a Klingon-inspired civil war on an alien planet. The one factor of redeeming interest is a burgeoning romance developing between McCoy and the new princess they are protecting. ( )