
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
The Federation is going to have trade negotiations with Chionians scheduled to be on board the Enterprise, however it turns out the Chionians have internal divisions that will make things difficult not only for negotiations but for First Officer Una Chin-Riley. Asylum by Una McCormack is the second book featuring the characters from Star Trek: Strange New Worlds in the novelizations surrounding one of the latest Star Trek television series.
Taking place after the events the second season episode, “Ad Astra per Aspera”—and maybe “Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow” as well—the book follows Lt. Commander “Number One” Una Chin-Riley in present-day and in her senior year at the academy, the Chionian ambassador Linchar, and two Euxhana in flashbacks. The story is basic for the franchise with the Federation having negotiations with what turns out to be the dominate ethnicity of a planet that is suppressing the minority’s cultural heritage and one of the main characters has interacted with said minority in their past, then said minority appears to be doing things to disrupt the talks. Overall, it was well written, adds depth to several of the main characters of the series—Number One, Christopher Pike, and Pelia—while also creating some good secondary characters. However there were some pet peeves I couldn’t get over, the first was Number One as a senior at the Academy making a commitment to help support a refugee family only to back out when it hurts her studies even though she has a full schedule and already doing extracurricular activities when there was no way a senior about to graduate and officially join Starfleet would have made this mistake at this point in their life. The second was inferring that Pike and tangentially Number One inspired Pelia to create the Kobayashi Maru test at the Academy, I mean why? Not everything in the lore needs to be explained as having been created by events in a prequel or by a character in said prequel, sometimes it can be created by a nobody and never revealed as to the reason. While those two things annoyed me, it didn’t take away from my enjoyment of the book so if you’re a fan of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds and want to get into the novelizations this is recommended.
Asylum is a good example of media tie-in novels, Una McCormack nails the present-day voices of the characters, and the overall story reads like a good episode.
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