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6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
A Star Trek Triangle, February 9, 2003
Triangle by Sondra Marshak and Myrna Culbreath (Star Trek #9, 1983)This marks the second Pocket-published Star Trek novel by the team of Marshak and Culbreath, their fourth fiction outing on the series overall. This book, like their others, is more psychological novel than science fiction. It is also, as far as I can determine, their last published work. The story proceeds from an idea thrown out by Gene Roddenberry (or perhaps Alan Dean Foster, whispered to have ghosted the book) in the novelization of the first movie, about a group of "New Humans," a humanistic group that is opposed to Starfleet purposes and seeks a higher plane of existence. In the book, Decker is a member of this group, and this is his motivation for joining with V'Ger, as opposed to love for Ilia. Marshak and Culbreath take that further, and posit the New Humans as a group mind, and also invent another group mind that opposes them, while both oppose Captain Kirk and the crew of the Enterprise. They also invent a new position of Federation Free Agent, something like the Federation's James Bond, 007 agents commissioned to act individually for the good of all. Despite this wide swath of new and potentially interesting plotlines, little is done with them. A good writer could have taken any of these setups and turned in an interesting story, but the authors are caught up in their usual alpha-male gobbledygook with Spock in the role of Superman and Kirk cast as the Lois Lane captain-in-distress. This time, Federation Free Agent Sola Thane falls in love with both of them, made more complex as Spock enters the Vulcan mating cycle of <i>pon far</i>, rendering him conveniently interested and available. This is one "triangle" as mentioned in the title. The other is the two unimind groups, fighting to take over Kirk, the greatest galactic symbol of "singletons," the individual minds. While the ideas are thick here, the book is packed mostly with long dialogues between characters reminiscent of bad comic books. In fact, much of Marshak and Culbreath's writing has the feel of a poorly-written comic book, with only a nice cover painting to provide good artwork. The idea of a powerful group mind is a good one, but the "group" minds here are actually dominated by powerful individuals, and not much here is actually "group" at all. Simply one mind dominating others, and somehow all apparently magically drawing superhuman strength from the group. A Federation secret (sorry, "free") agent is an interesting plotline, but nothing is done with it except to bring a woman into the story who outranks Kirk, and therefore one he cannot order around against her will. So, Kirk is placed in danger, the crew is prey for the two group minds, McCoy cannot detect the group mind influence, and Sola Thane must choose between Kirk and Spock, and whoever she does not choose will likely die. It is suspenseful, and there is a certain sense of foreboding here, but ultimately the lack of good writing skills causes this book to fail. Kirk and Spock are out of character, and the other regulars do not seem to suffer the same fate only because relatively little attention is paid to them. If you have read from the other three Marshak and Culbreath novels, and liked them, this book is very similar. But there is a reason this book is their last published work. Better writers were soon to be found to carry on the Star Trek series.
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by Sondra Marshak
by Sondra Marshak
by Della Van Hise
by Vonda Mcintyre
