I have a sneaking suspicion that he'll turn up in one of the subsequent books of this little mini-series, but for this one Redbay might as well have been called Redshirt, because his role was blindingly clear.

I know that, due to desperate reliance on the reset button, Trek rarely, if ever, loses one of its main characters, and while large parts of me are glad for that, it does tend to undermine stories like this, which aim for epic but have their sense of threat undercut because everyone we care about is going to survive no matter what. Because of this, for me, the stories Trek does best are the ones about more than just battles. The Soldiers of Fear has some interesting things to say about fear, but at bottom this is a book about a big fight where victory is won through military force alone. There's some lip service giving to the idea of reaching out to the other and attempting negotiation with them, but First Strike did that much better. This is still an enjoyable read, however, and I zipped through it easily enough. The pacing, especially, worked well for me - part of the reason I never really warm to fight scenes is because I often find them an elongated drag, and that didn't happen here. Much more focus was given to the preparation for the fight, which is more interesting to me and has more opportunity for character work, as opposed to explosion.