Quite possibly the worst Trek novel I've read. Okay, many of these aren't exactly high art, but this one is just, simply, _bad_. The characterizations are entirely off (this book has the smiling-est Vulcans since Sybok) and everything is a jumbled mess of cliches…it reads much more like a half-rate generic space adventure that got pulled out of a dusty file cabinet and sloppily rewritten just enough to slap the Star Trek logo on the front. I thought Pocket books had some form of editorial oversight to keep their books from going too far out of bounds; this one must have slipped through the cracks. It bills itself as a sequel to STVI, but it's no more a sequel than any other Trek novel that comes chronologically after that film, just has occasional brief mentions of one thing or another that happened in that film. The author was apparently one of the co-writers for STVI, but I find it hard to believe he had that much to do with it, given how little he obviously actually knew about the property. And I have to wonder if Pocket knew they were dumping trash on the market, as the primary antagonist alien species are Beta Prometheans in the book, but Thraxians on the back cover blurb. Really, it's just embarrassing.