Completely goofy: a fiction bomb goes off at a Shatner convention, bringing every version of Shatner ever (from Kirk to Denny Crane to his Priceline shuckster to TJ Hooker and more…) into a battle royale to the death. Not exactly High Art, but definitely entertaining.

It's rare for Trek fluff to annoy me enough to drop a star (I never expect these to be Great Literature, after all), but this one managed it. Hints of interesting ideas scattered throughout (such as the conflict between the Federations post-Khan "no genetic manipulation EVAR" mindset and a society where genetic manipulation for particular environments is commonplace), but marred with bad characterizations and characters both.

(Minor spoilers follow.)

One of the two primary antagonists is a high-level Federation administrator in charge of enforcing Prime Directive regulations, and simultaneously horribly xenophobic. While the book tries to explain it away

Spoiler

(clumsily, in a few short sentences at the end) through nepotism and favoritism

, it was too unrealistic that such a person could have been appointed to that position (let alone that

Spoiler

Kirk would see her as a romantic interest immediately after she verbally abuses his bridge crew

). Definitely one of the least impressive Trek novels I've read.

The first book was on the lower end of three stars, this one fell apart. Clumsy, unconvincing characterizations, and with an ending that didn't really end, just…stopped. Hopefully the rest of the books in this series of nine improve.