Say hello to Marron Marvel, TDF’s new guest reviewer! We’re short on Star Trek love around here, and Marron’s going to pick up our slack. Here’s her first Star Trek novel review, and keep your eyes peeled for more! -Pamela
Star Trek: Troublesome Minds by Dave Galanter
Buy It Now: on Amazon (paperback
Description: First contact becomes an interstellar incident when the Starship Enterpriseâ„¢ responds to a distress call from an unknown ship and saves the life of a man left to die by his own people. Berlis, member of a telepathic species calling themselves the Isitri, claims not to know why those from his homeworld want him dead. Captain James T. Kirk wants to believe him, but the damage is done: the Enterprise can neither leave the stranger to die nor turn him over to those who would kill him.
Berlis seems harmless, but his people say he cannot live among them: his telepathy is so strong that their wills are subsumed to his. The same fear that compels the Isitri to seek the death of one of their own drives the neighboring Odib people toward genocide. For every time a “troublesome mind” dominates the Isitri, the Odib pay the price in their own blood.
With Spock becoming erratic under Berlis’s influence, and the Isitri begging Kirk to allow them to destroy the man who threatens their existence, matters take a disastrous turn when Berlis makes his way back to Isitra…and an entire world falls to his whims.
This review is based on a copy I bought myself.
Marron’s Review:
I grew up long after the original run of Star Trek was off the air; but I remember sitting down with my grandfather — the man who raised me — on Saturday afternoons, after the cartoons were done, and watching reruns of the original Star Trek. The USS Enterprise‘s adventures were cut short two years before the completion of their five year mission, but I loved every episode (some more than others, admittedly) and always wondered what other adventures Captain James T Kirk and his crew had that we didn’t get to see.
In Dave Galanter’s novel, Star Trek: Troublesome Minds, we get to see one of those lost adventures.
The Enterprise responds to a distress call from an unknown ship, and Captain Kirk gives the order to save the three people on the ship — despite warnings from another pair of starships that seem to have caused the damage to the first. The three aliens that are rescued are a part of a species called the Istri; they are a telepathic species that do not have vocal cords and can only communicate with other telepaths. Through the help of a “speaking” device on his wrist and the Enterprise‘s Universal Translator, the leader of the three, Berlis, tells Kirk that he isn’t certain why his people would want him dead.
Kirk is put into a tough position: he can’t, in good conscious, send Berlis to die — nor can he turn the man over to those that would kill him, not if what Berlis says is true. Kirk returns Berlis to his colony, on another planet in the system, and then goes to speak with the people of the main Istri world to find out what, exactly, is going on.
The Istri tell Kirk that Berlis is a “troublesome mind” — every once in a while, an Istri is born with telepathic powers so great that he (or she) unconsciously uses his mental abilities to usurp the free will of the people around him and force them to do whatever makes him happy. In the past, the Istri tell Kirk, there have been troublesome minds that have led to conflicts and war with a neighboring species, the Odib. In other cases, some were children when the troublesome mind took over, and only when the troublesome mind died years later did they regain their free will — only to find that half of their lives were a cloud of uncertainties to them, that they did not know who they were, were married to strangers, and so on.
Kirk feels responsible for the turmoil on Istri because of his involvement; if he hadn’t saved Berlis, the Istri might not be on the brink of war with the Odib. Meanwhile, Spock’s becomes increasingly erratic and emotional, leaving Kirk to wonder if the troubled mind, Berlis, is controlling his first officer.
The story is a really great one; I couldn’t set the book down from the moment that I picked it up and started reading it. Galanter’s descriptions and the story he weaves are well done. I especially liked his descriptions of the manual language (i.e. sign language) that the Istri used to communicate with non-telepaths. There was a lot of thought and care put into the story and the unique new race of the Istri, and it really shows.
Reading this book is like watching an episode of the original Star Trek, but without the “cheese” factor; all these years later, the special effects that we see on television when we watch the original Trek look pretty hokey — but since you’re reading a book instead of watching special effects on a TV show, it’s easier to imagine how sleek and futuristic the technology is within the Star Trek world. This novel has all of the drama and suspense of the television series, and the author has captured the personalities of the characters perfectly. The interaction between Kirk, Spock, and McCoy is just as one would expect.
There’s also a twist at the end that I certainly didn’t see coming. It’s something that’s surprising and thought-provoking and, like with many of the TV episodes, the novel leaves the reader thinking about what has happened and wondering what will happen next.
If you’re a fan of the original Star Trek series — or maybe if you like the characters thanks to watching the reboot movie by JJ Abrams — this is a great book to pick up. I highly recommend Star Trek: Troublesome Minds to any Star Trek fan.
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