Book Review: Star Trek: Typhon Pact: Seize the Fire

Star Trek: Typhon Pact: Seize the Fire by Michael A. Martin

Series: Yes, Typhon Pact book 2
Genre(s): Sci-fi
Publisher: Pocket Books
Available Formats: Paperback, eBook
Description: As the U.S.S. Titan embarks upon a search for this potent technology in the hope of using it to heal the wounds the Federation sustained during the recent Borg crisis, Captain Riker must balance his responsibility for his crew’s safety against the welfare of the Hranrarii and his duty to the Prime Directive.

This review is based on a book I purchased.

Marron’s Review:

The second book in the Star Trek: Typhon Pact series may be the most complicated of the four books in the series, but it is also likely the best executed. Seize the Fire, by Michael A. Martin, is a happy middle ground between Zero Sum and Rough Beasts of Empire, with enough action to keep things moving at a steady pace and not too much focus on diplomacy and politics to slow it down.

Seize the Fire centers around the crew of the USS Titan, led by Captain William Riker, as they continue their ongoing mission of deep-space exploration. It also, as with the first and third books in the series, focuses on just one of the Typhon Pact species: this time, the Gorn. As the book opens, the Gorn Hegemony suffers an ecological disaster; violent eruptions from the star that their warrior-caste hatchery world circles causes the total annihilation of the planet, save for a few warrior-caste survivors that are sick with radiation poisoning and have likely gone insane from the same. The survivors mutiny on the starship that saves them after finding out that they are to be killed because the damage from the radiation has “tainted” them, and decide to search for a new planet to create a warrior-caste hatchery — for a warrior caste in their own delusional image.

Meanwhile, Titan discovers an unusual planet that leads them to believe that some kind of terraforming device has been used to create an artificial ecosystem on the planet. They also find debris of what might have been an ancient terraforming device and follow the clues, so to speak, until they come to a planet in a nearby sector called Hranrar — where they run into a small group of Gorn Hegemony survey vessels who are out looking for a suitable world to create a new warrior-caste hatchery and have decided that Hranrar is the perfect place to create said hatchery.

The only problem is that Hranrar is already populated by the pacifist race, the Hranrarii. As we all know from Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, using a terraforming device on an already-thriving planet kills everything on it in order to create the new ecosystem. Riker can’t just sit by and allow the annihilation of an entire civilization, but although the Hranrarii are technologically advanced, they aren’t a society with warp capabilities, which makes them ineligible for first contact rights and “protected” by the Prime Directive, which forbids contact with such species. Without the ability to warn the Hranrarii, Riker is outgunned and faces the dilemma of finding a way to stop the Gorn without getting everyone on Titan killed, or watch helplessly as the Gorn commit genocide.

The story has many other factors in play, and unlike the other books, there are a lot more things going on. Despite the busyness of the book, Michael A. Martin manages to tell a good story. The book itself is a little over 500 pages, but it needs all of that room because there are, really, three subplots to the book instead of the standard two. In previous Titan books, the diversity of the crew of the Titan has been emphasized quite a bit, because less than half the crew is human, unlike many of the other Starfleet crews we’re familiar with. However, in the case of Seize the Fire, this emphasis on diversity really works well and comes into play in a way that isn’t as over-played as it is in previous Titan novels.

Overall, the characterization was well done and the imagery and description Martin uses is superb. The book is, by far, the best book in the series and will definitely be a pleasure for any Star Trek and/or Titan fans to read.