I didn't finish reading this book, so perhaps I shouldn't review it. I guess I am anyway, though, seeing as I've gone this far what with the cover image and the introduction and the hey, hey, hey, this underwhelms me?
Yep, that's my opinion of this collection of short stories; there are a few gems in there, but they're few, far between, and sandwiched between a whole lot of meh.
Here's the list of the stories I felt were the best:
"A Time to Mourn, A Time to Dance: Oola's Tale" by Kathy Tyers
"And Then There Were Some: The Gamorrean Guard's Tale" by William F. Wu (My enjoyment from this story is primarily derived from the morbid absurdity of a retarded Gamorrean carrying a rotting corpse it doesn't realize is dead around with it as it tries to solve a murder mystery, though, so it's definitely not a story for everyone.)
"Old Friends: Ephant Mon's Tale" by Kenneth C. Flint
"A Barve Like That: The Tale of Boba Fett" by J. D. Montgomery
This is my first Star Trek novel. Unfortunately, I didn't like it; to be brutally blunt, I thought it sucked. And that's sad, because it started off with a lot of promise
In the first chapter, Kirk, Scotty, and McCoy have a discussion on the nature of transportation and what happens to the soul when a person is dematerialized and reconstituted during beaming. This immediately caught my interest and drew me into the story; as far as I know, the moral and metaphysical quandaries behind the transporter technology have never been directly addressed in any of the films or series', so I was interested in seeing how the author would tackle those questions following Spock's accidental duplication following an experiment with faster-than-light, interstellar beaming.
From there on out, though, the book just descends into a tedious quagmire involving some impending war with the Klingons, the disappearance of the Organians, Spock One and Spock Two hating one another, and the rest of the crew trying to find out which is the duplicate so that they can kill him (Wow, that really sounds in character for Kirk & co, doesn't it?)
In the end, it turns out the duplicate Spock is evil (because he's a reversed mirror image of Spock, physically as well as morally, ya know), some boring reality-warping bullshit happens on Organia, duplicate Spock dies (presumably), and then I quit reading the damn book because it was a complete waste of time and I wasn't going to waste the rest of it reading the rest of it.
I've begun reading My Enemy, My Ally by Diane Duane. I've heard a lot of good things about her Trek novels, so I'm hoping this'll be a whole lot better than the floundered disaster Spock Must Die! was.
It's funny; the more I like a thing (a book, movie, etc.), the less I have to say about it.
I guess I'll just say this: I'm definitely going to read the next book in the trilogy.