Black Fire by Sonni Cooper (Star Trek #8, 1983).

A rip-roaring adventure yarn that plays fast and loose with the science and sometimes with plausibility, it is nevertheless a lot of fun. It begins with an explosion that seriously damages the Enterprise as well as Captain Kirk and sends Spock spiraling into a course that leads him to mutiny and a life as the pirate Black Fire.  She introduces a alien race, the Tomarii, that prove to be a serious threat to the Federation, the Klingons, and the Romulans. The question is, can Kirk, with a new first officer and science officer, manage to stop Spock and defeat the Tomarii?

Author Sonni Cooper gets a glowing introduction from Theodore Sturgeon, award-winning science-fiction writer and scripter of the TV episode "Amok Time," which introduced the world to Vulcan mating habits as Mr. Spock went through pon far. He describes the many sides of Sonni Cooper, wife of a nuclear physicist, activist for Native Americans, publicist for William Shatner, part-time actress. He also compliments her ear for dialogue.

Cooper does write some good dialogue, although some falls flat, as one might expect from a first-time novelist. Sturgeon mentions a novel being submitted, an advance paid and notes for revision given, and seems to indicate that this novel was first submitted to Bantam during their tenure publishing Star Trek. This book reflects the rewritten version. No doubt Sturgeon also gave advice on the manuscript. There is mayhem aplenty, as the saucer section of the Enterprise is blown to bits in the first chapter. It provides some background for the refit seen in the first movie, possibly the second, as the change to new uniforms also apparently takes place during the time period of the novel while Kirk is convalescing.

Cooper introduces new characters including the warlike Tomarii race, Romulans, a couple of stock Klingons, and new officers on the Enterprise. The often breakneck pace at times slows to a crawl, as the author gets to the story she wants to tell, then moves on to another after that. In a sense, this is Star Trek as Raiders of the Lost Ark, but without the Ark, and with Spock as Indiana Jones.  However, Cooper should have made better use of a spouse as a scientist.

The home planet of the Tomarii, between a red giant and a white dwarf in a precarious orbit could be the home of a civilization after an upheaval in the solar system. But if there is no plant life, or precious little, how do the animals the Tomarii eat for meat subsist? Those animals have to eat something.  Spock goes without food, since there is only meat to eat, but the food chain seems to stop there. There must have been some plant life for the chain to continue. And how do the Tomarii learn of the Federation, the Klingons and the Romulans enough to plant spies on their crews, before any of those advanced races have learned about them? When the story slows down these plot holes may start to bother you.

But for all that it is a lot of fun. Just don't think too much while you read it.