Dreadnought! by Diane Carey (Star Trek #29, 1986)

Fresh out of the Academy, Lt. Piper is assigned to the Enterprise just as a call comes...the Federation's new secret weapon, a super-powerful starship designated a dreadnought has been stolen. In addition, the thieves have designated that Piper must be on the team that intercepts them. Piper is confined to her quarters, but promptly escapes and heads with her Vulcan friend Sarda over to greet the other ship. They are intercepted by a Federation team headed by Vice-Admiral Rittenhouse. Rittenhouse has been the driving force at StarFleet behind the creation and building of the new ship. With his three hand-picked starship captains backing him up, Rittenhouse resolves to retake the dreadnought, whether its renegade crew is dead or alive. Both Piper and Kirk must stretch their limits to preserve the peace.

This book can be seen as the ultimate Star Trek "Mary Sue" novel, as Carey makes little effort to conceal that Piper is a version of herself. The cover picture with Sarda and Kirk even looks like Carey. In the article reference in the previous post, the author points out some of the characteristics of the "Mary Sue" story shown here, such as Piper being out of uniform (and in a form-fitting black jumpsuit) for the entire novel until the end when she receives "the second-highest honor in the Federation" and a promotion to Lieutenant Commander, for a young officer days out of StarFleet Academy! There are a lot of credibility-stretching moments like that.

For someone supposedly considered top officer material, Piper exhibits none of the characteristics of leadership, except perhaps for the ability to look smart because other characters in the story are acting dumb. Piper comes up with "brilliant" strategy in two instances that is patently ludicrous. Once, she escapes from her confinement to quarters by wielding a curling iron, er, "curling implement," and later she leads her three partners-in-infamy in a bunny hop to distract some security guards. If that actually fooled any guards, they should be drummed out of the service immediately.

The plot concerns a group of malcontents at StarFleet, a plot that always falls flat because it goes against the way Gene Roddenberry's future universe was set up. People in the future are supposed to be better, they are supposed to get along with each other, and they are interested in things besides money and power, at least in the Federation. A mutinous faction always looks incongruous against this backdrop. When the "Next Generation" series tried such a plot in the first season, with an alien infiltration of StarFleet Command, it fell to Earth with a thud. The story obviously left room for a sequel, but wisely one was never filmed. So this story had one strike against it from the beginning.

Carey would write another novel in the series in just two more installments, a sequel to this story. She went on to become the most prolific Star Trek novelist to date, with dozens of novels to her credit. Most of them are far better than this first effort. Carey is also a prolific writer of other stories, including romance novels.

I can't recommend this novel. Read only if you are desperate. There is a seed of good writing here, and you can see the potential. But the payoff is slim in this book.