The Lost Years by J.M. Dillard (hardcover #2, 1989, reprinted in paperback in October 1990).

The five year mission is over and the starship Enterprise returns to Earth. It all seems anticlimatic to the command crew, as in "now what?" Captain Kirk wants another ship while he waits for the Enterprise refit, Spock wants to be Kirk's first officer, and McCoy wants to return to his beloved Natira and catalog the Fabrini medical knowledge, seen in "For the World is Hollow and I Have Touched the Sky" (original series episode).

Nobody gets quite what they want. Kirk is promoted to admiral, with the promise that he will be a travelling troubleshooter, not a deskbound paper-pusher. Spock, denied service with his closest friend, returns to Vulcan. And McCoy finds his beloved has wed another. Again the threesome is faced with the question, "Now what?"

The "what" is a circumstance that brings them together in the swirling Romulan plot on the planet Djana, and a Vulcan's attempt to take the katra of a Vulcan "mind-master" to the Romulan homeworld to reteach them the old mind powers of the ancient Vulcans. Uhura and Sarek are kidnapped, Kevin Riley becomes Kirk's aide, Spock becomes engaged again, and McCoy also finds a "girlfriend." The threads all come together at the end for a riveting conclusion.

This was to be the first book of an ambitious project at Pocket Books: a three-book hardcover series detailing the "Lost Years," the years between the end of the original five-year mission and the events of Star Trek: The Motion Picture, the first movie. Dillard's book was to be followed a few months later by Brad Ferguson's "A Flag Full of Stars," and then Irene Kress' "The War Virus." Didn't happen.

This book, of course, was published. Ferguson's manuscript was rewritten by at least one and probably several other writers, and eventually published as a paperback. Ferguson estimates the book, listing him as author, is about 7% his. It is said that Dillard did much of the rewrite. Kress' book never appeared. She has no Star Trek novels published, at least under that name. Two other titles on the same theme, "Traitor Winds" (by L.A. Graf) and "Recovery" (by Dillard) were later published.

This book gets off to a very slow start, but the plot eventually gets rolling and becomes quite interesting. You have to be patient to get to that point, though. Dillard is not a writer who will wow you with her wordsmithing, or impress you with characterization. Her strength is plotting. The storyline is good, if you can get through the first 1/3 of the book.

While this book (and the ones that followed) were supposed to feature the in-between story, it's really about Kirk, Spock and McCoy. Uhura is just here to advance the plot, and Scotty, Sulu and Chekov are mentioned only in passing. It may be that their stories were planned for the other books, but they appear here only briefly.

The characterizations are OK, nothing off-note here, but you won't really get any insights into the characters. It's more of the same, the Big Three being put through there paces. Dillard's pet security crew, Thomson, Sanger and the gang, appear here but again mostly just show their incompetence. They get promotions too, but if someone else showed this level of ineptitude StarFleet would bounce them. Of course, it's important to get the plot moving.

All in all, it's a good book. A bit too long, as the first 100 pages could have been tightened to 50-60 without sacrificing anything, but having the room of a hardcover encourages such laziness. The middle and end are well done.

Not a bad entry in the Star Trek book universe, although we've seen better.