Renegade by Gene DeWeese (Star Trek #55, June 1991).

After one hundred years as a colony, Chrellkan III is scheduled for independence from its mother world and neighbor, Chrellkan IV. But violence has erupted between the formerly peaceful worlds, and the Enterprise is dispatched to mediate the disputes. The Premier of the home world is full of wild accusations, as well as tape of atrocities, so Spock and McCoy are sent to beam down and investigate. Shortly after they arrive, hostilities break out, and they are reported killed. As violence escalates, and ship systems behave oddly, Kirk must find out the truth without his two most trusted advisors.

DeWeese does much better in his third original series novel, although the plot is still contrived. The story flows more smoothly, and the characters are generally quite believable. Lt. Finney is brought back from a TV episode to once again play a role, and the plot is similar to that show. But there is the new spin of Klingon involvement.

The novel plays like a decent episode of the television program. Kirk is the center of things on the bridge, and must depend on Scotty with Spock and McCoy absent. Spock and McCoy are on their own on the planet, and must find their own way out of the situation without the ship's resources. The whole thing builds to a solid climax, even if the ending is pretty easy to see.

This is also the final Original Series book to date by DeWeese. A book that combines original and Next Generation that he wrote in 2000-01 was just published in early 2005 as "Engines of Destiny." DeWeese, a former electronics engineer who once worked for NASA, is still writing.

A Flag Full of Stars by Brad Ferguson (Star Trek #54, April 1991).

In the time between the original TV series and the first Star Trek movie, Captain Kirk has been promoted to Admiral, and has moved from being a StarFleet troubleshooter to Chief of Operations, overseeing starship refits. The Enterprise is being readied for the command of new captain and Kirk protege' Will Decker. But an encounter with a Klingon scientist teaching on Earth causes Kirk to become embroiled in a sea of espionage and an arms race between the Federation and the Klingon Empire.

This was originally scheduled as a hardcover, second in a trilogy with the overarching title "The Lost Years" and this book was to follow J.M. Dillard's "The Lost Years" as the second book in the series. But a change in editors happened between that book and this, and the planned hardcover became subject to rewrites, and was issued as this paperback.

Ferguson has said that some of the fault was his, as he became ill and was late delivering the manuscript, and also that rewrites demanded cut the soul out of the book. Finally, Dillard did a rewrite, and the result was something of a pastiche. Ferguson has posted the manuscript he wrote in the Internet, but I could not find a current copy posted.

The book as printed is not very good. I cannot judge, having not seen Ferguson's manuscript, how much damage was done by the changes and what was present beforehand. The plot does not get going until 100 pages into the book, which wouldn't be so bad if this were a 400-page hardcover but is a bit late for a 250-page paperback. The villains of the piece, such as they are, are not very effective. The two Klingons on assignment on Earth as spies to observe the Klingon scholar G'dath are ruthless and brutal, but not terribly effective.

While having a positive Klingon character in G'dath was a nice change, his scenes were not written particularly well. His universe-changing invention was also not well thought out, and was eliminated pretty cheaply. Playing the Organian card gets old. And while the use of twice-seen character Kevin Riley as Kirk's chief of staff is a good touch, his character is too much of a cipher in both this novel and the previous one in this series. Even Kirk is pretty uninteresting.

There's just not much here to recommend this book. Characterizations were not well done; the writing, perhaps owing to the combining of two different styles, is unsatisfying. The plot is uninvolving. This book falls short in every area. And if you like the original crew, only Kirk gets more than a cameo appearence, and in truth G'dath and not Kirk is the central character. Spock appears not at all, and is merely mentioned in passing. He gets overused, but there is little else here.

Give this one a pass, unless you are a completist.