By David Mack from a story by Dayton Ward, James Swallow and David Mack

Gallery Books, out now

The last stand to ensure the future…

I make no apologies for this being a personal review – if you simply want the objective version of it, then all you need to know is that Mack, in conjunction with Ward and Swallow, has given these characters, with whom we’ve spent so much time both on screen and in print form, a conclusion that remains true to them all, in their individual ways, as well as the ethos of the Star Trek universe. And it doesn’t end on a hopeless note.

Midway through reading this book I suffered a serious heart attack, and things were touch and go. I mention this for context not sympathy: when I started reading the trilogy, I had experience of grief, as anyone approaching their seventh decade will, but not (for a very long time) that feeling that it was all about to be taken from me. And although Mack counselled me that this might not be the best of books to be reading in those circumstances, it was, because the questions that I was suddenly living with were the ones on a fundamental level that he put his characters through. The importance of family and faith; the regrets and the pride, the attempts to bargain (and was ever anything really as futile?). The inhabitants of the late 24th century are tested in this book in ways that they haven’t before – facing death in a way that even the Kobayashi Maru could not create.

There are so many moments scattered through here (and the two previous novels) that feel defining for these characters. You don’t need to have followed all of the books over the last 20 years to make sense of it – all necessary context is provided – but there is never the sense that what’s come before is somehow negated. If anything it’s validated – yes, we now know it’s a different timeline in subtle ways, but it all goes back to the same source. (And the epilogue is a masterstroke, particularly its incorporation of a certain another text.)

Verdict: An excellent capstone to 20 years of serialised storytelling. 10/10

Paul Simpson