by Dave Galanter

Gallery Books, out now

When the USS Discovery becomes lost in the mycelial network, they encounter someone who should not be there…

Do not be put off by a feeling in the first few chapters that author Dave Galanter hasn’t really been paying attention to Discovery, and that for some reason everyone involved in the approvals process has taken the week off. There are very deliberate reasons for things not lining up in the way that you expect… and they’re reasons that tie in with a key aspect of Discovery’s first season as well as aspects of the second.

The book, as the cover indicates, focuses on Stamets and Culber, and Galanter has clearly spent time not just reading the scripts but watching the performances of Anthony Rapp and Wilson Cruz, capturing a lot of their body language and inclination in his descriptions. This story doesn’t in any way negate what happens in the show but demonstrates that some things really do stretch across barriers that you wouldn’t expect to be there. That applies to the other crew members on Discovery – Galanter fleshes them out a great deal, and we get a chance to see a dynamic at work that is as effective as the one we’re used to seeing.

The book’s focus on the Culber/Stamets relationship moves across to a different sort of first contact situation (with a nice twist when the Prime Directive gets invoked) and Galanter balances the varying demands of his plot well.

Verdict: Holding a mirror up to the Discovery crew reveals different sides to them – an enjoyable Star Trek tale. 8/10

Paul Simpson

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