Captain Garrett of the Enterprise-C on the cover? Great! A Cardassian image also on the cover? This is going to be epic! Or is it?
Star Trek: The Lost Era, 2336: Well of Souls
Author: Ilsa J. Bick
Pages: 480
Format: eBook
Published: October 14, 2003
Publisher: Pocket Books
View on Goodreads
Date Completed: June 25, 2024
My rating: 
Thoughts
These “Lost Era” novels are meant to bridge the gap between Captain James T. Kirk’s apparent death on the Enterprise-B during the events of the film Star Trek Generations and the first episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation.
This particular book has Captain Rachel Garrett on the cover and we start almost immediately with her. Right away we find out she’s broken and imperfect. She recently lost her XO, who she also had a thing with. And she receives a call from her ex-husband who reams her for missing their son’s birthday. Another in a seemingly long string of let downs. And then we don’t see her again really until the second half of the book. And overall, her character is not super likable. And she’s kind of mean to her people. Not really what you want from an Enterprise captain. And not enough of her to justify being on the cover. Although, who else could they really put on the cover?
We get a lot of other characters throughout this book. There’s the enigmatic Halak whose storyline was probably my favorite. I loved the mystery and intrigue around him. And the trials and hearings. This could have been a really good Grisham-esque Star Trek book!
We also get to know Garrett’s ex-husband, Ven Kaldarren, and their son, Jase. Kaldarren is a Betazoid (full telepath) and Jase is young enough that he doesn’t quite know his own potential yet. But we get hints that he’s an empath like Deanna Troy, but he might have more telepathic abilities than her. Kaldarren is an archaeologist and we find that he’s working with/for the Qatala, a crime syndicate similar to the Orions.
We also get Tyvan, the ship’s psychiatrist and an El Aurian (like Guinan), who works a lot with Bat-Levi and her struggles with disfigurement, guilt, and trust in herself. The author of the book is a child psychiatrist, so Tyvan was written really well (so was 12-year-old Jase for that matter).
The aptly-named Dr. Stern is like a stand in for McCoy. Or even a precursor to Dr. Pulaski. She was fun, but it was a little much at times. And a little too much like McCoy.
The only other character from “Yesterday’s Enterprise” that we get here is Ensign (future Lieutenant) Castillo. He’s more of a side character here and I really wish he had been given more to do. He almost seemed kind of shoved into the story as an afterthought.
There are so many subplots in this book. But the one thing this novel does really well is tie them all together by the end. I suppose that’s except for Bat-Levi and hers is more of a B-story plot. But she’s got a nice full story too. At any rate, as I was reading I could see where all the stories were going and how they would likely tie together.
My frustrations really stem from the fact that the Enterprise-C has really little to do in this story. I was really hoping for a really good story set on the ship like you’d see on Star Trek or Star Trek: The Next Generation. Also, the whole Hebitian/Cardassian story would have been better for a different crew. It really was inconsequential to the story as a whole and could have been any alien race.
In fact, I would have preferred to see something with the Romulans or Klingons. I know we get those races a lot throughout the various series. But from the episode “Yesterday’s Enterprise” we know that the Enterprise-C was destroyed defending a Klingon colony (Narendra III) from the Romulans. The destruction of the Enterprise is what helped solidify the Klingons becoming allies of the Federation. If this book had some kind of conflict with the Klingons, it could have set the stage for the events at Narendra III.
If I’m being honest, my rating of 3 out of 5 stars is a bit high. The more I think about it, the more I want to bump it down to a 2.5 or even a 2. But there were enough good story elements for me to chew on. I just wish we’d gotten something a little different.
