A low-key sequel to Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country and told in a series of flashback starring Admiral Uhura, Lieutenant Benjamin Sisko, Lieutenant Tuvok, and Dr. Selar.
You had me at “a low-key sequel to Star Trek VI.”
Star Trek: The Lost Era, 2360: Catalyst of Sorrows
Author: Margaret Wander Bonanno
Pages: 352
Format: Mass Market Paperback
Published: December 2, 2003
Publisher: Pocket Books
View on Goodreads
Date Completed: September 17, 2024
My rating: 
Thoughts
This was the last book in the original run under the “The Lost Era” banner in 2003. It takes place during a time where not a lot else was going on. And the author took the assignment and ran with it.
We start the book with Admiral Nyota Uhura, head of Starfleet Intelligence. I felt the use of her in this role was really well done and a great extension of her character’s experience in communications. By the second half of the book she’s more of an ancillary character, but when she was on the page she shined. I really enjoyed her parts of the book.
During the course of the first part of the book, she’s putting together an investigative team to look into this medical mystery that’s cropped up. She’s got Sisko, Tuvok, Selar (DS9, Voyager, and TNG, respectively) as well as appearances from Doctors McCoy and Crusher! Hell, we even get future Senator Cretak (DS9) and Admiral Tal (formerly a subcommander in the TOS episode “The Enterprise Incident”). And no book set before the time of Jadzia Dax would be complete without some involvement of Curzon Dax. That old rascal…
The overall medical mystery that they’re working on in this story is pretty well done. Better than others. Maybe not as good as the best. But it’s good. And really, what I enjoyed was less about the medical mystery and more about the interactions between these characters, which the author did very much to my liking.
The story is told somewhat non-linearly. But it’s really through flashbacks, giving the reader context to the main story throughout. This was a big effort by the author to show and not tell. It got a little confusing from time to time as there were some flashbacks within flashbacks. So it was a bit of a mind warp sometimes. But overall it felt pretty effective for this story so as not to give away too much of the mystery too early.
Overall, this was a great Star Trek story and I gave it 5 out of 5 stars (although on a scale of 10 it would probably be a 9). It was just a good old-fashioned Star Trek story that happened to fit into the Lost Era timeframe.
