3.5
Living Memory
ByPublisher Description
An all-new Star Trek movie-era adventure!
While attempting to settle in as commandant of Starfleet Academy, Admiral James T. Kirk must suddenly contend with the controversial, turbulent integration of an alien warrior caste into the student body—and quickly becomes embroiled in conflict when the Academy controversy escalates to murder. Meanwhile, Captain Spock of the USS Enterprise and Commander Pavel Chekov of the USS Reliant are investigating a series of powerful cosmic storms seemingly targeting Federation worlds—unstoppable outbursts emitting from the very fabric of space. Endeavoring to predict where the lethal storms will strike next, Spock and Chekov make the shocking discovery that the answer lies in Commander Nyota Uhura’s past—one that she no longer remembers….
™, ®, & © 2021 CBS Studios, Inc. STAR TREK and related marks and logos are trademarks of CBS Studios, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
While attempting to settle in as commandant of Starfleet Academy, Admiral James T. Kirk must suddenly contend with the controversial, turbulent integration of an alien warrior caste into the student body—and quickly becomes embroiled in conflict when the Academy controversy escalates to murder. Meanwhile, Captain Spock of the USS Enterprise and Commander Pavel Chekov of the USS Reliant are investigating a series of powerful cosmic storms seemingly targeting Federation worlds—unstoppable outbursts emitting from the very fabric of space. Endeavoring to predict where the lethal storms will strike next, Spock and Chekov make the shocking discovery that the answer lies in Commander Nyota Uhura’s past—one that she no longer remembers….
™, ®, & © 2021 CBS Studios, Inc. STAR TREK and related marks and logos are trademarks of CBS Studios, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
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Meet readers like you in the Fable For You feed, designed to build bookish communitiesLiving Memory Reviews
3.5
“When Starfleet begins analyzing a series of disruptive and potentially dangerous flares in space, Commander Pavel Chekov realizes there’s a pattern: these flares mostly in places visited by the Enterprise on its five-year mission, albiet in reverse order — and the one exception is a place visited by Uhura. As more flares happen, one in the middle of a city, a death toll begins and Starfleet fixes an accusatory gaze toward the former comms officer whose personal memories were erased by the NOMAD probe, who can recall nothing about her leaves from this time to contribute to the mystery or defend herself. But she’s not alone: the Enterprise crew, despite being on different ships and assignments, rally like the family they are. Admiral Kirk, meanwhile, has a bit of a problem, as a pilot program he endorsed to incorporate a group of young people bred for war into Starfleet (teaching them the ways of peace and Shakespeare-quoting) is causing some strife and a wee bit of murder — and worse, he and Bones are smitten with the same woman, a vocal opponent of the program. Oh, the drama.
Whenever I return to the original series, it tends to be for particular episodes — “Arena”, “Balance of Terror”, etc, and so I’d forgotten about the whole “Space probe tries to exterminate everyone on Enterprise” plot that also caused Uhura’s memories to be wiped…at least, until next week’s episode. Living Memory explains how Uhura bounced back so quickly, using one Federation member planet’s mind-structuring technology to restore her technical/explicit skills — but not her actual memories. Uhura and friends begin exploring Uhura’s past, talking to her family and friends from her Academy days to learn what project she might have been working on so devotedly, and this forces Uhura to face parts of her past she was previously willing to pretend didn’t exist. Although the Uhura A-plot is the novel’s strength and great attraction, the moral issues posed by the Warborne group were interesting, especially given that Bennett does not create simple antagonists or characters, but allows the argument to become truly complex and fascinating to the reader to consider.
Bennett is a Trek author who reliably delivers good reads, and this was another solid one. Motion Picture era books are relatively rare, so I was glad to dig into this one and see the Enterprise crew just as they were beginning careers apart from the salad days of their five-year mission.”
“The narrator was great for the audiobook but some of the dialogue felt unnatural and didn’t always fit the characters.”
About Christopher L. Bennett
Christopher L. Bennett is a lifelong resident of Cincinnati, Ohio, with bachelor’s degrees in physics and history from the University of Cincinnati. He has written such critically acclaimed Star Trek novels as Ex Machina, The Buried Age, the Titan novels Orion’s Hounds and Over a Torrent Sea, the two Department of Temporal Investigations novels Watching the Clock and Forgotten History, and the Enterprise novels Rise of the Federation: A Choice of Futures, Tower of Babel, Uncertain Logic, and Live By the Code, as well as shorter works including stories in the anniversary anthologies Constellations, The Sky’s the Limit, Prophecy and Change, and Distant Shores. Beyond Star Trek, he has penned the novels X-Men: Watchers on the Walls and Spider-Man: Drowned in Thunder. His original work includes the hard science fiction superhero novel Only Superhuman, as well as several novelettes in Analog and other science fiction magazines.
Other books by Christopher L. Bennett
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