Review of "Star Trek: The Great Starship Race," by Diane Carey

 Review of

Star Trek: The Great Starship Race, by Diane Carey, ISBN 0671872508

Four out of five stars

Great power conflict over new Federation entry

 After centuries of hoping that they were not alone in the universe, yet almost reaching the conclusion they were, the Rey were contacted by the Federation. Overjoyed to learn that there were many intelligent species in the universe, the extremely emotional Rey welcomed the contact and applied to join the Federation.

 To celebrate the event, the Rey sponsored a race between warp driven ships of various types. Rules were put in place to level the playing field and the racecourse was marked out by beacons that required complex analysis in order to avoid going wildly off course. There is some preliminary trash talking between Captain Kirk representing the Federation and some of the other captains. In typical Kirk style there is a specific interchange between Kirk and a woman from his past.

 The race is about to begin when a Romulan warship suddenly appears and asks to join. Kirk is uncertain, but the Rey insist that the race must be open to all who want to participate. As Kirk and his shipmates believe, the Romulan captain has an ulterior motive. The Rey are very telepathic and project their emotions onto other intelligent creatures. While it has a strong effect on humans, it is devastating to Romulans and almost crippling to Vulcans.

 The captain of the Romulan ship has experienced the power of the Rey to disable Romulans and his goal is to wipe them out. His method is to ignite a massive fusion bomb deep inside the Rey home world that would destroy the planet. With reason to believe that the Federation would use the Rey to overpower the Romulan Empire, the captain believes he is justified in his planned actions. He also must act independently so that the Romulan leadership can deny foreknowledge of his actions.

 The story is a good example of the heroism and adaptiveness of the leaders of the Enterprise. Once the Rey on the Enterprise reveal their power to influence others, they understand the Romulan motives. In a pleasant reference to an episode of the original series, Dr. McCoy comes up with a method to damper down the Rey influence to manageable levels. In the episode, “The Tholian Web” the space the Enterprise is in causes them to go mad. McCoy uses a Klingon nerve agent to deaden the human emotional reaction so that they can function.

 Based on traditional aspects of great power rivalry, this book is well worth reading as it combines the resourceful of Kirk, Spock and McCoy with elements of what is good old fashioned competition and trash talking between confident humans.

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