The Disinherited - Uhura's Girlboss Era

 

Premise

    We have two storylines happening here. The first, is that Uhura takes leave to work on a different ship - temporarily of course. On the Lexington she uses her training in linguistics to work with the Rithrim, a species with a unique, visible, aspect of their language. Meanwhile, back on the Enterprise Kirk must deal with a troubling issue - a group of very powerful raiders are targeting Federation colonies. As the mystery enfolds the storylines meet, and personally, I found it all very satisfying...

Cast of Characters

    This was mostly a Kirk and Uhura moment, as evidenced by their beautiful visages gracing my copy of the novel. Chekov also has his moments. In the storyline, the emphasize how this mission is one of his firsts. He has some faux-pas's, gets yelled at by Kirk, and learns how to be a better shipmate. Personally, I love when there is a lot of characters in one of the books, but I think that in this case, the way that the authors concentrated on just a select few, really helped to maintain focus and kept the plot going along at a nice pace. A quick on the authors: there's literally three of them. Michal Jan Friedman of course has written a ton of Trek novels, and so has Peter David. I haven't seen Robert Greenberger's name on one before, but I think they really were able to balance writing this really well. Sometimes when there's this many contributors it can easily become muddled, and ideas mix poorly, but I think in this case everyone worked in balance with each other. 

The Only Thing Wrong With Having Three Authors

    Listen, as I will talk about later in my final thoughts section, I think that this novel is truly one of the most perfect, unoffensive, Trek novels that one could ask for. Personally though, I love (and sometimes prefer) a crazy ass Trek moment. While it did not deliver on that, probably because we had three A-game Trek authors checking and re-checking work, it is legitimately an interesting read. I think it's more of a mystery than some novels. Not really anything too deep into characters or anything really philosophical. The aliens feel to me as something out of a Star Wars B-novel. They have ancient secrets and weird orders, and their birthing facility next to the volcano reminded me of the giraffe cloning aliens from Revenge of the Sith. 

Any Notable Quotations?

    Why yes, yes there are. While I respect their dedicated to die on the hill of straight-man Kirk, I'm not loving how this quote sounds, "There was a distinctive scent of perfume, and the slight tinkling of that particular pair of large earrings that his communications officer occasionally favored. Kirk usually had to look up to confirm the identity of a male who entered his cabin, but for females he had almost a sixth sense" (16). I mean okay Kirk, sniff that perfume, make a mental note. I'm not judging him, just judging Peter, Michael, and Robert. Also I'd check out page 39, it has a moment straight out a cute Tumblr post with McCoy being fed UP. 

My King Baila

    Baila is the communications officer aboard the Lexington. At first he is super jealous that Uhura is stealing his thunder, and is rude and snooty to her. The captain of the Lexington laments to Uhura about Baila's poor performances as of late. He used to be a stellar officer, but right now he seems like he doesn't care. Because Uhura is genuinely a kind soul, she takes the time to get to know him, and reaches out to him. It turns out that Baila has a lot of trauma to get over. His parents did not want his to join Starfleet, and he still carries that with him. As time-progressed he lost some of his passion for working on the ship. Luckily, he finds a place working with the Rithrim when Uhura decides to return to the Enterprise. I loved getting to know him, I loved his little redemption, and I loved that Uhura helped to bring him out of burn-out, with absolutely no romantic connotations. He was a complex character with deep emotional issues, and maybe it's the Covid trauma, but I really loved how he overcame his burn-out and found a renewed passion in his work. Anyways, read this book just for him <3

Final Thoughts

    While I have many Trek tastes, and usually I prefer crazy Trek books with weird character moments and insane alien species there was something about this one. It was so well-written, every character felt grounded in the canon (even though Spock was barely in it). The three writers created a cohesive narrative with compelling side-characters and themes. As the title suggests, the themes of this book deal heavily with not feeling as though you belong. Baila, is our "human" connection to this theme, as he is disowned by his parents for joining Starfleet. He parallels the alien species and raiders that we meet, and overall I just really recommend this novel. Not for craziness exactly, but instead as a perfect adventure that has complex emotional beats.