Space

Josepha Sherman and Susan Shwartz's Vulcan's Heart follows Spock on an early mission to explore the possibility of reuniting Vulcans with their Romulan "cousins." Sherman and Shwartz draw upon a wide range of background material, including the Romulan commander from The Original Series episode, "The Enterprise Incident," Jean-Luc Picard's meeting with Sarek from The Next Generation episode "Sarek," the Enterprise-C's role at Narenda III and the fate of Tasha Yar from the alternate timeline as covered in "Yesterday's Enterprise" and "Redemption II," and Spock's relationship with the Romulan Senator Pardek in "Unification." Additionally, Sherman and Shwartz include references to their previous novel, Vulcan's Forge. Their story effortlessly links these pieces of background information from the various Next Generation episodes to create a novel true to the characters and interesting for its examination of Vulcan and Romulan culture. The authors manage to create suspense despite the fact that fans of the franchise know the fates of many of the characters in advance. Nor do they waste cameos; instead, they demonstrate an almost encyclopedic knowledge of background so that it makes sense for characters to appear where they do in the narrative. While the canonical nature of many Star Trek books is often in doubt, this ranks among the best for the authors' story and their use of the television and film material. ( )

I absolutely adore this book. It is exciting and engaging, and the romantic struggle between Spock and Saavik makes me positively giddy. ( )

http://eclecticlibrarian.net/blog/2009/01/2009books1-6/ ( )

A sequel of sorts to the Star Trek novel, "Vulcan's Forge", in which Spock journeys to the Romulan Empire in response to a call from the Romulan subcommander from "The Enterprise Incident", followed by his fiancee Saavik and a young Captain Picard. Good story about Romulan honor, betrayal and intrigue, but the really good stuff is the interplay between Spock and Charvanek, whom he once tricked out of the Romulan cloaking device. Equally compelling is the relationship between Spock and Saavik, and what happens when "Pon Faar" overtakes them both while on opposite sides of the Neutral Zone. A well-conceived novel that brings together all the intrigues hinted at from the first time the Romulans appeared on the TV series. ( )