REVIEW: The First Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Novel

The cover art for STAR TREK: STRANGE NEW WORLDS: THE HIGH COUNTRY by John Jackson Miller. Image: Gallery Books.

FEBRUARY 13, 2023 - First, I would like to thank Gallery Books for providing me with a review copy of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds: The High Country by John Jackson Miller. Second, the opinions expressed in this review are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Daily Star Trek News team, its journalists, or its staff. Lastly, there are spoilers in this review; if you would like to remain spoiler-free, jump past the “What’s It All About” section to the “Good and Bad” one.

The High Country: What’s It All About?

By the end of the first page, I saw that Miller had an absolute grasp on these characters.  In a few words, he nailed them in tone and context. The book starts out with a familiar trope: Captain Pike, First Officer Una Chin-Riley, Lieutenant Spock, and Cadet Uhura are aboard a shuttlecraft on an exploratory mission to the Planet Epheska when their shuttle goes dead, has no power, and is about to crash.  

Chief engineer Hemmer is able to beam them off of the shuttle, but with the interference from the planet below, he can only get a lock on the crew one member at a time.  They get into environmental suits and wait to be beamed off. 

Pike materializes on a homestead on the planet where he is taken in by a man named Joe and his daughter Jennie; Number One materializes in a forest with the backpack on her environmental suit merged into a tree high off of the ground.  She cuts herself free, is confronted by animals, and is met by a mountain man, who hasn’t seen a bath in months, named Celarius.  She later finds out that he’s a prince, son to the ruling General, Drayko, who we find out even later is the number one jerk on the planet; Spock materializes underwater, while Uhura materialized in a lava flow.  (We don’t hear from Uhura again until page 133, and Spock on page 155.

The early chapters are 2/3rd Pike meeting and interacting with the planet's people who are among various races from various planets. He soon discovers that the planet’s culture is based on the Wild West. Only primitive machines are allowed and NO technology is permitted.  

Upon discovery, he finds that the race known as the Skagaran is behind what’s going on. The Skagaran name will be familiar to Star Trek: Enterprise fans, as they were introduced in the third season episode “North Star.” They abducted alien races from all across the universe, literally carving entire settlements and towns out of their planet and transporting them to Epheska to begin a new life under their benevolent dictatorship. They have a baffle around the planet that won’t allow technology or even large machinery to operate.  It’s also responsible for the shuttlecraft crash and many others.

Pike runs into an old school friend, Lila Talley whom he grew up with and she’s one of the most recent abductions.  Pike discovers, all too late that his former bestie has changed and is totally on board with the Skagarans and their lifestyle, even serving as a warden for them. 

The other 3rd is Number One being rescued by Celarius. She makes it to Celarius’s city where he’s spit-polished and she finds out that he’s the heir to the throne. Celarius has massive airships (that his dad allows) and he takes Number One on a voyage to find Uhura. They do and she’s protectively guarding a lantern with a red and sometimes blue, or even an orange flame burning inside, depending on Uhura’s feelings.  

I should probably let it be known that the fireball is a sentient creature that Uhura decides to call an empatherm, and she names hers Empy and has become very protective of it after it sensed her need and protected her on her travels. The empatherms, as Uhura calls them, are sentient creatures known as the sah’ree and are being controlled by the Skagarans and their boot-licking yes-man, Drayko.

Celarius is smitten with Number One (because that’s also part of the trope) and when his dad Drayko finds out she’s a human, she winds up in his crosshairs, and it’s up to her new BF to step up and be imprisoned with her as a protest to his naughty papa’s actions.    

Eventually, Uhura finds out where they are being held and convinces Empy to melt the grate in the ceiling, allowing all to leave. Along the way, they discover a group of Vulcans that had been there for 100 years and are sailing the seas in large ships. By doing so, they’ve kept off of Drayko’s radar.   

Soon, Hemmer lands on the planet via an ejection pod and parachutes to the surface, along with several support structures and other parts that have been stripped from the Enterprise and dropped to the planet. He then takes those pieces and uses them to rebuild the Vulcan sailing ship to be able to cut through an ice shelf, for…reasons…

There are over a thousand orbs that allow one to communicate with others, control the empatherms, and perform other nefarious deeds.  The one orb that controls them all is discovered.  Now it’s a race against time as Pike assembles his new crew of various aliens ripped from their planet to get to this orb before Drayko does.

In the end, good guys win and bad guys lose… because of… tropes. 

Also, when the Vulcans are returned home to Vulcan, the planet’s inhabitants (The OG Vulcans that never left) were for whatever reason, speaking in Old English, (Shakesperean) language, throwing thee and thy all over the place.

The High Country: The Good and the Bad

At first, as I read it, I noticed that I wasn’t reading this book as fast as I usually do. Upon closer examination, I discovered that you’ll definitely need your readers for this one.  A book font is usually 11 points with a Calibri or similar font, which is easy on the eyes and there are traditionally 32 lines of text per page.  

This book is in an 8-point font of Times New Roman or similar, which does not lend itself to free-flowing reading, and there are 40 lines of text per page.  I’m not sure why this decision was made, but I can only assume that there was a page limit to publish this book and so a smaller font and more lines per page was used. This means that for every 4 pages read, in a traditional book, it would be 5 pages.  So, this book is 371 pages, but if it was traditionally formatted, it would run 463 pages.  So keep that in mind. 

Also, the writer jumps around on the character names.  Number One (Which she’ll always be to me as I’m only three years younger than TOS) is sometimes referred to as Una, others as Chin-Riley, and yet other times as Una Chin-Riley. Pike is referred to as Pike, Chris, Christopher, or Christopher Pike.  Uhura is Uhura, Nyota Uhura, or Nyota. I find it frustrating as a reader to have so many different identifiers for a character.  Just stick with Pike, Uhura, and Spock, and for the love of all that is Trek, Number One!

The Vulcans speaking in ancient Earth English made no sense whatsoever and broke the mold for Vulcans.  These are just little niggles that infuriate my righteous writer and editor’s soul.  It’s probably just me and a handful of others that this will irk. 

The story followed a format that many Trek books have ‘gone’ before in doing.  Some of the chapters involving Pike and Number One could have been deleted as they didn’t add much to the book except for the final page count. Nevertheless, the story was well written, if predictable, and the characters were depicted accurately.

I give it four out of five stars, only because of the irritating items I described above, which kept pulling me out of the book as I groaned over and over. Still, this book is highly enjoyable and will sit proudly on your shelf.