(courtesy Simon & Schuster)
Novels based on the characters in TV shows or movies either go one of two ways – they absolutely nail the characters and evoke a perfect sense of time and place that makes the story feel like a televisual sprung to life on the page or they feel like something removed the original property entirely, a narrative filled with strangers who are echoes only of their visual counterparts.
The good news is Towards the Night, a Star Trek: Strange New Worlds novel by James Swallow, sits firmly in the former knocks-it-out-of-the-park camp, and every word uttered by the characters resonates in your head as if you’ve hit play on the streamer.
The story itself is a pretty standard away mission that gets way more complex and complicated, not to mention life threatening than anyone including Captain Pike expects, and that is no bad thing because one of the great stories of the franchise’s storytelling ate the twists and turns that accompany what seem to be the most straightforward of outings.
In this instance, the U.S.S. Enterprise is out patrolling the tense border withthe Klingon Empire but things quickly take on a whole level of intrigue when Nyota Uhura hears mysterious, almost indecipherable messages tucked into background noise.
It’s the sort of thing less talented cadets might miss but the gifted Uhura zeroes in on what turns out to be a distress call, the answering of which is going to have to be handled very carefully.
Spock considered that possibility and did not find it favorable [sic].
“Perhaps it would be sensible to keep moving.”
So Number 1, Commander Una Chin-Riley and Lieutenant Spock head down with a team to the arid planet from which the signal originated to find remnants of a dead civilisation and intriguingly what appears to be metal fragments from a downed Starfleet craft.
Oh, and some huge carnivorous bugs which, in light of the fact that the almost dead planet is rather short on prey options, decide the away team would make some tasty snacks.
Everyone makes it back to the Enterprise but as Towards the Night kicks into high gear, Captain Pike, Lieutenant La’An Noonien-Singh, Nurse Chapel, and Lieutenant Erica Ortegas end up on a long-lost Starfleet vessel which sets in chain a temporal piece of narrative twisting and turning that is hugely clever – it’s tough to keep all your storytelling ducks in a row ———- SPOILER ALERT !!!!! ———- when it comes to time travel but Swallows manages it with aplomb, serving up a story that also delivers some fairly emotionally intimate character moments too.
In fact, what really makes Towards the Night sing beyond its compellingly immersive, full-speed-ahead plot is the attention Swallows pays to the humanity of the characters, a Star Trek hallmark for sure but one the author really delivers on.
Key scenes which would have worked beautifully purely as skillfully wrought action set pieces are amplified into harrowingly intense explorations of humanity in peril and the lengths that a Starfleet crew must go to right wrongs and fix a situation that appears to be too far gone for salvation.
(courtesy official author site)
Pulling a galactic rabbit out of the hat is nothing new for Star Trek generally, and Strange New Worlds in particular, but what really works in Towards the Night is how Swallows makes the fantastical feel so grounded and human while still allowing for some of the reality-defying derring-do that makes sci-fi novels such a huge escapist pleasure to read.
Towards the Night delivers on all counts, taking us on huge rides across time and a planet and into a future which owes a great deal to what the Pike-led crew of the Enterprise do in the past and present which occupies so much of this story.
Much of the fun, of course, comes from, as mentioned previously, “seeing” – yes, we are reading a book but so evocative is Swallows’ writing that it feels intensely and richly visual with scenes playing out in affecting technicolour in your mind – the characters act exactly as you expect them to.
It’s an undeniable pleasure but will no doubt become more of one in the next year or so as Strange New Worlds winds down – season four is coming up fast this year with a truncated fifth and final season likely landing next year – and all we will have in the way of new adventures is what Swallows and his fellow Star Trek authors can conjure up.
The good news is that the calibre of the storytelling remains high like it is in Strange New Worlds that we won’t have to feel too bereft at the loss of the streaming option.
La’an was on the verge of agreeing with the medic, but then she saw the certainty in Chapel’s eyes. At length, she gave her nod.
“Well, like it or not, there’s only one way to find out. And only one way to get out.” She pointed the way down the gloomy corridor and started walking, without waiting for the others to follow her.
We will, of course, because that is the nature of the televisual beast.
But in the case of Strange New Worlds it feels even more pronounced because the writers have done a superlative job of serving up a show with inventiveness and rich imagination, full of stories and genre shifts and characters who are not only fun to be around but who also feeling affecting real and honest too.
You want to be around these people because while you know they are fictitious, they certainly don’t feel that way.
Which is why having authors like Swallows summon them up so completely and evocatively is such a relief and a joy; we might be losing them from our screens but if the quality of Strange New Worlds is replicated across other books released in the series, and The High Country by John Jackson Miller suggests that is entirely possible, then it’s not a forever goodbye.
That is the magic of books like Towards the Night – they allow us to hold onto characters and places and situations we love even after the show that first gifted them to us has shuffled off its mortal streaming coil.
Sure, all those visual flourishes aren’t there but if you’re a long-time reader like this reviewer, and you’re used to summoning up verdantly alive scenes in your mind, then superlatively good reads like Towards the Night more than make up for the loss of the visual option and allow you to continue your love affairs with characters you don’t want to lose forever well into the future.