#desperate hours

This is another Star Trek tie in novel, this one a prequel to Discovery and The Original Series (you could also argue Strange New Worlds, but that show hadn't been made yet when this book was written). A mining colony accidentally awakens an alien drone that threatens to destroy the planet and the Shenzhou and Enterprise both respond to the threat. Starfleet command deems the drone too much of a threat to the surrounding worlds and orders complete orbital bombardment, but Michael Burnham and Spock manage to persuade their captains to give them a three hour window to attempt to disable the drone from within.

I did not like this one. I was trying really hard to be fair to how out of character it is given that when this book came out, we only had season one of Discovery, so I know much more about the characters than David Mack could have. But even just looking at season one, it's still very out of character. Early Michael may have sometimes been utilitarian to the point of seeming callous by those raised on Earth, but she still absolutely would never question why Starfleet would bother to help people who don't want to be part of The Federation. Putting the needs of the many before the needs of the few is very different from not acknowledging people's human rights. I also hate that this book says she bullies Saru. They have a professional rivalry, sure, because they're both desperately lonely and their only social interaction is being the teacher's pet, so they get upset when Georgiou pays attention to the other one instead of them, but they weren't needlessly cruel to each other, at least not prior to the Battle of the Binary Stars. Actually, not even each other, it just says she bullies him. Even after the Binaries, he's mean to her, not the other way around. I can't imagine the type of bad faith reading of her you would have to make in order to imagine that this is a proper characterization of her, even pre-series.

I also don't understand how one could come to the conclusion that Michael and Spock barely know each other. They're not that far apart in age and it's not like Sarek and Amanda had separate houses or even that there's an implication that they went to boarding schools. I don't know how you would look at Spock's sister and say she and Spock barely know each other. However, despite that baffling foundation, Michael and Spock's relationship is the strongest element of this book. They are very explicitly mirrors of one another, and it even manages to reveal an element to their family dynamic that is accurate to the show but hadn't been established yet.

The TOS characters in general though feel weird, because they would have to be TOS versions of themselves, SNW hadn't even been greenlit yet, but they feel more accurate to to their Strange New Worlds versions than their Original Series ones. Which, if you know my opinions on SNW, ain't exactly a compliment, but it is fascinating that this book captured something that hadn't happened yet.

As for the Discovery characters, they feel off. Admittedly, we don't know that much about Prime!Georgiou, so I can't say that this is in direct contradiction to her canon characterization the way I can with Michael, but it still feels wrong. Saru's character is fine outside of his relationship with Michael, but I honestly never cared that much about Saru outside of Michael, so the part that is off is the part that's most important to me. I also hate that he sees Michael as an active threat. It's one thing in the show when it's a PTSD symptom, and even then it rubbed me the wrong way, but there's no reason for it here. Meanwhile, we learn a whole two facts about Detmer, and one of them is wrong. Which is a real disappointment; one of the most common complains about Discovery is how little we get to know the bridge crew, so I would have expected expanded material to show us more of them.

Even on a craft level, the exposition is really clunky. Not even in a typical treknobabble way, the narration itself is weird. I lost track of how many characters were referred to as "the [city]-born officer." Like, I appreciate the attempt at diversity in picking cities from around the world, but it's a strange affectation. And while Michael, Spock, Saru, and Georgiou's narration all furthered the plot, the miners didn't show us anything we didn't already know and never got a conclusion after the climax. It felt like it was just there to add to the page count.