#sarek-centric

After an initial chapter that kicks off the plot narrated by Kirk, Sarek takes over as primary narrator which I absolutely love. I’m all about getting to see Vulcan and the Big Three through Sarek’s eyes. We get to hear his thoughts about Spock, Kirk, McCoy, Amanda, Vulcan, and his colleagues and students. Y’all, apparently deep, deep down, Sarek just wants to like people and be liked in return. 

Any way, we find out that Amanda has had some kind of issue with her nervous system that is triggered by living on a foreign planet for too long, but she’s receiving some kind of experimental treatment by the medical team that helped Amanda when she was pregnant with Spock! She’s expected to make a full recovery but she’ll be spending most of the book, if not all, in a coma. Sarek misses her but he’s determined to carry on valiantly while he waits. He’s taken a teaching position at the Vulcan Science Academy since he’s not currently available to go off planet.

We follow Sarek through his daily routine and he has some really humorous observations about how humans and Vulcans interact. Sarek actually has a lot of thoughts about romance, dating, courtship, and bonding. But mostly he’s amused by all of it.

He has a human teaching assistant, Eleyna Miller, who he basically considers a try-hard. She wants to be perfectly Vulcan. After about 50 pages, it starts to feel like she might have a crush on Sarek, which ya know... same, gurl. No judgies. Except she comes across like she’s a little unhinged. If she’s not the eponymous murderer, the author is being too heavy handed too quickly with his red herring. I’m evenly split between her being a secret Romulan who has infilitrated the VSA and is sewing chaos or she’s secretly in love with Sarek and she’s trying to kill Amanda hoping to take her place as Sarek’s bondmate.

And yes, there’s a murderer. There are currently three total patients including Amanda receiving the experimental treatment. They are completely dependent on life support, they can’t be revived bc it completely strips their nervous system even the part controlling the autonomic systems, and their life support systems are on dual, independent batteries bc they would die before a back up generator could kick on. So it’s super sus when one of the patient dies due to a power failure. On top of that the patient is the wife of the main Healer who helped invent the system. 

A mystery is afoot!

Never fear, Jim Kirk is here. Y’all... Jim is the World’s Worst Detective. He is written as pure gold Himbo, the laughably incompetent dum dum who means well, bless his heart. He creates a list of potential suspects and then starts demanding everybody account for their whereabouts. He is told multiple times that he has no jurisdiction here, but the Vulcans humor him, seemingly amused by his attempts at logical deductive reasoning. And he’s bad at it. He accuses T’Pau (he apparently has very hard feelings about her nearly letting him die), then strongly considers Sarek, working himself into a mental tizzy, then considers both Spock and Bones but only half-heartedly. He clears his entire suspect list and starts over bc surely one of them is the murderer.

Without spoiling the novel, Jim only survives the plot bc McCoy is aware of how oblivious and dumb Jim can be when he has a hunch and McCoy is prepared to be a counterweight his olympic level jumps to the wrong conclusions.

The identity of the murderer is pretty obvious throughout the story. It’s so obvious it circles back around to making you wonder if it’s a red herring. The only reason this group of very smart men didn’t solve the case sooner is bc they are blinded by their own biases about who is capable of what.

Anywho, the group is running around trying to unmask the murderer and keep them from striking again. The murderer is indiscriminately destructive in their goal.  There’s a lot of action scenes, but my favorite aspect of this book is how much of it focuses on the relationship between Sarek and Spock and how badly Sarek wants to reconnect with his son. For a murder mystery focused almost exclusively on stoic male characters, there’s a lot about feelings and I love it.

This book has some genuinely good original characters and M’Benga (My medbay boo) makes an appearance. I would definitely recommend this. The mystery is not that mysterious but it turns out to be a good character study for Sarek.

Mind set, he goes inside to see Amanda. Amanda is gaunt, losing weight with illness, Her cheeks are pale, no longer pink and full. She’s sleeping more often and doesn’t have the energy to work her beloved garden. Sarek asks her to go see a Healer, but Amanda puts it off, saying she’s busy with translation work. Sarek is not pleased. He has to go off planet bc of this nefarious plotting. He wants to at least call Spock home. Amanda for bids him to do so. Sarek says see a Healer or I’m calling our son to sit with you until I return. Amanda relents. 

Sarek heads to Earth. Apparently, a Terran supremacist group has formed. The Keep Earth Human League (KEHL). Why do these groups always have the worst names. At least you don’t have to guess what they want. Losers. 

The KEHL is protesting outside of the Vulcan embassy and ONLY the Vulcan embassy. The Federation doesn’t understand their sudden increase in numbers when the KEHL has always been a few scatterbrained loons. The leader, Induna, is from Kenya. Given the white supremacist habit of yelling “Go back to Africa” at black people, I’m not sure how I feel about this, but fine... Sarek agrees to meet with Induna and goes out into the crowd against Federation Security recommendations. 

The crowd gets super rowdy at the sight of the Vulcan ambassador and things get physical. Sarek gets pushed down, his handlers start Vulcan pinching people to get to him, and Federation Security starts phase stunning people sending everybody running. In all the pushing and shoving, Induna lands on Sarek and when they touch, Sarek can since that someone with Vulcan telepathy has influenced his thinking. What Vulcan would DARE do this?!

It definitely couldn’t be a Vulcan who lives on Vulcan. But there is a colony called Freelan that is closed to outworlders but often hires young vulcans as aides. Sarek has always been suspicious of this practice, but had no reason to outright question. Sarek’s aide recalls a Vulcan women he’d interacted with named Savel. Her name lacking the T’ in front meaning she was unbonded. He enjoyed his interaction that he tried to find a way to contact her but there was no record of her being born on Vulcan or ANY Vulcans traveling to Freelan in the last thirty years. Where did these Freelan Vulcans come from? Sarek puts on his spy hat.

Meanwhile, Peter James Kirk has been invited to meet the Vulcan Ambassador. He’s super psyched. But he arrives at the consulate just in time to get swept up in the police dispersal of the aforementioned race riot. If you don’t remember Peter, he’s from that episode where William Shatner played Captain Kirk’s own brother, George Samuel.

It’s also the episode where we found out Vulcans have a set of inner eyelids!

Anywho, Peter’s storyline is pretty meh. They needed a bumbling character who grows stronger over the course of the story and they chose Kirk’s nephew. He’s described as being 32 but he’s a Starfleet cadet and written like he’s 19. The less said the better. i will only mention him when his story dovetails with the main plot. But for now, just know he got tangled up with the KEHL intending to bring them down then got kidnapped and sold to the Klingons once the bad guys realize his connection to Kirk.

Back at the consulate, Sarek contacts Taryn saying he wants to meet to renegotiate tariffs. It’s a rouse to get towards the Freelan servers at their embassy. Sarek and Taryn end up playing chess and discussing Earth. Sarek of course has a measure of respect for the Terrans while Taryn says he has no such respect for them, bringing up the KEHL. Sarek says a fringe group like that will never threaten the Earth-Vulcan alliance.

When Sarek accesses the Freelan servers, the info is all written in ROMULAN!!!! The Freelans are secretly Romulans! Taryn is a high ranking Romulan officer. Just then, some Freelans transport into the room and they start cursing in ROMULAN when they realize somethings up with the servers. Sarek and Soran barely escape and they don’t have time copy the databases as Sarek wanted. But no time for regrets, Sarek gets an urgent message recalling him to Vulcan.

“Ambassador Sarek, you must return home immediately. Your wife is gravely ill. I do not expect her to live more than another month... possibly less. I regret having to impart such news in this manner, but i have no choice. Return home immediately.”

BTW, when I searched for this gif, tumblr stopped me with a page of resources for depression and suicide awareness. Good job, Tumblr!

We’re introduced to a female Klingon named Valdyr. Her uncle Karg doesn’t like that Klingon has a female chancellor. He wants Valdyr to quit school and marry well to bring prestige to their clan and to overthrow the peaceful government of Klingon. Karg and his crew are the Klingon Taliban. That’s the best summary I can give you. Valdyr will eventually interact with Peter. That’s the only reason I even brought her up.

We then get a journal entry from Amanda. She’s 93, suffering from fatal Reyerson’s disease, and contemplating what daeth is like. Her thoughts are about first meeting and falling in love with Sarek. It’s SOOOO sweet.

Then we jump to the Enterprise where Kirk is Captain’s Logging. They’re investigating a Klingon raid on a Federation colony when Spock gets a missive from Sarek telling him to come home. Jim and Bones are really sad to hear that Amanda is sick and talk about how much esteem they have for her, insisting that Spock go home immediately and they’ll follow once they get everything cleared up at the colony.

Back on Vulcan, Sarek is watching the sunset trying to wrap his head around the fact that Amanda and that she has no katra for him to preserve. Once she’s gone, she’s gone. The grief overwhelms him and he wonders how humans survive this kind of loss? Feeling his grief, Amanda calls him and insists he take her to her beloved gardens. He agrees as long as she wears a respirator mask. They end up talking about Spock and Amanda is upset to discover Sarek has sent for him. But Sarek’s like “My wife, Spock had to be informed. If anything happened to you, and I had not told him, he would never speak to me again. And i could not fault him for his decision.” Sarek is so right, so Amanda forgives him.

Spock arrives home and is shocked to see how fragile Amanda seems. He and Sarek wordlessly call a truce to their omnipresent tension to focus on her. While Amanda sleeps, Sarek catches Spock up on his theories. How does he know this Spock asks. Glad you ask. Apparently, when Sarek was 59, he was on the Freelan space station when his first Pon Farr hit, but he couldn’t head home until his mission was done. 

Y’all, canonically the men of the House of Surak have extremely irregular Pon Farrs. Spock’s was years too soon and Sarek’s was years too late. Sarek’s theory is that leaving the planet Vulcan messes with your biological clock.

Anyway, Sarek went into rut and became delirious and violent. The Freelan liaison knew what was wrong with Sarek and how to treat it and while he was out of it Sarek thought his saw a Vulcan face on the liaison but he’d always assumed it was the blood fever making things up. Until now! He HAS to go find out what’s going on. He suspects these Freelan Vulcans are now adults who were kidnapped as children by Romulan raiders from Vulcan passenger ships. They are controlled by Romulans and being used to influence the KEHL and the Klingon Taliban rebels. Removing Vulcan from the Federation will weaken both Vulcan and Earth will leave both vulnerable to Klingon attack and then leave them wide open to be sideswiped by a Romulan invasion. Sarek does a better job of explaining this but my recaps are already long. This honestly needs diagrams. Spock suggests cluing in the Enterprise, but they’re interrupted by Amanda wanting to see Spock again. 

This is the point where Peter is kidnapped. All you need to know there. 

We return to Sarek’s house where McCoy has arrived and is examining Amanda. He agrees with the healers. Lady Amanda doesn’t have long. There’s a heartbreaking line about the words being a blow to Spock and he “realizes bitterly that he’d hoped his old friend would be able to work some kind of miracle.” Y’ALL. Spock loves his mama.

Then the Klingons invade a Federation colony and the UFP president calls asking Sarek to negotiate. 

Sarek explains to Amanda that he has to leave because of the hostage situation. Amanda is clearly heart broken but she’s stoic. They both realize if he goes, this is the last time he’ll see her alive. She asks him to hug her one more time. He does it. She makes him promise to read her journals, taking the first one with him on his trip. He promises. They touch fingers one last time and Sarek takes his leave.

Spock is not having it. Surely you’re not leaving while your wife is on her death bed.

Spock reads Sarek to filth and calls him a coward. But Sarek is all “The needs of the many...” 

Spock goes to be with Amanda. She talks about dreaming of a hamburgers and Spock is basically halfway to the Enterprise galley before she reminds him that eating meat now after nearly a century abstaining would kill her. But Spock is still like “whatever you want, name it and it’s yours.” She asks him what it was like to die (in the nuclear reactor in the Star Trek movie, which also made me ugly cry). He tells her it was painful, but ultimately peaceful. She asks if he recalls an afterlife, but he reminds her that his katra was with McCoy so he technically wasn’t dead and he doesn’t know what it will be like for a human without a katra. It’s a really good conversation, y’all. Anyway, she senses Spock’s anger at Sarek and makes him promise not to become estranged again over her death. 

Over a Deneb IV (the captured colony), Sarek has spoken to the Klingon Chancellor and she assure him this actions was not sanctioned. During a break, one of the Klingon guards tries to kill Sarek. When they touch, Sarek feels the same mental taint he felt from the KEHL leader. This is the Freelans at work again.. Now they have to figure out who all is infected.

Meanwhile Amanda is taking a turn for the worse. She’s having mini-strokes that are making her weaker and weaker and there’s nothing they can do. McCoy says it’s a matter of days, maybe only hours. Spock informs Sarek, but Sarek says he can’t leave. His works not done. Spock is fed up. 

“I ask that you reconsider. My presence does not comfort her. She is calling for you.”

^Also this is basically Sarek when he gets off the phone with Spock and finds an empty corridor where he won’t be interrupted. He reaches out for Amanda one more through their link and feels her when she passes. On Spock’s side, the last thing she says is “Sarek” and then passes away with a small smile on her face.

It’s like 30 pages of heartbreak... Very well written heartbreak. And we still have a Federation plot to resolve! We’re only at the 40% mark!

At this point, Peter has been smuggled to Kronos and he is put under Valdyr’s care. Peter is not your average human, he’s a Kirk. Valdyr’s not some timid woman, she’s a Klingon. Valdyr’s uncle wants Peter kept alive so he can be tortured alive in front of Jim Kirk. That’s all you really need to know.

Sarek arrives back on Vulcan for Amanda’s service and Spock is giving him the cold shoulder. At the funeral service, Sarek is gratified that people who initially spurned his relationship with Amanda are now expressing their condolences and the loss that society bears bc of her death. 

Sarek gets together with Kirk and they compare notes. They all agree something is fishy. They spend some time talking about the plot of a book i haven’t read yet, so can’t help you there. They come up with a plan to successfully download the servers Sarek was looking at earlier. They have to get closer to Freelan, but Spock’s certain he can do it. As they’re planning, they’re informed of Peter’s kidnapping. They decide to head towards Freelan nonetheless.

Here we get a journal entry from Amanda and a flashback from Sarek about Spock’s birth. It’s beautiful. 

Then we jump to Taryn, the Romulan commander. But he’s having a nightmare that indicates he was one of the kidnapped Vulcan children. The plot thickens!

A journal entry from Amanda and a flashback from Sarek about Spock being bonded to T’Pring. Apparently, Amanda never like T’Pring and thought she would hurt Spock. Mama always knows. 

Twenty or so pages of Peter and Valdyr falling in love. Those Kirks, man. They can’t resist alien women. That’s all you need to know.

We check in with Taryn and his ward-niece Savel that has a crush on Sarek’s assistant. They are the ones who have been going around mind whammying everyone. But apparently, the Klingon contingent that kidnapped Peter is wildly off script and speeding up the conflict timeline faster than the Romulans can get into place. At this point, the Enterprise will intercept and wipe out the rebel Klingons long before they reach Federation space and regroup with their fleet in time to meet the Romulans head on at full strength. They have to figure out away to slow things down. 

Jim, Spock, and Bones take a shuttle to Kronos to rescue Peter only to find he’s already made a jail break with Valdyr’s help. There’s a brief scene where they’re cornered by the rebel Klingons and they have Peter fight a Klingon one on one to prove he’s a badass Kirk, but honestly he’s an idiot and I was more impressed valdyr who is defying her uncle and his guerrilla fighters to escape an arranged marriage, save the female chancellor she idolizes, and save her planet from destruction. Less Peter, more Valdyr please. They escape Kronos is a warbird and head back towards the Enterprise.

Meanwhile Taryn decides that the best course of action is to lure the Enterprise into Romulan space where they can jam communications and keep Sarek from sending the databanks he’s downloaded to the Federation as proof of the Romulans’ plot. But Sarek’s already way ahead of him and has sent out messages to the top 6 officials in the Federation. If the Enterprise doesn’t survive the next eight hours, the time delayed messages will start repeating until receipt is acknowledged. 

There’s another journal entry from Amanda and a flashback about Sarek finding out Spock is going to Starfleet instead of the VSA. Well, worth the read. Y’all. Sarek disowned Spock to push him into a corner. Sarek really thought Spock would change his mind and was shocked and hurt when Amanda reported that Spock was headed to Earth. AND THEN AMANDA LEFT HIM AND MOVED BACK TO EARTH!

Back in the future, Sarek has already figured out that Taryn is trying to lead him on a wild goose chase. The Enterprise gang decides to divide and conquer. Spock and Sarek are going to board Taryn’s ship, take him down, and get definitive proof that the “Freelans” are the Romulans while Kirk and the Enterprise use the distraction to get out of jammer range and call for back up.

This all some how devolves to Sarek and Taryn stripped down to just their pants fighting to the death for the lives of Sarek, Spock, and all the Vulcans on the ship and on Freelan. They’re fighting by the rites of the Toriatal with poisoned dipped senapas. I believe that’s the weapon Spock and Jim fought with in the Pon Farr episode.

Spock: You are not in any condition to attempt this.

Sarek: I’m well aware of my limitations. If I can hold out long enough, perhaps Kirk will return. If I am only wounded, the estimable Dr. McCoy might be able to save me.

Spock: Taryn is younger, taller, and doubtless far quicker than you.”

Sarek: Do no think that knowledge has escaped me.

Anyway, despite Spock’s worry and Sarek’s resignation to die, Sarek wins by a a stroke of luck. Literally.

They beam back over to the Enterprise and Spock and McCoy are able to synthesize the antidote to the poison that’s killing both Sarek and Taryn. They’re on the mend. Just in time for the rebel Klingons to show up. 

With the help of Taryn’s ship and some defectors among the rebels, the Enterprise destroys Karg and his rebels. They transport all the Vulcans on Taryn’s ship and on Freelan who wish to be repatrioted to Vulcan, but Taryn stubborn returns to Romulus, even knowing he will be put to death for treason for freeing the Freelan Vulcans. Taryn and Sarek part as friends. 

Peter and Valdyr promise each other they’ll stay in touch while they finish their respective trainings and then they’ll get back together. All you need to know there.

We get a journal entry from Amanda and a flashback from Sarek about Sarek’s father Solkar dying. This is what brings Amanda back to Sarek. It’s a very touching memory.

They give us Peter successfully passing the Kobyashi Maru test using lyras and the actual Enterprise crew volunteering as his bridge crew for the test and my eyes nearly roll out of my head. After passing he decides he’d rather be a diplomat than a Captain living in his uncle’s shadow. Hopefully this is the last we see of him. 

The book ends with Sarek in Amanda’s garden watching the sunrise in Amanda’s garden. He spreads her ashes and wishes her farewell. Y’ALLLLLL!

Final Thoughts

Amanda and Sarek are my favorite canon ST couple and my second favorite fan fic ST couple behind Spirk. It was very rewarding to get this in depth look into Sarek’s head and how he relates to his human wife and his half-human son. I would’ve liked this book just as well if it had just been about Amanda’s life span coming to its end. But getting to see Spock and Sarek work together through their grief to save the universe was pretty good.

I didn’t mention Bones, but he was a great support character. He showed his signature true compassion when he realized his friend needed his emotional support. I also thought they did a good job of not letting Kirk take over the story. TOS is super bad about injecting Jim Kirk all over Vulcan politics and House of Sarek drama but he was very restrained here. Peter Kirk on the other hand... I think you could have cut him out of the story completely and it would have been just as good of a story. I liked the Taryn- Sarek frenemyship as well. 

I really enjoyed this story and highly recommend it. Amanda and Sarek forever!