Review: Star Trek: Silent Weapons

Star Trek: Silent Weapons (Cold Equations #2)
by David Mack
Science Fiction
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Plot Summary:

The second book in a new trilogy by the national bestselling author of Star Trek: Destiny!

Three years after the disastrous final Borg Invasion, a bitter cold war against the Typhon Pact has pushed Starfleet’s resources to the breaking point. Now the rise of a dangerous new technology threatens to destroy the Federation from within. Captain Jean-Luc Picard and the Enterprise crew answer a distress call, only to become targets in a deadly game of deception. To protect a vital diplomatic mission, they must find a way to identify the spies hiding in their midst, before it’s too late. But Worf soon realizes the crew’s every move has been predicted: Someone is using them as pawns. And the closer they get to exposing their enemy, the deeper they spiral into its trap…

Review:

After thoroughly enjoying the first book in this series, I dived right into the second because the author did such a great job capturing the experience of being in the Trek world.  The world-building and the characters were again amazing in this book - there are so many details that bring everything to life perfectly.  The plot however was not as absorbing for me.

There was a lot going on in this book, but it was all sort of a mystery until the very end as the author kept jumping to the actions of different groups of people and for some groups it was never clear what they were really doing until the end.  And it was a long wait for me to find out.  To the point that I became disinterested in the action many times.  Unfortunately the pacing just felt very off and I felt that I almost didn't care what the answer was.  "Almost" because I did still keep reading.  The final few chapters of the book did wrap things up nicely and set up even more mystery for the third book.

The technical aspects of the world was the highlight for me though as there are some ideas that are really exciting when it comes to how advance the technology is.  There are social responsibility questions raised too about those advancements which is perfectly in keeping with the Trekkian philosophy.  Even though the plot was disappointing to me in many ways, I was impressed again with how well the author writes for Star Trek.  And I'm hoping that this book is merely suffering a bit from middle book syndrome.