Romulan Way

When I read Ms Duane's My Enemy My Ally I found a author who treated Star Trek with some respect and mostly the Vulcans and Rihannsu (Romulans)with some much needed respect. Romulans have always been put on the back burner in favor of the Klingons (Example Star Trek 3TSFS was originally intended to have the Romulans as the foes) Ms Duane sheds some much needed INTELLIGENT background on the Rihannsu for me Star Trek Nemisis while a fairly good film overall doesn't have a very interesting background for the Romulans. This book is two parts one a plot concerning Dr. McCoy as a prisoner on Romulus and the other a history of how the Vulcans an Rihannsu had their great rift and how they came to be two seperate races. My favirote races in Star Trek are Vulcans, Romulans, and Hortas they are all present in Ms Duane's novel. While McCoy is the only original series character to appear Arrhae's story is suspenseful enough and enlightining enough to keep the novel going the ending is nerve shattering suspense. I will recomend this book to anyone who likes Star Trek.

This was one of the books, along with "Spock's World" (also by Diane Duane) and several others, that made me a Star Trek fan. It's fascinating and compelling reading.All Star Trek novels are at heart fanfic, which can be a very bad thing, but which can also produce quite excellent results. This is an example of good fanfic---a creation of a totally original character (Arrhae, the human posing as a Romulan) who avoids becoming a Mary Sue; the exploration of Romulan history and culture; the discussion of how Romulans are changing as a result of contact with the Federation and the Klingons. It's fun to read, too. :-)I personally liked the manner in which the Romulans created their culture: they formulated, discussed, and propagated it via their Internet while they were en route to a new home. It doesn't sound terribly unlikely to me.

Finally a book that delves into the history of the mysterious Romulans. The story deals soley with Dr. McCoy, has he is inadvertantly captured by Romulans and taken to Romulous. McCoy is kept at a Romulan Cmdr's home until he can be tried for his crimes against the empire. While incarcerated, he learns about Romulan history, which acts as the main story in the book. We learn about how the Romulans were the off shoots of Vulcans, the dissention between Surak, and those Vulcans that didn't hold Logic as the way out of Vulcan's bloody and violent past. The story opens many doors into the minds of a little explored race in the Star Trek universe.

What was done for Vulcans in Spock's World, is now done for the Romulans. They are made real, given a culture and a history. Of all the Trek books deserving reprinting, this has to rank among the top. Duane takes us on a tour not of trite and worn plots or repetitive adventures, but of a new and alien culture. Truly here, as in most of her other novels, Duane creates and takes us on a tour of an interesting, richly believeable world guided by three-dimensional characters.

A great pity this is out of print, as it's one of the best examples of real world-building in a Star Trek novel. It holds up as a work of pure speculative fiction, as very few other works set in this universe do. Instead of reading a juvenile history of some Terrestrial civilisation and crudely imitating it, as appears to be the practice of many Star Trek writers, Duane creates a complete and believable culture. If the people who write scripts for the shows and films had any sense, they would regard novels like this as canon and dump most of the absurd tripe that the creators of the Old Show (largely from outside real, that is to say literary, science fiction) developed.