Where Sea Meets Sky

The author must have been inspired by Star Trek IV. In this one Pike meets Whales...in space! Without giving away the premise, it's a good novel to end the series with. We get more insight on the character of Captain Pike. His style of command was closer to Picard's than Kirk. Pike was the first one to use the phrase "engage". Only it didn't catch on because actor, Jeffrey Hunter was only in the first pilot. I hope to see more of Captain Pike with the new novel coming out next month from Pocket Books. I believe it's entitled "Burning Dreams" by Margaret Wander Bonnano. The chronicles of Pike's 10 year mission have a lot of unanswered questions. A good example would be what happened to his original crew with "number one" and all the others. We never saw them again.

I must admit that I personally was not particularly enthralled with the character of Captain Christopher Pike in the TOS episode. This was also the first trek book I'd be reading written by Jerry Oltion. It was with these reservations that I opened this book up to page one. Upon reflection, these trepidations were completely baseless. The author, turned for me, what was an uninteresting character, into an absolute page turner. The idea of the "Titans", space creature's controlled by humanoids, I thought would be less than captivating to say the least. Wrong again. The character interaction's in "The Captain's Table" were extremely well done. I especially liked the reference to the captain of the Titanic being there. Without giving too much of the story away and spoiling it for those who've not read it yet, I'll just read this one. You will not regret it. I hope the author is given the opportunity in the future to bring this character back to life again. Thank you to Jerry Oltion for a great read.

"Where Sea Meets Sky" presents Christopher Pike's first person narrative in the Captain's Table series. If the Jean-Luc Picard story was a pirate tale set in space then this final book in the series is clearly a whaling tale set in space as Pike and his crew deal with the ecological mystery of the titans, a species of creatures nearly the size of the Enterprise that are used by the Aronnians as interstellar dirigibles. Unfortunately for them the creatures have not returned from their annual migration, and Pike is ordered to find out what is going on out there. As Jerry Oltion reveals in his acknowledgments, the idea for the titans came from a Treasurecon III convention panel once upon a time in Billings, Montana, where the group created plausible creatures that might live in space. Oltion had just been waiting for the right opportunity to bring those crazy space whales to light. If you are interested in the creative use of biotechnology, along the lines of what Harry Harrison came up with in his "West of Eden" trilogy, you will find the "science" in this book to be quite interesting. The idea that ecological problems can be solved ecologically is always nice to hear. However, if you are expecting any hint of the nature of the relationship between Pike and his science officer Mr. Spock that compelled the Vulcan to violate General Order 7 and take his former captain back to Talos IV, you are going to be disappointed. Oltion does the best job of shifting back and forth between Pike's narrative and his conversations with his listeners at the Captain's Table. This is the one book in the series that deals explicitly with the storyteller being aware that he is talking to an audience from other times and places. It is that part of the book more than Pike's actual story that plays off the tragic fate that awaits the former captain of the Enterprise down the road. "Where Sea Meets Sky" scores out as an average book in this series, with the Voyager entry featuring Kathryn Janeway clearly the best book in the series and one of the better Star Trek novels you will ever read. It will not surprise anyone who has been following the series that since the bar called the Captain's Table transcends mere notions of time and space that ultimately we end up with a story cycle, although the truth about the gecko is rather unsatisfying.

Dont read this guys review who gave it a bad review. This book was excellent!!!! I started it at the airport in L.A. and finished it during landing in Atlanta. The best of the round table books so far, and I have read three. Very creative!!!

Star Trek fans will love this book. it is not necessary to have read all of the series first, altough i did; they can be read out of turn, and make good very good light reads.