Scarcely five days after the Enterprise barely escaped an encounter with a giant machine capable of devouring entire planets, a rattled Jim Kirk has another foul assignment land on his desk. A scientist has gone missing on a planet within the Neutral Zone, and his team was pursuing a lead that, should it fall into any hands — not just the wrong ones – -could create genetic weapons of enormous destruction. The last time something like this appeared on the radar, Starfleet and the Klingons both glassed the planet involved with torpedoes to ensure its destruction. How dangerous does something have to be for Starfleet to choose the nuclear option? Now, Enterprise and a Klingon ship are racing toward an encounter that could disrupt the fragile peace between the Federation and the Empire, and potentially unleash a nightmare into the Alpha Quadrant. No rest for the weary, captain!

In Harm’s Way pulls off a nice trick in creating an ST TOS novel that intersects a bit with Vanguard (a series authored in large part by David Mack, with Dayton Ward and Kevin Dilmore also contributing), but without being a Vanguard novel and thus allowing Jean-Luc-off-the-street to pick this up and enjoy the story without knowing any of the background. The novel is rich with story: the primary thread is that of the away team, led by Commander Spock, who are attempting to find the missing scientist and recover his data while avoiding any prime directive violations. Said team is also try to avoid the Klingons, who landed their own away team and couldn’t care less about prime directive violations as they merrily shoot anything that looks like it might fry up nicely. If two large away teams trying to find the same thing without finding each other sounds like an impossible task, well — you’re not wrong. In orbit, Enterprise is playing hide and seek with the Klingon ship, captained by Kang, because neither party is supposed to be in the Neutral Zone. Kirk, who is psychologically worn out by the haunting death of Captain Decker in “The Doomdsay Machine”, isn’t coping with the additional stresses of this mission very well, and has determined that it’s best just to avoid the Klingons — especially since there’s another Starfleet ship in the area, a secret one dispatched by Station 47 itself, which has a crew of officers with Lower Decks style personalities: they’re not The Right Stuff, but they’re fun to read, especially as they try to work with the more straightlaced Enterprise officers. Evidently they’re in their own Seekers series, so don’t be surprised to see that show up next year. The humor is particularly welcome given that Harm’s Way shifts to horror towards the end, as Starfleet and the Klingons both battle against an Eldrich abomination with an army of murderous mind-controlled natives. It’s unusually gory for a Trek novel, when most people tend to die in nice sanitary ways.

David Mack delivers yet again, which is no surprise: I’ve never failed to thoroughly enjoy one of his books. He knows how to create an action tale in a vivid background, with humor and character drama thrown in. The dialogue is especially interesting, and I liked Mack’s treatment of the Klingons: there are several in here, and they’re not all the bloodlusty Space Vikings they tend to get reduced to.

Coming up — Neuromancer, Star Trek, and more as this month-long celebration of SF continues.