Crossroad

By Barbara Hambly

The crew of the Nautilus,a battered Starship of mysterious origin, is beamed aboard the Starship Enterprise™.The group claims they are freedom fighters from the future working to save the Federation from the Consilium -- a group of corrupt power-seekers.

But when the Nautiluscrew members suddenly seize control of the U.S.S. Enterprise™,and a Starship from the future arrives to arrest the renegades, Kirk must separate his true allies from those who wish to destroy the Federation.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Simon & Schuster UK
• Release date: Oct 16, 2012
• ISBN: 9781471108853

Barbara Hambly

Barbara Hambly was born in San Diego. Her interest in fantasy began with reading The Wizard of Oz at an early age and has continued ever since. She attended the University of California, Riverside, specialising in medieval history and then spent a year at the University at Bordeaux in Southern France as a teaching and research assistant. She now lives in Los Angeles.

Reviews for Crossroad

[karlstar_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This is one of the better, if not best, Star Trek novels. The characters have depth and meaningful relationships and while Kirk and Spock are center stage, they aren't the only characters with significant parts. Considering the constraints of a Star Trek novel, I thought the author did a fantastic job stretching those boundaries and producing a very enjoyable, interesting story.

[adonisguilfoyle · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

An unusual adventure for the crew of the Enterprise, sort of Alien meets the Terminator time paradox. The good guys were easily distinguishable, but I failed to spot which character would go onto cause so much controversy in the future, perhaps because they were so rarely focused on in the original series. Hambly treats the regular characters well, especially the introspective and idealist Kirk, but she could have done with genning up on past episodes better (for a start, Kirk is 34 midway through the five-year mission, not when he first joins the Enterprise as captain). The whole story has a sombre, dystopian feel that, on top of the fact that the crew are nearing the end of their service together, depressed me more than Star Trek ever should, but I did warm to Dylan Arios, the 'Master' of the ghost ship, who holds Kirk as his hero.

[cheryl_in_cc_nv · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Ok, let's see. More intrigue than some, a little time travel, less humor than some. Less of the personalities of the main characters, but still plenty. Nurse Chapel has a big role. Something about the themes behind the adventure didn't quite come through for me - I think maybe it was because the author tried to cover too many ideas and also make it a page-turner, which made it a little hard to focus on appreciating either aspect.

[jjmcgaffey · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Weird and wonderful. Time travel, temporal paradox, psionic control and a very strange future - it was nice of Hambly to finally say who the person was, I certainly hadn't guessed. I thought it was Lao, trying to fix his brother. The best thing was that all the standard characters - Kirk, Spock, McCoy, Chapel, etc - were very true to their canon selves. That's something that a lot of ST novels fail with - they're bent out of shape to fit the story. Here, though, they're handled correctly - even the ones who only have walk-on parts ring true, and Kirk in particular (a lot of the book is from his POV) feels right. He worries about the right things the right way - and I agree totally with his relief when he finally gets actual evidence about who's lying and who's telling the truth. It's quite a dark story, like many of Hambly's, and it ends on an inconclusive note - will that future actually come to pass, or not? But a magnificent story none-the-less, and one I will reread.