The Fate of the Phoenix

Star Trek Adventures #11

by Sondra Marshak, Myrna Culbreath

In this sequel to The Price of the Phoenix, the universe is beset with the Voran Hegemony is threatening to secede from the Federation, the Romulans are probing the Neutral Zone, the Klingons are restless, Spock has lost his psychic powers, and there is a duplicate Captain Kirk.

Genres: Star Trek, Science Fiction, Fiction, Ebooks, Science Fiction Fantasy, Star Trek Original Series, Media Tie In

262 pages, Paperback

First published May 1, 1979

Reviews

[Bill Riggs · Rating 1 out of 5]

DNF. I just can’t. The Price of the Phoenix was absolutely horrid. The worst Trek novel I’ve ever read. This one started just like the other ended Jim/James, maleness, Speck love triangle, owning each other. I’m not going to subject myself to more of this bizarre fan fiction Trek bromance.

[Benjamin Plume · Rating 1 out of 5]

I asked myself "why would I read the sequel to the book I dubbed 'the worst Star Trek book I have read'?"

The answer is that I bought them at the same time, so if I spent money on it I may as well read it.

This one was a little better than its predecessor. It suffered from many of the same flaws, but not to the same degree. It was at least readable thanks to easier-to-follow action sequences. Still, I would not recommend it even for those who have read the first.

[Mike McDevitt · Rating 2 out of 5]

And the greatest Bromance in Space continues...

I'm not saying I like Spirk, mind you... but...

Oh, heck, I can't stay mad at you gals! This overwrought insanity is exactly what space soap opera was created for- getting a reaction. I raised this from my initial one star gut dislike years ago: because it's well-written. It's poetic, weirdly beautiful. It tends to over-speechify, and I'm SO tired of Omne, the unstoppable rapey villain. But its fans are not wrong.

I can't bring myself to buy into it, or think of it as canonical, but I'm willing to admit it happened SOMEWHERE. A Parallel Universe that's Extra EROTIC! (Thump, thump- I hear someone banging a broom on my ceiling for shouting EROTIC.)

I enjoyed the characterization of the female Romulan Commander (here given the name Di'on). She's mighty, and interesting. I can almost forgive how they transfer her on-screen desire for Spock over to a cut-rate Kirk with ear implants. There isn't enough about her, and WAY too much about Omne.

Is it possible to have a villain Mary Sue? Who shows up out of nowhere, has every skill, overpowers everybody, and becomes the main character? If so, they better be a Q.

[Mark · Rating 1 out of 5]

Hoo boy.

Somewhere in this story there's some great Star Trek stuff. Those are the bits that deal with the implications of the Phoenix technology - artificial replication of both mind and body - and what the galactic aftermath of immortality would like. Also the bits that touch on some of the limitations and unfortunate ramifications of the Prime Directive.

Unfortunately, all those big ideas and great talking points get covered up, nay, slathered over, by the authors' not-at-all concealed sexual fantasies. Oh, there's nothing actually explicit here, and no sex is actually had (except once, between chapters, and that's more than a little rapey - which is apparently okay when it's female-on-male), but Marshak/Culbreath's background in fanfic makes itself painfully obvious. Every character of note in this book is on one or both ends of a sub/dom, hurt/comfort relationship, and it made me extremely uncomfortable all the way through the book. Everybody is all too eager to "own" another person, or all too resigned to being "owned" themselves, and none of it is consensual. I mean, ick. This is Star Trek. Such attitudes SHOULD NOT BE OKAY in this future. Not by Kirk, not by Spock, not by anyone who's supposed to be showing us how optimistic we're allowed to be about the future of humanity.

[Mayaj · Rating 5 out of 5]

Equally as goofy and horny as its predecessor.

I cannot express how wonderful and stupid this entire endeavor has been. Omni, "the alpha male of the galaxy" vs Kirk, Romulan clone Kirk, Spock, Omni-flavored clone Spock, the nameless Romulan Commander, and a masked (because he's too beautiful to look at) Romulan Princeling-slave. I cannot possibly tell you who wins or what the hell we were even fighting about.

Also there are giant sloths, Kirk gets amnesia, and while in THIS book no one appears to be wearing cowboy outfits, we do have a rhino joust between two Romulan warrior women over the possession of pretty Romulan Zh'james Kirk and his friend the even prettier Romulan princeling.

We 70s real hard on this one.

[Charles · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of my favorite of the "New adventure" books about Star Trek. The authors really got the characters right and seemed to care about them.

[Joe Davoust · Rating 1 out of 5]

Worst Star Trek novel I have ever read. The plot was too convoluted and often simply made no sense. The characters from the TV show were portrayed so differently from the originals that it made what actions they took totally unbelievable. The "guest stars" were very one dimensional in their thoughts and actions, but had crazy and arbitrary back stories that added nothing to what little could be made of the plot.

Kind of a spoiler below.... (but because the plot makes no real sense, it's not really spoiling anything
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A crazy example of what I mean by how convoluted at the plot is:

At one point Kirk and Spock and a bad guy named Omne who had at one time all killed each other or thought they had but were possibly resurrected were in a ship chasing a Romulan commander who was in a ship being chased by another Romulan commander while chasing a fake Spock who was really a combination of a resurrection of dead Spock and dead Omne who had a fake Kirk on his ship who was made to look like a Romulan because he was the stolen hostage of the first Romulan commander who was in love with the fake Kirk.

For the most part the book was riddled with crazy unintelligible scenes like the above. Add that to the fact that there's a lot of sexism at the beginning about how men can't control there manliness and women can't help but fall in love with them, even Romulan women. It made the book very very difficult to read and I would recommend it to no one. (Unless they are have the same stupid goal that I have of trying to read every Star Trek novel)

[Patrick Hayes · Rating 2 out of 5]

This was a sequel to a book, The Price of the Phoenix, that I've never read. However, that wasn't an issue as the events of the previous novel are made clear to the reader fairly quickly.

In a nutshell: Antagonist Omne, thought dead at the conclusion of the first book, is alive (due to the "Phoenix" ability he's created) and more than raring to take out Kirk for killing him. Unfortunately he created a second version of himself, the Other, who looks like Spock and wants to rule the galaxy for himself, much like Omne 1.o. Adding to Who's Who questions is a 2.0 of Kirk, called James, who looks like a Romulan and is under the command of the Romulan Commander from "The Enterprise Incident." She takes James with her because she is attracted to him and for her own nefarious purposes, but she's a Romulan, so that's expected.

While the Commander tries to keep James safe among the Romulans, Kirk and the Enterprise are ordered to go to a world to keep it from leaving the Federation. It's here that Omne reveals himself and the plot starts moving quickly.

This was an okay read that took a while to get going and ended up in, what's now considered, a typical Star Trek finale--an alliance of combatants on an alien world, headed toward one goal until moving towards personal goals.

I enjoyed all of the Romulan Commander scenes, but found Omne too similar to Thanos of the Marvel Universe. The monologuing, both interior and exterior, was overwhelming throughout the book and had me reading those sections more quickly so I could get to something actually happening.

I don't think I'll give the first book a read.

[Recensioni in tre parole · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ultraterreno. Complesso. Insidioso.

[Susan · Rating 5 out of 5]

The story continues. Can all survive.
An enjoyable re-read
Star trek Adventures 9

[Randy Ray · Rating 2 out of 5]

Tiresome. The first book was better.

[Jason Fawkes · Rating 1 out of 5]

Quite possibly the worst book I've ever read - unfortunately the author's other three Trek novels would also make the bottom 10. (I'm a completist!)
The plot, the almost unreadable prose, it's just awful.
The weird BSDM subtext doesn't help either.

[Brooke · Rating 2 out of 5]

Significantly less fun than the first one and a hundred pages longer. And they didn't touch tips once

[Christopher Rush · Rating 1 out of 5]

The sequel to Price of the Phoenix is both better and worse than the original: better because anything would almost have to be better than it simply by not being it, worse because this is longer and attempts to double down on what made the first so horrible as a reading and would-be Star Trek experience. Better, in that at times it almost stumbles into an actual plot, a story in which characters perform actions, events occur, and things happen. Worse, in that the plot quickly devolves into more of the same: longing looks, poignant unspoken yearnings, meaningful glances, among more characters than before.

Now we know what is worse than inside jokes broadcasted to an unknowing public and all the embarrassments and awkwardnesses thereunto: inside fantasies broadcasted to an etc. etc. etc. For that's what this is, Sondra and Myrna's inside fantasy, chapter-like thing after chapter-like thing, glance after glance, soul-searing reflection after soul-searing reflection, near-verbatim conversation rehash after near-verbatim conversation rehash, again and again and again. And again.

In one sense, we (Star Trek fans) owe S & M a great debt: as mindboggling as it may be to think it, there actually was a time in human history in which these two were effectively in charge of the Star Trek universe. They were the ones keeping it alive, keeping it before the public, trying to expand it while the actors and NASA were more or less using it as window dressing and funding props (I say this with no animus or regret - it's not like anyone or anything else were giving DeForrest, Nichelle, or James much of anything else to do, professionally, by the mid-'70s). S & M, in a world of typewriter manuscripts and air mail postage stamp conference invitations, were fighting the good fight that Ms. Trimble fought before them, single-now-double-handedly reminding the nation, yea, the world that Star Trek is not just an optimistic science fiction show on a shoestring budget, it was (and is) an Idea - a great idea, of humanity reaching not just for what might be out there but for what could be in us, our potential not just to ignore or put side ancillary, external differences, but to embrace them as ways of unity, community, and assets to make us all better together at being human and, dare I say, loving our neighbor as ourself.

But this book isn't any of that, really. It's a painful series of glances, unspoken eroticisms, and rehashed conversations for over two hundred pages, in which the same characters, joined by a couple more, keep running into each other and their clones, in a vortex of plotless pseudo-emotion and yearnings. Worst, just when it seems like it might actually end, the epilogue says, "but wait, there could be more..." and nothing that any of the characters and we (the readers) went through for over two hundred pages that seem so much longer than even 700-some Thackery pages (and boy, those are long pages) really matters. Not in the sense of "it's an imaginary SF book" not mattering - we know it's ST, and it could matter either by being good ST or just a fun SF story. No, it doesn't matter because S & M, unwilling at the last moment to truly bring their inside fantasies that have transgressed the boundaries into public experience to an actual, meaningful narrative conclusion, instead hit the reset button and leave the door open for more, a non-ending ending of the worst kind.

Perhaps we should be grateful to Pocket Books not only for continuing the world of ST in literary form (I know, I know, they're not all bangers) but also saving S & M from themselves, saying "no more" to this version (these versionsl of Kirk, Spock, and the Romulans.

I was thinking of skipping over the first two dozen or so Pocket Books adventures that I've read a couple times already in my life, but now that I have reflected (too much) on S & M's '70s ST journey, it may be worthwhile to read them again, from a renewed appreciation of their efforts to keep ST alive in as deep a valley of a time as the '70s, and experience anew what they can do (yes, did, 40-some years ago) in the ST universe without the burden of being its lifesupport as well as its ardent, perhaps most zealous if not most genuine (though maybe that, too) fans.

[H. Givens · Rating 2 out of 5]

The first book in this duology was awful, but in an entertaining way. Its horrible writing was entertaining, and the overt slashiness even more so. (I love K/S, but these characters were pompous and so out of character that it could only be laughable.) And there were some interesting philosophical elements at play. So, I read the sequel, partly seeking entertainment and partly actually wanting to know how the story might carry on, what happened to Omne in the end.

Unfortunately, I did some Googling partway through, because I wanted to see what else the authors had written. I discovered that they're both staunch Objectivists, followers of Ayn Rand, and all of a sudden the books weren't much fun anymore. It's not just weird bad writing, it's that bizarre conviction that every character should be a pure elemental essence, and every conflict is a primal assessment between two unadulterated forces-as-people, and everyone just knows things by looking at each other, and everyone is a perfect specimen of something, and blah blah blah. No wonder the characters are so out of character; none of them were ever meant to be ultimate expressions of anything. Spock was never even implied to be "one of the best fighters in the galaxy," for instance, but of course he has to be because everyone here is THE BEST BAR NONE.

There were still some good elements, some sections where the writing actually got good. Some interesting stakes, and one long (literal) debate about the Prime Directive that worked really well. But it stopped being fun.

[Mona · Rating 3 out of 5]

It reads more like a slash fic than a Star Trek novel

At least the first book provided a few interesting concepts and philosophical conundrums. This one was just... odd. Too fast paced for one thing, going nowhere for another. And where the first book had already introduced these weird sub-dom kink / humiliation fetish undertones, the Fate of the Phoenix just went full in and literally subdued the character of James into an oddly emasculated sex slave in order to elevate the Romulan Commander, without either character having earned such position and without any plausible rational reasons for him to accept that kind of relationship to ever begin with. In what parallel universe would Kirk's duplicate ever not only eagerly, but joyfully accept to spend the rest of his life as a slave (a "favourite") to an aggressively overbearing bully of a woman? Because not only was she written as a flat she-spock mary jane, more often than not she also comes across as insufferably rude and straight unlikeable. This kind of sub-dom relationship was vaguely hinted in the first book as well, but in the second it felt just uncomfortable to read.
Even Spock felt completely out of character, and Bones and Scotty mere extras. The villain, a mighty character in the first book, was also relegated to a second-class character and reduced to a joke of his former self.

To be fair, were it not Trek I would give it 2 stars.

[Paul Lunger · Rating 3 out of 5]

The lone sequel novel in the Bantam Star Trek Original series novels "The Fate of the Phoenix" by Sondra Marshak & Myrna Culbreath is a book that is at times confusing to read but also fascinating as well. In this installment, we find Omne in various forms across various versions of himself as he & his Black Omne counterpart come back to life to cause more chaos than before. The main focus at times of the story is the Romulan commander & James who are dealing with issues internal to the Empire as well as factions w/in parts of the Federation looking to secede. We also have Spock & Jim Kirk dealing with other issues of their own all of which they eventually realize is tied into Omne & his various forms of subterfuge. Marshak & Culbreath keep to the same story line making Omne one of the most complicated villains in Trek history as well as keeping we the reader guessing as to what happens next even as they reach the Black Hole World. Yes, trying to figure out who & where we're dealing with is a mess at times, but it still doesn't take away from how nefarious Omne is & why "The Price of the Phoenix" deserved this sequel.

[Reesha · Rating 3 out of 5]

2.5 stars if I had the option. Better than the first one but still not very good. Most conversations are written as though everyone speaks the same way, with a penchant for roundabout riddles, half-thoughts, and stabs at philosophy (one of the writers apparently has a degree in philosophy, but it only comes across in stumbles here). There are rarely differentiations between voices, which is especially heinous in light of the novel's subject matter.

The "slash" aspect of the first book was very toned down in this one, almost as if they were admonished for it, but the bulk of the text still reads like a mediocre fan fiction (as someone who enjoys good fan fiction, and slash, and has been reading it for decades, I am not bashing the art form at all, only the execution within this novel).

The plot is actually interesting, as is the Big Bad. It's the writing that needs help, not the ideas.

[Matt · Rating 3 out of 5]

The first ever Star Trek sequel novel is entertaining in its scope and ambition, but Marshak and Culbreath don't have the chops to take it to the next level. The muddy prose from the first Phoenix book continues, causing sequences where it's really hard to follow what's going on or understand the rules of the world they've set up. Still, Omne is a compelling character and I'm glad I got a chance to revisit him for another book.

As I noted in when I read "Star Trek Lives!," Sondra Marshak is obsessed with Ayn Rand. In this novel, it is incredibly funny when it ends up causing a character to spend pages giving a John Galt speech on the merits and flaws of the Prime Directive. Almost worth reading the book for that part alone.

[Kate · Rating 2 out of 5]

This was really slow to get going. It takes pretty much half the book to get to the main event, which then quickly gets convoluted. We have this ridiculous villain, who continues to be ridiculous, and then it gets weirder. Nothing really gets resolved either. Not as balls to the walls insane as its predecessor but it’s biggest crime is being mostly sloppy and boring in this case. It, of course, has its moments.

[Alex · Rating 3 out of 5]

A decent enough Star Trek TOS novel. I found this to be better than its predecessor, as it had more action packed scenes and a satisfying conclusion.

I wouldn't say this was my favourite ever Star Trek novel but a pleasent way to while away a few days in the world of the crew of the USS Enterprise.

[R · Rating 2 out of 5]

Not nearly as fun as the first. There was a lot of the Commander and James, and I don't much like the Commander particularly after her initial scenes in this one.

Took me a long time to get through this because I wasn't that enthused with the plot. And what was up with that ending... is there meant to be a third one??

[GB · Rating 1 out of 5]

The sequel to a story that should not have been told in the first place. Not quite as much actual torture this time, but lots of long boring conversations like the kind you didn't want to hear from the people sitting in front of you on a 20 hour bus ride.

[Michelle Swanson · Rating 1 out of 5]

so I thought the first Phoenix book was bad this was unreadable got over half had to give up so many clones of ppl running around and to confusing who is real or a clone.
Just unreadable my first book ive actually had to quit reading...

[Tracy Poff]

Much better than The Price of the Phoenix--far more interesting plot--but with many of the same problems, and a few new ones.

My full notes are available on Barba Non DB.

[Michelle Hanson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Didnt read the first book.. but it explained what was needed.

[Luke Van Santen · Rating 2 out of 5]

Well, that's done. Maybe I'll come back in 53.xxfys years...

[Brian]

Slash-tastic!

[Daniel M · Rating 2 out of 5]

The ideas exceeded the writers' abilities. While I don't regret reading this it is kind of a mess. I enjoyed it less than Price of the Phoenix which I enjoyed more than I should have.

[Amanda · Rating 2 out of 5]

Disappointed with this book. I really enjoyed the first one but this one has unsatisfactory storyline and ending. Ugh just underwhelmed.