Best Destiny

Star Trek Classic #76

by Diane Carey

As James T. Kirk prepares to retire from a long and illustrious Starfleet career, events in a distant part of the Federation draw him back to a part of the galaxy he had last visited as a young man, a mysterious world called Faramond whose name takes Kirk on a journey back to his youth.

At sixteen, Kirk is troubled, estranged from his father, and has a bleak future. However, a trip into space with Kirk's father George and Starfleet legend Captain Robert April changes James Kirk's life forever, when a simple voyage becomes a deadly trap. Soon Kirk and his father find themselves fighting for their lives against a vicious and powerful enemy.

Before the voyage ends, father and son will face life and death together, and James T. Kirk will get a glimpse of the future and his own best destiny.

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

398 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published November 1, 1992

About the author

Diane Carey also wrote the Distress Call 911 young adult series under the name D.L. Carey.

Diane Carey is primarily a science fiction author best known for her work in the Star Trek franchise. She has been the lead-off writer for two Star Trek spin-off book series: Star Trek The Next Generation with Star Trek: Ghost Ship, and the novelization of the Star Trek: Enterprise pilot, Broken Bow.

For more information, please see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diane_Carey

Reviews

[Jerry (Rebel With a Massive Media Library) · Rating 4 out of 5]

An exciting and entertaining look at Captain Kirk's younger years.

[Jamie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Apparently it's bring your kid to work day at Star Fleet because Commander George Kirk brings his "snot nosed", disillusioned, hell-raising teenager of a son Jimmy along on what's supposed to be a mundane mission to a remote planet where the remains of an ancient, highly advanced alien race have been uncovered. Cool. But, watch out for those... space pirates! Young James T Kirk and his father and crew are thrust into a deadly situation. Lessons are learned, especially the honor of being ready to sacrifice one's self for others, and a fractious relationship with his father is mended. And who knows, maybe Jimmy will change his ways and his life will take on a new direction? Stranger things have happened.

[Sud666 · Rating 4 out of 5]

Best Destiny is the story of the development of two men. The story starts 45 years before the events of ST VI: Undiscovered Country. A 16 year old, rebellious, trouble-making and downright snotty "Jimmy" Kirk runs away from home to get aboard a ship in order to be a deckhand. Promptly "recovered" by his father, a Starfleet Security officer. Deciding to teach his troublesome son some lessons he and Captain April take Jimmy on a routine exploration mission. Of course nothing is routine about this mission. Here young Jimmy runs into Roy Moss near a planet called Faramond. The pirate ship captained by Big Rex, Roy's father, has been raiding vessels near an area of space known as the Blue Zone.
The pirates attack and capture the small Federation vessel. From here we see the development, almost in parallel, the two men- Kirk and Moss. For Kirk, he shifts from a snotty, arrogant, know-it-all (believe me the teenage Kirk was an annoying nightmare) brat to the man who will one day become a legendary Starfleet Captain. For Moss, an abused by highly intelligent boy, he goes from being a teenage boy with problems to the man who one day becomes a pathologically driven lunatic.
Eventually Kirk, his father and Captain April are able to defeat the pirates and call in the Enterprise. Moss is arrested and Kirk goes on to join the Academy and gain fame.
Fast forward 45 years and Captain Kirk and the Enterprise crew are notified that a Starfleet vessel has gone missing near the planet of Faramond. It seems Moss has managed to return and discovered an old alien technology that could have grave consequences for all of Starfleet.

The rest of the story you will have to read to find out. The book really isn't about the adventure at all. This book tells the story of the development of Kirk into the man he is, and in parallel it tells the story of how Roy became who he became. This book gives a great insight into Kirk and what makes him Kirk. The annoying young brat who learned about duty and discipline during this voyage also manages to connect with his father and start preparing for his Starfleet career. Meanwhile Roy goes from bad to worse as he becomes power mad and megalomaniacal.

This is a great story for any fan of Kirk. It gives a great look into what motivates Kirk, as well as where he gets his maverick approach to things. The story itself is relatively pedestrian in comparison to the biographical portrait sketched about Kirk. A well written Star Trek tale that will help fans understand the legend that is James Tiberius Kirk. Highly recommend to any ST fan, but most especially for those with a soft spot for Kirk.

[Dan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Best Destiny tells the story of young James T. Kirk and what made him the heroic captain we know him to be. This is an excellent story that has held up in the couple of decades since I first read it, and I recommend it for any fan of Star Trek novels. Diane Carey has constructed a compelling story, both in the flashbacks to Jim's early years and in the crisis that Captain Kirk and his crew face shortly after the end of Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country. It is still one of my favorite Star Trek novels.

Full review: http://treklit.blogspot.com/2018/01/B...

[Clay Davis · Rating 4 out of 5]

I liked the look into Kirk's past.

[Matthew Rushing · Rating 4 out of 5]

3 1/5 Like the story, writing style was not my favorite.

[Steven Shinder · Rating 4 out of 5]

It was interesting seeing this version of the Kirk family dynamic. The 2009 film seemed to posit that the absence of his father via death made Jim Kirk a troublemaker. And here, it seems to be due to the absence of his father via work-related duties. Robert April even feels responsible for some of this. And with Jim Kirk being young, I guess it's natural he'd be called Jimmy here. I also quite like what Jimmy had to say about pre-destiny vs destiny. That really resonated with me. There are no things set in stone just because of what day we were born; we make things happen ourselves.

[Jessica Kordyban · Rating 5 out of 5]

I found this book interesting. I enjoyed the story of Jim becoming a man.
I was surprised by the amount of gore in the book though. I wasn't prepared lol

[Rob Cook · Rating 3 out of 5]

The tale of a young James T. Kirk's first adventure involving the Enterprise is documented with a linked framing story involving the Enterprise crew at the end of their careers following the sixth movie.

I found the young sullenly Jimmy Kirk a bit difficult to believe (for me he didn't mesh with the older Kirk seen on screen) but I enjoyed the main story featuring his interactions with Captain April and his Enterprise crew. It's unfortunate they don't get much of a follow-up at the end of the book.

The latter set framing story is good although the epilogue seemed to undo the end of the sixth movie and I found this unnecessary and disappointing.

[Craig · Rating 1 out of 5]

Oh man, I am done with Diane Carey. I didn't finish. I couldn't swallow this garbage anymore. Her characterizations are awful. Her dialogue is childish. Her insistence on everyone in Starfleet talking like a sailor from the 20th Century is ridiculous. I have endured her novels in the past but no more. I get infuriated just reading this. Not only is her writing awful, she doesn't even think about the details of Star Trek. Plus this novel is being told by Kirk about when he was a teenager... then why is that story being told from his father's perspective most of the time?!

She is the absolute worst Star Trek novelist. How she kept getting work is beyond my understanding.

[Mary JL · Rating 2 out of 5]

For the die hard Star Trek fan, they might rate it higher. I read it and found nothing too bad about it--but nothing exceptional either. Especially, I find the relatively quick change is Kirk;s character a bit hard to swallow.

[Eric · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is a must read before the next Trek movie.

[Lisa :-) · Rating 2 out of 5]

Little Jimmy Kirk vs. the Space Pirates. Not too bad, but really not too exciting.

[Tyrone Wilson · Rating 3 out of 5]

An ok read, but kinda slow in some places.

[Thomas C.Curtis · Rating 4 out of 5]

This wasn't what I was expecting. Even so, it was fun to see an alternate beginning to Captain Kirk.

[Christopher Schmehl · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great read! Imaginative tale of Robert April, George Kirk, and James T. Kirk aboard the original Enterprise 1701 and on an away mission in space.

[Margaret Hovestadt · Rating 5 out of 5]

Loved it. Took a few minutes to get into it, and then I struggled to close it.

[Jasminkaa · Rating 5 out of 5]

Thrilling, interesting and adventurous story about a legendary captain. 💫💫💫

[Cheryl · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fun little backstory about a young Jimmy Kirk, interposed with an updated James Kirk. Flavors of Khan what with fighting someone that he's fought before. Spoiler* he wins. He always wins!

[Reesha · Rating 2 out of 5]

Are you a huge James Kirk fan? Then don't read this review. We are not the same.

I originally opened this novel feeling cautiously optimistic. Kirk is my least favourite character of the original crew - I adore Spock, Uhura, and Chekov and I like Scotty, McCoy, and Sulu, while Kirk falls somewhere below Janice Rand and Kevin Riley - but I'd read a few earlier novels that focused on Kirk yet surprised me and that I even quite enjoyed. In addition, this is penned by Diane Carey, a giant of Star Trek and a truly talented writer, so I figured it had an even chance of being delightful despite the subject.

Then I read the 4-page introduction to the novel. My enthusiasm absolutely plummeted. Starting a Star Trek novel by waxing philosophical on how great Civil War generals were? Yyyyyyikes.

Then the actual novel started and I thought... oh, no. Oh, dear. The first 200 pages are basically just a snotty, spoiled, sullen 16 year old being a typical dreary teenager - but in space - and I can't remember having been so bored and disconnected reading a Star Trek novel in a while.

Let me be clear - the quality of the writing itself is top tier. A different story, a different plot, I could easily have been hooked by the lyrical and descriptive qualities of the prose. But the majority of this story was so incredibly boring I could barely convince my eyes to move to the next line.

I just don't care that a deeply unlikeable 16 year old eventually learned a lesson, taking a 400-page novel to do it, and an equally unlikeable 19 year old took the same 400 page novel to never learn, grow, or change. I just. Don't. Care.

The novel started with the conceit that it would help us understand how Kirk got to be so great. I don't feel that I learned that at all. If anything, Kirk has become an even blander, even more boring, white-bread character to me than he already was. The little asides into the colonizer POV, about how great the U.S. pioneers were without a single mention of the massive genocide of the peoples who were already there and fully cognizant of the land they were "discovering" added bursts of cringe to a consistently mind-numbingly boring story.

If you are a big Kirk fan, you might adore every page of this book. If you know a disrespectful, egotistical teen who likes Star Trek and you think seeing themselves in this story might turn them around, then maybe it's worth a try. But me? I genuinely wish I'd had the strength to DNF this one, because I didn't gain a darn thing from it but a few unintentional naps.

[Isabella · Rating 3 out of 5]

Rating: 3 stars

I went into this book completely blind. Not knowing the premise, what characters it entailed, or even what era of Star Trek it was focusing on. (You could say that Kirk on the cover was a dead giveaway, but Star Trek is notorious for slapping well known characters on the covers of books they have little or nothing to do with.) Having gone in with no expectations, I come out the other end feeling exactly whelmed. Not overwhelmed, not underwhelmed, just whelmed. This book wasn't bad by any stretch of the imagination, but it also isn't up there with some of the best the Star Trek novels have to offer. More often than not, that is how I come away from media tie in novels. Most of them are not bad, but each opinion may be affected by my fondness of the franchise as a whole, so it has to be particularly terrible for me to give it anything under 3 stars.

I have another comment that doesn't fit anywhere but I want to mention it because it stood out to me. This book was a little more gory than the regular Star Trek novels tend to be. A couple of scenes were particularly descriptive involving body mutilation and near death experiences with said injuries. Yes, people were "wounded" in (classic) Star Trek all the time, but it usually involved paint-red blood, palm punches, and dramatic collapsing, not severed arms with fleshy tendrils. The character in this book is so beaten up Kirk says it looks like a corpse is speaking. But oddly, this is the only violently descriptive part of the book. There are no other instances of brutality this intense in any other situation. I have no idea why that is.

[Casey Pettitt · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5 stars. I considered just listening to the audiobook version of this, but I’m so glad I read the actual book. Heck, I’ve had it on my shelf, unread, for years!

I dinged this a half a star for two reasons. First, there were times I felt the story dragged on a little too long. At 398 pages, it’s a lengthy book for its time. I can’t put my finger on specific scenes, but some of the stuff on the Shark probably could have been trimmed a little. All the bickering between the crew really solidified how bad they were, but it was also pretty evident early on.

Second, I was really hoping for some closure on how Veronica would fare. Maybe just a could sentences with older Kirk thinking about her and his amazement at her recovery. I mean, she was in rough shape and I know she survived, but the last we see of her after all she went through was her in a hospital bed falling asleep.

The thing I loved most about this book was how much I really didn’t like Jimmy at first and then his literal U turn and the subsequent events on the Shark. There was definitive redemption for Jimmy and I feel like we really got to see him become the Jim we all know and love. From his ability to annoy the crap out of his captor with his verbal jujitsu to probably the first occurrence of the double-fist hammer-punch which only came about because his hands were tied together.

Overall, a great adventure and one that I can’t believe has taken me so many years to delve into. A must-read for avid TOS fans!

[Jean-Pierre Vidrine · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a good story spotlighting both Kirk's youth and his later years. It does have it's flaws, though. The framing device of Kirk and the crew heading for an apparent disaster seems to cut into the story of young Kirk and his father with no apparent structure nor direct correlation of the moments recounted.
There were also times when the editor or proofreader missed something glaring. In one instance Kirk steps up to Spock's science station. A moment later, he is said to get up from his command chair, which he should have already done in order to step up to the science station. Later, a character is described holding a communicator and having a control box on his belt. On the very next page, the control box and communicator apparently swap places. Normally I wouldn't nitpick such things, but they were so jarring that they took me out of the story.
They did not, however, ruin the story. It's a good book about what drives Kirk and the other people in Starfleet, a story of hope for the future.

[Courtney · Rating 3 out of 5]

A good book. The first Star Trek novel I’ve read.

Best Destint switches between Captain Kirk on what might be his last mission on the Enterprise, with a young brash Jim Kirk on his first space adventure.
Things I liked: the plot was good! It was tense and the character development was pretty smooth. Seeing the ins and outs of a Starship in a more intimate way than in the TV series was nice. Plus, a disabled main character (Veronica) was a refreshing addition. The metaphors, while there were too many, added strong imagery to scenes and feelings. The philosophy, whily cheesy at times, was solid.

Things I thought could use improvement: the story dragged, especially in what could have been more tense parts. After young Jim’s story all but finishes, there’s the story of older Jim that keeps going. I lost interest the last 3 or 4 chapters. The story would’ve been just as strong being purely about young Jim. Also, the author used some othering language about the characters of color, as exotic or relating them to food, etc.

[Rusty · Rating 2 out of 5]

It isn't the plot that's the problem in this novel, but the slow pace and poor characterisation, in my mind, of the young Kirk. Carey portrays him as an utterly charmless obnoxious teen who will later use his inborn natural talent for dirt as captain of the Enterprise to be successful. James T. Kirk never came across like that as an adult. In fact, he was known for his charm, not his dirty tricks. Yet, even after young Kirk's sudden revelation that he's not perfect, Carey still has him as a charmless smartass.

It was good to see Robert April and George Kirk in action, but as another reviewer said, April is portrayed as a fairly one-dimensional, not very effective captain. Yes, it was a plot device to show the elder Kirk in action, but more time could've been spent on characterisation than the overlong scenes with the pirates. Again, a plot device, but I thought it weakened the story overall.

Curiously, the author's Cadet Kirk in the book of the same name comes across as a quite different character.

[Lois Merritt · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was interesting - we see teenage, moody, pain in the ass Jimmy Kirk (just like in the reboot Trek movie), but with his father. George Kirk takes him on a mission that happens to have him see and go on board the newly built USS Enterprise, commanded by Robert April. And it's hardly a spoiler to say that stuff goes wrong, he sees the light - and his future - and grows by the end of the story. It was an interesting story based on when it was written, before the image I have in my head from the first rebooted crew movie where we see the lost Kirk acting out before he meets Pike. Here, April kind of fills that role, but more so the mission and the bad guys.

James Doohan narrated this one - geez, sometimes, the voices he does are so great, it made me wonder if they were really him (yep, they are); and he can do a really good Kirk too!

[Chris Pestacchi · Rating 4 out of 5]

Of course book about a 16 year old James T. Kirk would still involve the Enterprise. Yes, that Enterprise, Good ol' NCC-1701. It's the kind of unnecessary eye-roller fan service detail that makes the whose universe seem small.

That being said, I really liked this a lot. Best Destiny is not only a good Star Trek story, but a good adventure story. Even though we know Jimmy's getting out alive, Diane Carey manages to give us a suspenseful survival tale with a palpable sense of danger (RIP Redshirts). While a little long in some places, the story overall moves pretty well thanks to Carey's strong sense of characters.

[Kieran McAndrew · Rating 5 out of 5]

Cmdr. George Kirk calls in a favour with his old commanding officer when his sixteen year old son Jimmy is in danger of going off the rails. Captain Robert April decides a diplomatic mission to Faramond might open Jimmy's eyes to new possibilities. However, when the Starfleet cutter is attacked by another ship, Cmdr. Kirk realises that he may have exposed his son to nothing more than imminent danger.

Carey's 'Best Destiny' is a great sequel to 'Final Frontier', but stands very well on its own. Carey expertly regresses the younger Kirk to a rebellious teen without direction and a deep fount of anger.

[Kristin · Rating 1 out of 5]

Another of the random assortment of Star Trek books in our personal library.
Unlike Probe which I liked a little better than I expected, Best Destiny was way worse than I expected.
Early 1990s writing style just can't match up to what I'm used to reading with Star Wars fiction these days. Plot did not hold my attention, and I absolutely hated teenage Jimmy Kirk.
The only reason I didn't DNF is because we owned it so I felt an obligation to finish it.

This book fulfilled the 2023 PopSugar prompt #1 - A book you meant to read in 2022 (the last one of my backlog).

[Denise · Rating 5 out of 5]

I enjoy most of Diane Carey's Star Trek novels, and this one is no exception. The way it ends is the way Star Trek (the original crew) should have ended: with the hope that the Enterprise's missions would last a little longer, at least. Kirk, at 65, is too young to retire anyway!

But it's the story of a father and son for the most part, and parts are quite touching. I actually teared up at one point, and that doesn't often happen at any book, much less a Star Trek book.

I think most fans of Star Trek the original series would enjoy this, esp. if they were unhappy with Generations.