Star Trek: The Wounded Sky
{4/5} “Ever since we came out, I keep expecting to walk through things like a ghost — because I was somewhere so much more real and solid than physical reality that I could see through my hands, couldn’t touch or move anything… The — country — I don’t know where it was. It burned my eyes. The edges on everything were sharp as shadows in space. Colors — were almost a torment. Stars would have looked pastel by comparison. It was a terrible place… And I’d give anything I can think of to get back there again.”
Captain Kirk and the Enterprise have been given the honour to test a brand new inversion drive, invented by the Hamalki, which will allow them to visit another galaxy. K’t’lk, a Hamalki who looks like a large glass spider, is onboard for the test. The test is successful — they find themselves looking at the Milky Way from the outside. But the test has also caused a tear in the universe — and another universe is converging with ours, which will end all life as we know it.
Star Trek: The Wounded Sky by Diane Duane was published in 1983.
The current books in the Titan series feature a crew of many species — but Duane did it here first, as she features a plethora of species on the Enterprise.
I like the descriptions of what happened during the inversions. The characters find themselves somewhere else — and someone else.
The language is a bit more poetic than the average Star Trek book. There’s also quite a bit of scientific and philosophical discussion.
It’s more about the characters and atmosphere than the plot. It didn’t grab me quite as much as other books I’ve read lately but it was worth reading.
I’ve read all of Duane’s other Star Trek books, including her masterpiece Spock’s World, but somehow hadn’t gotten around to this one.