[Jason Vines]

Taking Wing by Andy Mangels and Michael A. Martin launched the Star Trek: Titan series auspiciously, immersing readers in thrilling Romulan intrigue, as well as exploring the benefits and challenges of having the most diversity of alien species ever on a Star Trek crew. So I was looking forward to the next Titan installment, also by Mangels and Martin.

Sadly, The Red King took readers through its story with the speed and grace of a garbage scow.

Spoiler

In the previous novel, the starship Titan found itself stranded in the Magellanic Cloud where the Neyel hold sway. The Neyel, long-separated descendants of humans to whom Mangels and Martin introduced us in the Lost Era book The Sundered, fascinated me greatly, so I had anticipated significant exploration of them and their region in The Red King. But the book offers nothing of the kind, instead providing an emaciated plot about an expanding protouniverse whose few elements the authors stretch out to fill 362 pages.

The concept of a protouniverse, full of intelligent life, displacing our own as it grows is interesting, but Mangels and Martin don't develop that much, either. We just observe some nonsensical mayhem which the Titan solves by blowing up stuff. The Red King could have been a story on Star Trek: Voyager.

Captain William T. Riker, the new starship commander, also doesn't impress me this time around. He acts like a wishy-washy liberal milquetoast, of which Commander Donatra takes advantage in her wily Romulan machinations. One would think Riker wasn't the protege of steely Captain Jean-Luc Picard, but of wussy Captain Jonathan Archer.

Avoid this one, folks. It's not even so bad it's good... It's just bad.

Grade: D+