#9 Triangle
By Sondra Marshak and Myrna Culbreath
Kirk, Spock, McCoy and crew must battle the Totality - an evil form of collective conciousness called Oneness - alongside Sola Thane, whom both are in love with!
The plot of this novel is a little hard to describe without going into great detail. It expands on the original idea for The Motion Picture involving "New Humans" and takes place not long after the events in the film. Basically, there are two forces of Oneness and both of them want Captain Kirk. The Enterprise is sent on a mission to deliver an Ambassor Gailbraith (leader of the less evil Oneness) to the planet Zaran while also exploring an area of space near the planet where ships have been disappearing without a trace. They recieve a distress call from a Starfleet Free Agent named Sola Thane who is trapped on one of the planets in the sector.
Sola turns out to be quite the Mary Sue character. Immediately, she is drawn to both Kirk and Spock and they to her. The three of them eventually become connected in not only a love triangle (see what they did there?), but also a psionic link to each other. It has apparently been seven years since Spock's last Pon Farr, conveniently, so he actually gets more action than Kirk from the girl. There are a number of interesting passages in the book that come off as slashy subtext between Kirk and Spock. For example, Spock refers to Kirk as T'hyla, which in Vulcan means friend, brother...or lover. There is later a passage, during a climactic scene, where Kirk laments wanting the triangle to be eternal. Hmm. The novel is utterly ridiculous, but a fun read nonetheless. And the authors do well at capturing the unique way in which Shatner delivers dialogue. I kept waiting for the trashy romance novel scenes, but they did not come.