#13 The Wounded Sky
By Diane Duane
The Enterprise tests the inversion drive, journeying outside the milky way. But they also travel inside their own minds in a reality-bending experience.
Star Trek has an excellent premise, one of which the show's producers and writers rarely took full advantage. Here's a ship, a crew that can go anywhere and do anything, yet they rarely venture outside the familiar. Ms. Duane, however, has the courage and imaginative force to truly push our heroes into the unknown. This is genuine science fiction, and definitely one of the finest entries in Pocket Books' numbered series. The Enterprise is testing an Intergalatic Inversion Drive that accidently launches them into a realm where space and time are meaningless. Further summarizing is difficult, but that Kirk and Co. must create a new universe should be tantilizing enough.
Duane has such a solid grasp on these characters you'll feel you know them twice as well by the novel's end. New characters like the spider-like alien scientist K'l'tk and in-the-now Ensign Amehertea are well drawn. The plot moves steadily but the final chapters are particularly revealing and hynotic, and should be experienced first-hand.