Review: The Delta Anomaly by Rick Barba
The Delta Anomaly by Rick Barba
Sometimes I feel like I need a whole ‘nother set of review criteria for licensed novels. Books like Rick Barba’s The Delta Anomaly are great examples of why. If you’re into Star Trek, specifically the 2009 reboot, and if you want to subsume yourself in more of the same, then you’ll adore The Delta Anomaly. But of course, non-Trekkies should probably look elsewhere.
The Delta Anomaly is one of several stories offered in this series about Kirk, Spock, Uhura, and McCoy’s pre-movie Starfleet careers. A lot happens in this slim volume. There’s a serial killer. And a budding romance. And a pre-Kobayashi-Maru simulation exam. And a cloud of nanomachines or six. This is a busy book for one so slim, and while the action scenes are well-written and the pacing perky, it also felt a bit scatter-shot, a touch schizophrenic.
But really, who reads licensed novels for the plots? Not me. I’m in it for the snappy dialogue and continuing evolution of familiar characters, and you find that in spades here. The characters are accurate–the most important quality in any licensed novel. Particularly nice is the slow-burn, growing romance between Uhura and Spock, a romance that is communicated entirely through innuendo. Their chemistry was fun in the movie (despite my own initial fangirly objections), and the tension between them in The Delta Anomaly really holds the novel together. Their scenes were easily the most satisfying of the entire book.
Barba also manages to pull in some general Trek lore from other incarnations, and mostly to very good effect. I only spotted one misstep (warning: super nerdy pedantry ahead) when he mentions a Ferengi in the 23rd century, and, worse, a Ferengi owning slaves. Quark would be so disappointed! But I don’t think that even most Trekkies would be as bothered by this as I was. Because, you know, I’m a huge dork.
This was mostly a very solid Trek novel, and an interesting book for teen readers. With its focus on college-aged protagonists, the content is a tad more adult than some YA of a comparable length, but the drinking and flirting are relatively fluffy and really pretty fun. Basically, if you want to read about your favorite Trek characters as college kids, you could do worse than to read this book.
Phoebe
Phoebe is a 20-something writer who lives in New York State with her husband and cat. She is a dork, not a geek or a nerd.
Her debut novel, Starglass, will be released from Simon and Schuster Books for Young Readers in Summer 2013.
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