I guess these early novels that spend a lot of time exploring Vulcan bonding and mating and mind melding are just not my thing. I respect them a lot however. These early writes, many of them women, were pioneers and absolutely essential for shaping our fandom.

The actual epidemic this book is about reminded me of our own Covid-19 epidemic and it was interesting to see how it has the potential to sow dispute and distrust, though I would have liked that part to be a bigger focus. Unfortunately that was not the case. A lot of the story was about people falling in love in the midst of it all. There was also a natural disaster and some berserk Vulcans (holdovers from the earlier book "The Vulcan Academy Murders"), that have no problem whatsoever to circumvent the Enterprise's security. Nothing was really explored in the detail I wished it were, and a lot did not quite click for me.

However, there is a scene between Spock and Sarek about Spock's mixed heritage that I found really good. The Klingon forhead ridge thing is also mentioned, pretty much in passing, and I wonder if the Enterprise writers had read this book before they wrote their story.

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