Half Star Trek novel, half Romulan history lesson

Sequel to Diane Duane's novel My Enemy, My Ally, although this time the cover names Peter Morwood (her husband) as co-author. I already discussed Duane's first "Rihannsu" novel (Rihannsu being what she claims the Romulans actually call themselves in their own language) at http://www.epinions.com/content_15981514372, and you may want to refresh your memory by looking at it. Go ahead, I'll wait!

Back already? Okay. You will recall that in My Enemy, My Ally Duane alternated between the viewpoints of Captain Kirk and a Romulan starship Commander in different chapters. In this book, however, we have story development and historical commentary on the last two thousand years or so of the Romulans, in alternating chapters. Bear in mind (as I warned you in reviewing the previous novel in the Rihannsu sequence) that none of Duane's declarations about Romulan culture, past and present, have been embraced as canonical by Paramount. At any rate, if your principal interest in reading Star Trek novels is to see the plot move as fast as possible, you will want to give this one a miss. Also, if you don't like having your stories be too predictable in the buildup to the grand finale, you will want to give this one a miss. Also, if you don't like seeing a story end on a bit of a cliffhanger and then not having the next installment come out for approximately thirteen years, you would have wanted to give this one a miss when it first appeared in 1987 - although I suppose it doesn't matter now, since the sequel installments are finally starting to creep on the shelves of the stores now.

With all that said, I suppose I ought to say something nice about this volume now, to be fair and to justify the four stars I gave it. First, Duane is one of the more skillful writers to have done Star Trek novels - ST:TOS (The Original Series) novels, at least. Robert A. Heinlein once commented in a letter to his agent that he felt his good reputation with the fans rested upon his ability to give them a story with a moth-eaten plot amusingly told, as opposed to a story with a moth-eaten plot poorly told. I think that was a touch oversimplified, but the basic sentiment can usefully be applied in examining the appeal of a great many books by various people, including this one by Duane and Morwood. It's the writing style that appeals to me, not the details of the plot. Nevertheless, I'll share some of the plot with you in case you aren't prepared to just take my word for it that the writing is above average.

We realize early on that one of the viewpoint characters in the "plot" scenes (ignoring the historical commentary stuff), Arrhae ir-Mnaeha t'Khellian, the senior servant in a Romulan noble House (think "butler" in a story about the English aristocracy) is actually a human being, a deep-cover agent for Starfleet Intelligence. She underwent drastic changes to give herself green blood, pointed ears, and generally look the part of a Romulan. Interestingly enough, there was never any intention of using her to obtain military and political secrets in preparation for a war. Starfleet Intelligence had plenty of agents who could do that. Terise Haleakala-LoBrutto is merely meant to gather cultural information so Starfleet analysts could better understand what makes a Romulan tick. Her own training is as a xenosociologist, which means she ought to be able to cope with the demands of such an assignment. As the story opens up, she's been on one of the two Romulan homeworlds for about eight years and counting. It turns out, incidentally, that the facial bone structure which was just so-so on Earth qualifies her as a classic beauty by Romulan standards, although she doesn't seem to make much use of that fact, i.e. she doesn't go around seducing susceptible males at the drop of a hat, if ever.

She seems almost totally submerged in her timid-with-authority, strong-with-lesser-servants Arrhae persona. We are supposed to be extremely worried about whether or not she'll be able to continue functioning as a Federation agent when necessary. Are you worried about that? No, neither was I. But it gave some interesting moments, all the same, as we saw her acquired thought patterns conflicting with older ones from her Starfleet training.

A prominent captive, Dr. Leonard McCoy of Enterprise (a starship which has caused the Romulans considerable grief over the years) is quietly stashed in her master's house to keep him out of sight until a great big mock trial can be held to convict him of crimes against the Empire and have him slowly tortured to death for the public entertainment. It is made painfully clear to us from McCoy's own thoughts, however (he being the other major viewpoint character in this tale) that the entire thing has been contrived by the Federation, beginning with his capture, as part of an elaborate scheme. This kills a fair amount of the suspense we might otherwise feel at seeing one of our old favorites fallen into the hands of ruthless enemies.

At the very end Arrhae/Terise chooses to stick around among the Romulans rather than being swept up in the rescue effort that gets McCoy safely away from the planet. In fact, she even ends up as a media hero for what she (apparently) did during the grand finale of the story. My major objection is that Commander Ael t'Rllaillieu, co-star of the previous "Rihannsu" novel by Duane, only gets to appear at the very end of this one and opens a real can of worms in the process, one which then waited thirteen years to be addressed (as you might guess, I first read this story no more than a couple of years after it was first published, and got kind of bitter about the lengthy delay in seeing more of Ael). Stay tuned for details - I recently picked up two more volumes by Duane in her "Rihannsu" series and will be reviewing them here in the near future.


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