Thursday, January 4, 2018

Retro-Rocket Review: The Funniest Star Trek Novel Ever




I have been reading aloud to my kids for more nights than I can count.  We started bedtime books when the eldest was nine...and that kid now has a PHD.  We still do bedtime books now, when the youngest is 12.  We have read the Narnia books, and the Tolkien books, back-to-back-to-back, and with the possible exception of some of the Percy Jackson books and two or three of the Myth Inc. books, none of them has had my kids rolling on the floor as much as How Much for Just the Planet.

Think about it.  Federation prospector ship and Klingon battle-cruiser discover a huge deposit of dilithium on a planet, simultaneously.  The Federation crew is forced to abandon ship, sending it on to contact the Enterprise.  However...the ship's computer is malfunctioning, and as the escape pod leaves the ship, the food replicator begins spewing out an unstoppable flood of peppermint milk shake.

It only gets weirder from there.

Then, when both the Enterprise and the Klingon cruiser Fire Blossom arrive to negotiate for the rights to the dilithium, the natives decide to make their point...musically.  The book reads like a Gilbert and Sullivan musical, with the crews of both ships being dragged along on one misadventure after another.

Fun, laid back, refuses to take itself seriously.  

-=ad=-

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