Star Trek: Summon the Thunder by Dayton Ward and Kevin Dilmore is the second book in the 9 book Star Trek Vangaurd series. This book takes place very soon after Harbinger by David Mack ended. This book does not feature anyone from the Star Trek the Original series, like the last one did, but with events that happened in this book Kirk, Scotty, Chekov, and Uhura will all return in the series soon. The event of this book take place in the far reaches of space between The Klingon Empire and Tholian space on Starbase 47 also called Vangaurd. The Starfleet mission is set up to look like a peace keeping mission, but really the Starfleet Federation is looking at a higher life form and a potential weapon. The first book had a lot of internal conflict and character development, this book continues the conflict but loses some of the character development. This book had more action than the first but did not always do the best job describing it. This story had a great beginning but lost momentum in the middle a little bit and pulled out a decent ending that made me want to read more. The Shedai Wanderer has some great action scenes and seems like a really interesting character that could be the enemy or really misunderstood. Star Trek: Vangaurd 2 Summon the Thunder was published by Pocket Books on July 1 2006.
Plot Summary: The spaceship the Endeavour is on a mission to check out a power source and possible weapon that was discovered in the last book on the ice planet Erilon. The surface team thinks they are investigating a dormant planet with a power source beneath the planet until they are attacked both on the surface and in the air. The Klingons are searching the same thing on another planet as they are attacked on the surface and in air, but this time the end result is different with the Shedai against the battle hardened Klingons. Also to make things more interesting the Romulans curious abut what is going on see the power of the weapon first hand. Things get messy as the Vanguard sets up peace talks while hiding what they know of power of Shedai.
What I Liked: The political intrigue was told really well and made more interesting by the Romulans join the fight. The Quinn and Pennington adventure was fun and I liked a twist element that was in the story. Both these characters were my favorite of the last book, they are not in too many scenes but make the most when involved. I liked Reyes finally letting his lover and second in command know the truth. I like the science of the crystalline material. I liked the Shedai and how it operates, it is not explained really well until the second battle. I liked the Romulan involvement and really liked all the scenes they were in. The Reyes and Pennington scene really good writing in that scene.
What I Disliked: The first battle on Erilon was a mess and I feel was not described well at all. I had a real hard time picturing it. There is no line break or anything when the narrative switches characters with in the chapter, it was really annoying and done at least 3 times. T’Prynn knows someone is a spy but did not seem to know this in the first book and doesn’t include the reader in how they found out or how long they have know it kind of came out of nowhere and didn’t even act like it was a big deal, when to the narrative it is a really big deal. Dropped the ball a bit in character development for this novel, when it was really excellent in the first.
Recommendations: This is a solid second novel in a series, that adds onto what was started in the first book. This book had a lot more action 2 big battles and one smaller one. The character were rarely developed further but David Mack did such a good job in the first I noticed it more than I perhaps would’ve. The story overall was good and made me want to read more of the series. The next book David Mack returns which makes me really excited for the series. I rated Star Trek: Summon the Thunder by Dayton Ward and Kevin Dilmore 3.5 out of 5 stars.
Reading with My Eyes 