Reviewer: Strider Signed [Report This]
Date: 03 Aug 2012 22:24 Title: Fifteen

Oh, no! This is why I usually don't read incomplete stories!

Anyway, thoughts so far. You could have this published. You might have to tone down the slash elements, subtle as they are, but I have no doubt that PocketBooks would accept it. If you ever need an editor, let me know.

You've made excellent use of this dynamic we see so often between Kirk and Spock (also fully present with McCoy, though that's not the point here). It's this absolute loyalty each has toward the other, this almost irrational need to protect the other--even if it means betraying the other for his own sake. And yet, neither can understand that the worst betrayal of all would be for the other to allow himself to be hurt. Did that makes sense?

I'm kind of doing a few chapters at once here...I'm glad you addressed the aftermath of Spock stealing the ship to take Capt. Pike to Talos IV. There just had to be some repercussions of that that we didn't see, and you address them here, making them a slow-growing seed of doubt, resulting from an action that Spock saw as protecting Jim and Jim saw as betrayal. Again, Spock protecting Jim at the risk of losing Jim's trust. So typical and the source of so many of their problems! You really explore that with wonderful angst and intensity.

The only suggestion I have is that every now and then you could be a little less oblique about what's happening. When Spock caressed-then-attacked Kirk, I wasn't entirely sure what was going on, because you gave us the lead-in and then the reaction, but actually skipped over the action itself. Was Spock going in for a nerve-pinch? Then with Spock's deal with the Cardassian, I wasn't quite sure what it was. At first I thought he was bargaining with his body, but even when Kirk figured it out, I didn't. I got the point, that Spock was making a major sacrifice for this information, but not the details.

But that's really a minor critique, and I've been enjoying this story immensely. I've actually lost sleep and blown off quite a bit of work to read it--and put one of my Star Trek novels on hold to read this instead. It's better.

I'll be eagerly waiting for updates!