The Janus Gate trilogy closes out with Kirk's story, though a lot of it is still from the POV of the junior officers. With Kirk, Sulu and Chekov all displaced in time, only hours remain to set the timeline straight. A new adversary, possibly the original antagonist the alien device had been built to fight, blocks the Enterprise crew's remaining attempts to access Captain Kirk's past location. They are building a blockade around Tlaoli and want to stop all use of the machine there. Lt. Uhura is in command of the Enterprise during the crisis and comes up with the solution that saves the landing party, with one startling sacrifice. The end leaves everything back where it started, after the repeated 3 days at the end of The Naked Time.

These three books were the best TOS fic I've read in ages, possibly the best ever and that's saying something given the amount of Trek I've consumed in the last 49 years. I'm just sorry it spent so long in my book stash that I've only just gotten around to reading it. ( )

I want to praise the world-building and time travel dynamics in the final part of L.A. Graf's Janus Gate trilogy, but I literally lost the plot. Sorry! Only when the Kirks were reunited in the final few chapters did I start paying proper attention again. Also, I think reading - and paying for - all three books in one would have worked better than trying to string a series out of one storyline (and inserting proper breaks in the Kindle version would help too). The first novel is fantastic, but when Kirk drops out of the loop, the characterisation falls a little flat for me - I understand the trend for playing up the secondary characters in the spin-off novels, but Kirk really does hold the rest of the crew together. Chekov and Sulu, at whatever age, will never be more than supporting cast for me. ( )

http://defcons-treklit.livejournal.com/17746.html#cutid1 ( )