Demons

(Star Trek 30)
by
J. M. Dillard

Pocket, July 1986, 251 pp.
ISBN: 0-671-62524-1

Genre: Science Fiction
Subgenre: TV Tie-In
Reviewed: 2/4/1999

Reviewed by: Conan Tigard

Book Cover

Excerpt

”Jim?” McCoy Called…

”No point in going in there. They’re both out cold.”

Kirk stopped at the entrance to the little room and half-turned his head toward the doctor. McCoy could not see his face. “Just wanted to check on Anitra,” he said easily. “No harm in that, is there?”

There was a heartbeat’s pause. No harm, that McCoy could see…yet there was something wrong with the question, with the way that Kirk stood in the doorway. McCoy realized that the hairs on his scalp and neck were standing straight up.

”Dear God,” McCoy whispered. “Jim—“

Kirk’s back relaxed. “Something wrong, Doctor?”

”Yes. Yes, there’s something wrong,” McCoy croaked, forcing the words from his throat against their will. In the midst of his terror, he was suddenly struck by anger at what had been done to his friend. “Just what in hell are you?”

Synopsis

Silek, Sarek’s brother, returns to Vulcan from an archeological site on Beekman’s Planet. With him he brings, as do a lot of other people that were traveling with him, a relic of the long dead people that lived on the planet. Little does he know that inside the relic an evil sleeps waiting to be awakened.

Sarek finds a way to open it and becomes possessed along with a lot of other people on Vulcan. As this “virus” starts taking over more and more people, causing them to become extremely violent, even murderous, because of their need to feed daily, little does Captain Jim Kirk of the USS Enterprise realize, but his ship has also become infected.

The virus is passed on by simply by looking into an infected person’s eyes. Commander Spock, Dr. Leonard McCoy and Dr. Anitra Lanter struggle against time to figure out how the virus is spread and how to cure it without having to destroy everyone on board the Enterprise and the planet Vulcan.

They must stop it before it spreads further into the Federation. Unfortunately, the only place equipped for them to do their research is in the middle of where the infection started, where it is the most dangerous for them to go…Vulcan.

Demons is a science fiction book in the Star Trek world and was written by J.M. Dillard. It is Star Trek number 30.

Review

Demons a very fast-paced book and I found it to be highly enjoyable. Most books you read build up slowly to the end. Not this book! I found that it was moving at top speed before page 100 and continued at a great rate until it was over. I love that!

No stardate is listed, but I assume that is takes place somewhere after the fourth movie: Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home.

I definitely recommend this book to all Star Trek enthusiasts. If you aren’t one of those, but just feel like reading a fun story, this is a great place to start. The Star Trek characters are all portrayed perfectly. The author obviously knows these characters well.

Demons is probably one of the best Star Trek books I have read.

I rated this book a 9 out of 10.