The Star Trek: Prometheus trilogy, written by German authors Brend Perplies and Christian Humberg (with translation assistance from Keith R.A. DeCandido), returns this month with The Root of All Rage.

This novel, which was originally published in German in 2016 in conjunction with the franchise’s 50^th anniversary, reaches the English-speaking world and continues the story of the USS Prometheus investigating a threat to the galaxy.

If you enjoyed the first book in the trilogy, you’ll enjoy this one too. Perplies & Humberg continue to spin out their story that stretches from the Lembatta Cluster, to Office of the President of the Federation on Earth, and to the Great Hall of the Klingon High Council on Qo’Nos.

The book is also stuffed full of references to the Star Trek canon, events and characters from other novels, some subtly, but many not so subtly intertwined with the narrative.

Overall, I enjoyed The Root of All Rage more than its predecessor, Fire with Fire, though the book still took a while to really get going. While I struggled a lot with Fire with Fire, this month’s The Root of all Rage really begins to pick up after the first third of the novel, and the back half is a fun adventure and an easy read.

When the narrative focuses on the Lembatta Cluster and the two protagonist ships – the USS Prometheus and the IKS Bortas – the book really hums. However, in the early parts of the book the narrative frequently gets dragged aside, and the crew of the Prometheus feel like they are relegated to supporting characters in their own trilogy.

I can see the intent behind including characters on Earth and Qo’Nos, as the writers were attempting to raise the stakes significantly for the protagonists and give the story a scope fit for the 50^th anniversary. Unfortunately, however, these sections of the book never really convincingly sell that the Lembatta Cluster crisis is one worthy of the attention of the entire political structure of the Federation and Klingon Empire.

In The Root of All Rage, the number of guest stars from the franchise continues to mount. Accompanying the Prometheus and the Bortas are Ambassador Spock and Ambassador Alexander Rozhenko, who both drop in and out of the narrative as required. Rozhenko in particular is entirely absent from the first portion of the book, suddenly reappearing as the story required.

Spock is handled better here than he was in Fire with Fire and felt more important to the overall narrative. However, I couldn’t shake the feeling that he was dropped in just because the writers wanted a main character along for the ride.

On Earth, Lwaxana Troi appears in this novel as an important guest star, and Captain Picard makes an appearance. Again, many of these inclusions of characters from the Star Trek canon can be fun, but these books are stuffed so full of them that there is little weight to it. Picard’s appearance, for example, is entirely superfluous to the story and feels like the writers were working on box-checking the characters they’ve always wanted to write.

In addition, spending so much time with guest stars robs the new characters of the USS Prometheus from development. Captain Richard Adams, who was little developed in Fire with Fire, remains a generic Starfleet captain with few discernible unique personality traits. Some of the other members of the crew are better served, but their character development is frequently brief which makes it confusing to understand which Starfleet character is which.

Thankfully, this problem does not hold true for the IKS Bortas, where the Klingon crew are well developed in the book and interesting. It is always welcome to see more of the Klingon perspective in Star Trek novels, and the Bortas are an interesting crew of misfits, many of whom have their own agendas. From a character perspective, the Bortas crew are the absolute stand outs from this novel.

Though The Root of All Rage’s character issues and sprawling cast of characters hurt the overall story, I still found the book to be an enjoyable, easy read. The narrative zips along, and the book’s final twist ties into an episode of The Original Series and a trilogy of Star Trek: The Next Generation novels that I was not expecting. I am excited to see how that plays out in the resolution.

If you’re a fan of galaxy-spanning Star Trek stories that include action, mystery, Klingons, and politics – and especially if you love fan service – I would say to go ahead and give the Prometheus trilogy a go, a definite improvement from the first book in the series.

If you liked The Root of All Rage, you should check out:

• The Q Continuum, Book One: Q-Space, by Greg Cox: The Prometheus trilogy ties into the events of this book its two sequels, originally published in 1999. The book involves a threat to the Q Continuum that Q enlists Picard’s help to solve.
   
• The Battle of Betazed, by Charlotte Douglas and Susan Kearney: The events of this novel are referenced a couple of times in The Root of All Rage, and depict the events surrounding the Dominion conquest and subsequent liberation of Betazed during the Dominion War.

Finally, if you like the first two Prometheus books, you can preorder In the Heart of Chaos, the third and final chapter of this novel series. Due in November, this release concludes the journey of the USS Prometheus and IKS Bortas through the Lembatta Cluster as they work to flush out a threat to the entire Alpha Quadrant.