Christopher L. Bennett returns to his passion project of exploring the The Motion Picture era in the latest Star Trek novel, The Higher Frontier.

Set at the end of Kirk’s second five year mission aboard the Enterprise — which followed the events of Star Trek: The Motion Picture, but preceded The Wrath of Khan — The Higher Frontier bridges the gaps between the two films in another sweeping tale that connects various parts of the Star Trek canon into a satisfying story.

Given everything going on in the world right now, The Higher Frontier has not received the attention it deserves. And that’s a shame; with much of the world’s population currently in some form of self-isolation, what better time than to read a great Star Trek novel?

And The Higher Frontier delivers, providing all the Kirk/Spock/McCoy movie-era action that you could wish for.

Bennett has been slowly exploring The Motion Picture-era Enterprise crew since his first full-length Star Trek novel Ex Machina was published in 2005. That book and The Higher Frontier serve as bookends for Kirk’s second five year mission; Ex Machina picking up immediately following the end of The Motion Picture, and The Higher Frontier leading directly into the events of Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan.

The novel begins with a tragedy: the massacre of the Aenar — the Andorian subspecies introduced in Star Trek: Enterprise — at the hands of a mysterious enemy. Kirk and the Enterprise are sent to investigate, and solicit the help of Miranda Jones and the Medusan ambassador Kollos from the Original Series episode “Is There in Truth No Beauty?”

It’s very much like Bennett to stitch together disparate parts of the Star Trek canon with some thread you didn’t realize existed, and he is true to form in this novel and continues to be a master at reconciling Star Trek canon and continuity.

As the mystery of the massacre of the Aenar unfolds, it is paired with a different mystery: the emergence of human telepaths in the wake of V’Ger’s arrival on Earth five years earlier. Calling themselves “New Humans” — one of several nods, call backs, and allusions to Roddenberry’s novelization of The Motion Picture — these individuals have begun manifesting telepathic skills not seen before in humans.

Through the novel, Bennett weaves together The Motion Picture, The Wrath of Khan, “Is There in Truth No Beauty?” “The Aenar,” “Where No Man Has Gone Before,” and includes references both subtle and overt to Discovery, and the depiction in the novels of Andorian culture, as well as Bennett’s own previous work in this era and last year’s The Captain’s Oath.

There is also a lot of great character work in this novel that helps bridge the gap for Kirk and Spock, in particular, between The Motion Picture and The Wrath of Khan. Kirk’s return to the admiralty, and a position at Starfleet Academy no less, and particularly Spock’s decision to finally accept the rank of captain, and command the USS Enterprise, are handled well. Spock’s arc is perhaps best served of all the characters, as it was in Ex Machina also.

If there is one disappointment with the novel, its structure does feel slightly similar to last year’s The Captain’s Oath. That book chronicled the first command of James T. Kirk prior to being offered captaincy of the Enterprise, and spanned a period of several years that ultimately set up where we meet Kirk on screen.

In a similar fashion, The Higher Frontier seems to start with the mandate to set up The Wrath of Khan, and work backwards from there. While it’s a lot of fun to dive deep into this period of history because it has not been fully explored, it does sometimes feel like Bennett’s recent books have a central conceit of taking a piece of unexplored Trek history or some contradiction in the canon and then solving it or filling in the gaps.

I would imagine he is likely responding to an editorial request for “big” stories to justify the trade paperback length and price of recent releases, but a smaller more intimate story would not be unwelcome from such an accomplished writer as Bennett.

Overall, The Higher Frontier is an enjoyable and brisk read that allows us to explore our favorite characters in a largely unexamined period of their history. I always thoroughly enjoy movie era stories for the more established, mature characters we encounter, and The Higher Frontier is no exception to that.

If you feel that the transition from Kirk at the end of The Motion Picture to the beginning of The Wrath of Khan is… well, a bit weird, then this book is the one for you.