Book Review: ‘Child of Two Worlds’ by Greg Cox

February 13, 2023 at 8:18 am | Posted in Books, Reviews, Sci-Fi, Star Trek | 1 Comment
Tags: greg cox

Star Trek: Child of Two Worlds is a standalone novel from The Original Series line of Star Trek books from Pocket Books. It was written by Greg Cox and was released in December 2015. 

The first thing I will say is that Greg Cox can  write some amazing Star Trek stories. Between this book and The Antares Maelstrom, he has made his way into my Star Trek author top five!

This book is a very straightforward book, and yet it has so much heart to it. Greg Cox takes the simple question of “Nature vs Nurture” and applies it to a Cyprian Girl who is kidnapped by the Klingons and has now become Klingon in almost every aspect. The question is does the Enterprise return her to the Cyprians?….or to the Klingons?

In reality, this book is all about execution. The idea itself is not terribly original, but rather every aspect of it was carried out to perfection. We get to see how the people of Cypria react, how the Enterprise crew reacts, and we also get to see how it affects Spock personally. The action is exciting throughout (a rarity in Star Trek books for me), and the themes are AMAZING!

Cox took an unconventional route of setting the book during Pike’s leadership of the Enterprise, and as a result it doesn’t have Kirk or the rest of the known crew. Instead, we have Pike, Spock, and Number One (who we now know as Una thanks to Greg Cox’s book Captain to Captain, but at the time of the writing of this book her name was only “Number One”). All three of them serve as our main point of view characters, with Pike getting a substantial amount of the page time but Spock stealing all of the scenes. This book really feels like a Strange New Worlds novel, even though it came out years before Strange New Worlds was even an idea (the TV show not the anthology line).

The questions this book raises are very complicated. There is no right answer in the end, and the way that Cox deals with it is quite admirable and writerly. In fact, I wonder if some readers will make the jump to equating the situation in this book to modern gender ideas happening today.

Overall, an excellently written novel! Greg Cox has done it again! I sped through this book and had such a blast with it! I cannot wait to pick up more books from him in the future. Five out of five!

Reviewed By: Jonathan Koan for Roqoo Depot.

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