Star Trek: Provenance Of Shadows (Crucible Book 1) - David R. George III

Title: Provenance Of Shadows (Crucible Book 1)
Author: David R. George III
Published: 2006
Chronological Period: 1930 - 1955 / 2267 - 2366

Available at:
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Review:
Provenance of Shadows by David R. George III is the 1st book in the Crucible trilogy of Star Trek novels which were written as part of the 40th anniversary celebrations. The story starts off after the events that occur in the Star Trek original series first season episode, The City on the Edge of Forever. From that point on we get to follow two stories from McCoy’s perspective. The first of these is where we see what happened to McCoy in the 1930’s on the assumption that Kirk and Spock didn’t manage to rescue him from the Guardian of Forever. The other story follows McCoy’s life after his rescue right up until his death.

This novel is without doubt a character piece, it tries to explore the reason why McCoy is the man he is. McCoy has always been a fascinating character and George has done a great job in bringing him to life in a manner that fits in with what we know of him. We do get to learn some interesting facts about him and whilst some of the psychological elements seem a bit melodramatic it was still thoroughly interesting.

However, there are a few issues with this characters driven approach. Basically, George has spent so much time exploring McCoy and padding out the story that the pacing is incredibly slow. Everything seems to be overly drawn out and because George decided to use the TV show as the basis for the overall plot points, most of what we see in the novel in terms of events is already known to us. This means, that there is no suspense or real excitement in the novel beyond what you may feel in regards to the exploration of McCoy’s psyche.

The 1930’s period does give George much more leeway and he has tried to add in some original events. However, even here the pacing seems rather slow and there is still a basic lack of surprise as we already know from the TV episode that the events around WWII are altered by McCoy’s presence. This part of the story however, really strives to explore the human condition via McCoy’s interaction with the other characters in this time period and I really enjoyed following this.

Overall, this is an interesting novel which tries to explore and explain McCoy the character. It does have some pacing issues and beyond the character exploration it doesn’t have the most exciting or entertaining of plot lines. However, if you are a fan of McCoy you would be mad to miss out on this novel which is almost a shrine to the man and his time within the Star Trek Universe.