Unravel timeless Star Trek mysteries in “Lost to Eternity”

Review: Star Trek — Lost to Eternity

If there’s one person we can trust to take a complex Star Trek tale and turn it into a tapestry of intrigue, thrills, and imaginative drama, it’s Greg Cox. By happenstance, we recently revisited Cox’s 2016 hidden gem Captain to Captain, and his The Rise and Fall of Khan Noonien Singh trilogy made the list of Top 5 Star Trek Novels some guy wrote back in 2022, so his pedigree is strong. How does his latest book, Star Trek: Lost to Eternity, hold up?

We mentioned Cox’s skill at scribing complex tales, and Lost to Eternity is no different. The narrative here focuses on three storylines, which operate in parallel for about half the book until they start to coalesce. The first plotline is in 2024, when a podcaster, Melinda Silver, and her producing partner, Dennis, try to get to the bottom of a cold case from 1986, a case where a woman mysteriously vanished in San Francisco after a couple of whales in her care were released into the wild. Another plotline is in 2268, when Captain Kirk and the crew of the Enterprise investigate the apparent kidnapping of a prominent Federation scientist, end up within a pre-warp civilization, and proceed to cause all sorts of ruckus – although much of this disruption is caused by the ever-present Klingons who arrive on the scene. Finally, Cox plays in 2296, when Captain Kirk and the Enterprise-A crew, which includes Saavik, tackle a diplomatic mission with two long-time enemies, the Romulans, and Klingons, as the three factions try to establish a rapport with a recently revealed species who live incredibly long lives.

It’s a bit to keep track of, so we definitely recommend reading this book in short order, instead of picking it up and putting it down for long periods. Otherwise, you might just get lost amid the three parallel storylines – until that is, they converge as we realize the antagonists in each plotline may very well be the same person, a man hellbent on cracking the secret of immortality. This man – known by various names depending on the time period, but we’ll just call him Doctor Kesh for now – has a backstory that is a neat callback to Cox’s landmark Khan trilogy.

Kesh’s quest for immortality scratches at a high-concept topic surely pondered by everyone under the Sun, and Kesh’s fanaticism is both sympathetic and ferocious. Kesh isn’t without mercy – indeed, life is the most sacred thing to him – but he has spent far too long unlocking the secret to eternal life to let anything get in the way. This quest, what we think is the heart of the story, reflects our shared vulnerability and the universal longing for something enduring amidst the transient nature of existence – an entirely appropriate storyline for Star Trek.

She shrugged. “We all have to go sometime.”

“Do we? I refuse to accept that. Why should any life, no matter how long or accomplished, have to come to some inevitable termination, regardless of what we do?”

– Melinda and the man who we’ll refer to as Kesh.

While we are talking about neat callbacks, the best part of Lost to Eternity is how thoroughly Cox uses elements of The Voyage Home to illustrate just how much of a mystery Gillian’s disappearance was to her contemporaries. Melinda, ever a curious journalist, interviews surviving witnesses of Gillian’s final days in 1986 San Francisco, including: the trash workers and joggers seen in Golden Gate Park when Kirk’s cloaked Bird-of-Prey arrived and departed that city; the grandson of “Miracle Milly,” the older woman from the hospital who miraculously grew a new kidney thanks to Doctor McCoy’s intervention; one of the nuns who witnessed Spock’s aquatic visit with the whales; and a few more. Whereas we never paid any thought to how the activities of Kirk and his crew during that movie would have impacted San Franciscans, and indeed, the world, after they returned to the future, Cox certainly has. His narrative here is a neat testament to how authors regularly fill in the blanks of this constantly expanding universe.

Rest assured, Greg Cox has delivered another Star Trek tale worthy of your bookshelf. The mystery of Melinda trying to solve Gillian’s disappearance, combined with Kesh’s centuries-long impact on certain events in the pursuit of immortality and how Captain Kirk and his crew counter those events, will keep you reading until the end. You might also gain a newfound appreciation for The Voyage Home (watch it again before reading this book if you haven’t seen it in a while), and how clever authors can be when they care so much about the universe to which they contribute.

You can order Star Trek: Lost to Eternity on Amazon now.

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