The Janus Gate: Future Imperfect

I may have been slightly overenthusiastic in reviewing book one, Present Tense, of L.A. Graf's trilogy - the follow-up was a bit of an anti-climax in comparison. I can appreciate the time-travel concept, and the alternative future with the gorns (heh), but without Kirk, who only features in a 'reduced' role here, I quickly lost interest. Sorry - no fault of Graf's - but I found myself skipping through the Sulu/alternate Chekov scenes on the gorn homeworld, and even the arrival of Mr Spock failed to liven up the underground time portal scenes. Clever - but stretched a bit too thin. Hopefully book three will restore the status quo in time honoured Trek fashion!

Book 2 focuses on Sulu and Chekov and solving the problems created in Book 1 by the alien transporter. They've figured out that it swaps people in time with another version of themselves and that it had happened to Chekov as well, when he was disoriented after falling into the cave river. I had figured that bit out when he disappeared a few hours later, but the reader doesn't get the clues for why the device moves specific people until into book 2. They have to solve the problem of the people trapped in the wrong timeline before their own out-of-time immunity runs out - the 3 days they are reliving after the Enterprise's slingshot back in time - to get their timeline back on the right track.

Thanks to the accidental triggering of an ancient alien technology, Captain Kirk has been banished to his own past. During a brutal massacre on Tarsus IV, Kodos the EXecutioner entered the history books as one of the most genocidal tyrants of the twenty-third century. As a boy, Kirk barely survived. Can he stand by now and let it happen again?