As a tie-in to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of Star Trek: The Original Series, Simon and Schuster’s Imprint, Pocket Books, released an exciting new trilogy by John Jackson Miller, long-standing bestselling author of Star Trek books. Like the Legacies trilogy released earlier last year, the Prey trilogy takes place across decades, encompassing characters from various series. While Legacies is essentially an original series trilogy, Prey is a next generation trilogy. As the title implies the core plot of the trilogy revolves around the Klingons, so there is action and intrigue aplenty.
The second book continues the story of Korgh’s desperate plan to claim the House of Kruge. You might remember Kruge as the Klingon who fought with Kirk on the Genesis planet in Star Trek III: The Search for Spock. In a very non-Klingon way, Korgh has set about taking the House of Kruge through subterfuge rather than an honorable fight. He hired the members of the Circle of Jilaan, an underground group of technologically advanced charlatans who use their holotechnology and professional actors to trick the weak for money.
If you ever saw Star Trek: The Next Generation “The Devil’s Due,” Ardra was a member of the Circle of Jilaan. So Korgh hires the Circle to trick a group of discommended Klingons, called the Unsung, that have lost their honor and have been living as a colony. The Circle, with a Betazoid named Cross as their lead actor, brings Kruge back from the dead to appear to the Unsung and inspire them attack in Kruge’s name. It’s a complex long con, brilliantly planned for decades by Korgh, but just as success is in his grasp things start to go horribly wrong. I don’t want to say too much more about the plot because I don’t want to spoil anything.
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John Jackson Miller has another winner with The Jackal’s Trick. This book is so engrossing it’s hard to put down. I can’t wait to read the third one. All the best of Star Trek is here: Picard at the head of the Enterprise, Admiral Riker on the Titan with his wife Deanna Troi helping him to sort out complex diplomacy, Worf on a quest of honor, Geordie La Forge working with Tuvok to solve a complex puzzle, intriguing secondary characters, and lots and lots of angry Klingons. What more could a Trek fan want?