The Captain's Oath

Star Trek: The Original Series

By: Christopher L. Bennett

Narrated by: Robert Petkoff

Length: 11 hrs and 58 mins

Publisher's summary

An all-new novel based upon Star Trek: The Original Series, featuring Captain James T. Kirk and the crew of the Starship Enterprise!

©2019 Christopher L. Bennett (P)2019 Simon & Schuster

Not just an origin story

While some may feel that Trek prequels are being run into the ground, this is a notable highlight amongst them all while still being its own independent story. There are two intertwined A and B stories (more like two segments in the timeline) that come together to create a nice history of Kirk and the gang just before and just after he becomes captain of the enterprise. Yes, you can probably guess the ending to everything fairly easily, and there is yet another eye roll worthy attempt to have a Trump character inserted at one point, but this is none the less one of the most entertaining Star Trek books to come out in the past year or two, and Robert Petkoff is once again brilliant as he always is.

best star trek novel I've read

first book I have personally read, where I feel the actually got Kirk right. The stories in the book could have been two seperate books.

Very piercing look into the human condition

I remember looking at the reviews of this book and being amused at the Trump supporters who felt that this novel was a rehash of liberal indictment against right-wing values. What they don't remember is that Star Trek has always been a boundary pusher for what might be considered liberal values. The Vulcan IDIC concept, infinite diversity in infinite combination, is one of the Federation's key tenets, and is represented by the many alien races that comprise it. Humans, Vulcans, Caitians, Rigelians, Andorians, Tellarites, and many more races working together to create a civilization more than the sum of its parts. The acceptance of refugees into Federation space is a key factor in this story, as well as the utterly alien nature of these refugees as well as the need for understanding to bring about peace. There is no blatant indictment of right wing values in these concepts, and if you as a reader think there is, then that speaks volumes about you as a human being, and the kind of values you hold dear and furthermore, if you feel criticized by this story or this writer, it might behoove you to reflect upon what we as sci fi fans want for the future. Ask yourself why you were sensitive to the topic, or offended.

Review of The Captain's Oath: Star Trek

Great set of Star Trek stories connecting characters from 2 separate commands of Captain Kirk. The same good comforting feelings were experienced as when watching episodes of the original series. Very good narration that kept the characters distinct from each other without trying to imitate the original actor's voices.

A great adventure

It was read very well that it wasn't very hard to picture the Star Trek crew. I would listen to it again

Best reader

The story jumps between past and present. Sometimes it's hard to keep up, but it is still interesting.

What I love this, is the narrator. I have tried several star trek audiobooks, but Robert Petkoff seems to be the best. Not trying too hard he nails TOS character voices naturally.

Great story telling!

Sad that many in some other reviews found this book “woke” and don’t finish it, it was in my opinion one of the strongly best written books of TOS, and unless your so far right wing, you will likely have no idea what wokeness anyone is referring too, just 2 great stories following Kirk pre and post Enterprise.

WELL-DONE!

I really enjoyed the tribute to the original series. Would like seeing the author add more stories. Nice to hear more about Mitchell and Kelso. Seeing Kirk and Spock work together early was nice, as was the story with Kirk and McCoy. Star Trek: The Original Series has always been my favorite - Without that, there's no 50-plus years of a an entertainment legend. Solid narration, too! How about an encore? :-)

Just OK

Reading and character definition was very good. Story was just ok and even a bit boring at times.
The time period jumping was not that smooth and almost annoying to me.

Good story, but the structure was distracting

I thought the overall story was good, but the jumping back and forth in time was distracting and unnecessary. A linear telling of the events would have made the story much more enjoyable. Having said that, if your tolerance for constant shifts in story timeline is high, then you can enjoy it like I did.