Star Trek #34: The Pandora Principle
                     Author Carolyn Clowes

                      Reviewed by Sue

This was another Star Trek book loaned to me by my dog walking
friend Jean. Once again it is one from the original series, not my
favourites of all of them, but I must admit that I thoroughly
enjoyed it.

The story revolves around a woman called Saavik who I vaguely
remembered from one of the films, III or IV. She was a prodigy of
Spock's and this story introduces her as a child, explaining how
they first met. At first, it isn't clear exactly who, or what, she
is. It emerges fairly quickly that she is one of the offspring of
a group of Vulcans who were enslaved by Romulans on an
unfriendly planet after their ships were captured. All the adults
have died, and only the children remain, unruly and brutal, Saavik
being no better than the rest and worse than some. A team of
Vulcans, including Spock and his father Sarek, have gone to the
planet Hellguard to rescue the children and try to rehabilitate
them.

There is one extra complication. The children are actually half
Vulcan and half Romulan, the result of the women from the missing
ships being raped by their Romulan captors. Many Vulcans would not
accept them because of this, so when Spock takes Saavik under his
wing, he makes it clear to her that she must not divulge where she
has come from or her heritage.

Saavik trains at Starfleet but her training comes to an abrupt
halt when a Romulan Bird of Prey is found drifting by the
Enterprise.  It appears to have a special cloaking device which
doesn't have to be disabled so that weapons can be fired. This is
a disaster for the Federation as it gives the Romulans a big
advantage but of course they are very pleased to have a version of
the cloaking system to examine and investigate.

However, there is something else on the ship, hence the title of
the story. This is something extremely dangerous and once this is
discovered, Spock and Saavik become deeply involved with finding a
solution. In fact Saavik is the only one who can.

This is an excellent story and I would heartily recommend it. It
is well paced and the ending is well devised.














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