STAR TREK: THE LOST YEARS (Lost Years #1) by J. M. Dillard
Published in 1989 by Pocket Books (Simon and Schuster) The idea behind the book is interesting: What happened to the characters from the original Star Trek series between the end of their original five year mission and the events of the movie Star Trek: The Motion Picture ? But, the follow-through is quite weak. The characters feel like cardboard cut-outs of themselves, especially McCoy. Kirk's decision to become an admiral makes sense. but McCoy's outlandish, petulant, even childish response to Kirk's decision was simply not believable to me. Even worse, the new characters are, at best, one-note wonders. McCoy and Natira, McCoy quits Star Fleet to find a woman from the TV episode "For the World is Hollow and I Have Touched the Sky." She is the leader of a group of refugees who live inside a giant spaceship that they thought was a planet. They had a romantic spark but when McCoy returns to visit her he finds that she has made a political marriage