Book 44: Forgotten History (Star Trek Department of Temporal Investigations)

Forgotten History by Christopher L. Bennett is the second installment of the Department of Temporal Investigations. This book takes a look at some of the Original series’s journey’s through time and their own department’s history.  This book is bleh to me.  

This is the first book in a long time where I really went this book is well written, seems to use the characters well but I couldn’t get hooked into the plot line. I just wasn’t compelled to keep reading it. In fact I actually started this book before Lords of Misrule but it was easy to pick up the other book first even though both were in my purse. It was when I kept it as the only book to read, I read it.

Forgotten History is the second book in the Department of Temporal Investigations. I haven’t read the first book in the series. In many ways I love jumping into a series at any point and see if it could just get the story without having all the back history. I believed that this was a great book to jump into since it can stand alone.

In many ways this book is much more of an Original series book. It stars Kirk, Sulu, Scotty, and that ilk much more then the Department of Temporal Investigations (DTI) cast book. It felt like that the DTI made cameos. Very important cameos to the plot but cameo roles never the less.  I think Christopher L. Bennett did a great job of capturing the voices of the classic Trek members.

My biggest fault with this book was that it was very fragmented and the plot wasn’t driving the reader. It was more of highlighting a few of the TOS journey’s to the past while the DTI crew also saw how some of their history was created. There were neat things in the book: interviews about time travel philosophy with the Enterprise crew, realizing your hero doesn’t always live up to the idol you made him out to be, a throwback to the Trouble with Tribble-actions episode, and playing with the different ideas of time travel.  It was fragmented and poorly knitted together. 

I couldn't fall in love with this book. It was only so-so. I need a book to grab me and just lmake me want to read it. This one failed to do so. It wasn't poorly written. It just wasn't special.