Book Review: Star Trek: Defiant Vol. 1 by C. Cantwell et al.

Star Trek: Defiant Volume 1 written by Christopher Cantwell, art by Angel Unzueta, and colors by Marissa Louise

Worf and Spock reluctantly team up to hunt down Kahless II, a renegade Klingon who wants to reunite the empire. Kahless is killing god-like beings and somehow taking their powers, thus providing an ultimate weapon for conquest. The Federation is not on board with this grand conspiracy, so Worf and Spock (who are on board) steal the USS Defiant to complete their self-assigned mission. A few other familiar faces join their crew as their adventures go on.

While the story is interesting, it does have a lot of parallels with Picard Season 3, maybe too many. The dramatics feel a bit like reruns from other stories and make the overall narrative less interesting than it should be. Also, this is part of some other concurrent stories (as referenced by footnotes) so it has the MCU problem of keeping up with a large variety of narrative threads. If you are a die-hard Trekkie, you'll get everything (though, you have to have read other contemporary comics). Otherwise, some surprise twists and character revelations are not so surprising. A reader can't say, "Wow, that person came back!" when they don't know who that person is and how they connect to the others.

Mildly recommended. I wasn't impressed enough or hooked by the story to keep reading.