Star Trek - Bloodthirst

'Maybe it was an illusion created by the shadows, but the man's skin was gray, the expression pinched - like a corpse, McCoy thought, like a med school cadaver that'd been taken out of stasis and left lying around the classroom too long.'

Bloodthirst (#37 Pocket, #6 Titan) (1987) by J M Dillard is a vampire themed addition to the Star Trek novel series (as if you couldn't tell from the title) which I tried to hate, wanted to love and ended up with mightily confused feelings on the whole experience.

Back up.  Back up.

Bloodthirst is a book of contrasts, not just thematically but also in how successful Dillard is in writing.  The first half of the book is an uninteresting slog that takes far too long to get moving, but the second half is strong and keeps you turning the pages.  Misdirection of the reader promises a complex plot,  but in the end the simplest explanation was the correct assumption (Dillard appears to lose herself along the way).  Annoying 'OC' crewmembers take up far too many pages with their seemingly endless soap opera, but somehow I end up caring about two of them by the end.  And so on and so forth.  I'm pretty conflicted.  I feel like everytime I come up with a criticism, something else mitigates it, and when I find something I like I can recall something to the contrary immediately.   

It's not like Dillard was the new kid on the block at this point either.  J M Dillard is a pseudonym of Jeanne Kalogridis and Bloodthirst was actually her third Star Trek novel published.  Her previous titles were Mindshadow (1986) and Demons (1986) in which she develops two of her OCs Nguyen and Tomson.  I haven't read those two novels yet, so I can't really comment on them, but I am kind of looking forward to seeing how her writing developed (if it did).  Kalogridis (as Dillard - referred to here on only as Dillard) went on to write two more ST:TOS novels of her own devising and several ST movie novelisations, and many more stories set in the Star Trek universe.  She also has written her own original stories, including a few vampire ones.

It's funny, because as I was reading it (especially the first half) I was thinking that Dillard writes a lot like Vonda McIntyre, because of her overbearing original characters, and she ends up doing the novelisations for the films, just like old Vonda did.  She also, unless I am very much mistaken, also references one of Vonda's OCs Snnanagfashtalli (also seen/mentioned in 'Uhura's Song') two or three times in passing, but I'll be damned if I can find those references again, I should have put a sticky when I noticed them.  I have to admit that her likeness to Vonda McIntyre soured me a little towards her, but she managed to somehow mollify me later.  I should explain, I spent much of the first half of the novel wondering whether I should give Bloodthirst a 1 or 2 / 5.  I thought 1/5 would be a little too harsh, and that it was a solid 2... but somehow Dillard turns it around in the second half and Bloodthirst claws its way to 3/5.

Now I have to admit, I really do like Vampire stories, but, do they do well in Star Trek? Well, it's not like we haven't seen them in the TV series itself - what about the salt vampire?  The concept is the same, a parasitic creature who can pass as human and then attacks, usually killing the victim, sometimes creating more of themselves.  Bloodthirst takes the concept of vampire and tries to 'sci-fi' it with varying levels of success.  What I do like is the whole 'vampirism' as a disease and medically explicable, it's still scary without the mysticism - it might actually be more scary when talking about a potential plague - but I think it was a mistake to try and shoehorn the vampire mythos in.  Dillard feels the need to explain the mystical vampire by having Spock explain it, and then later Chekov reveals his crucifix (given to him by his Russian grandmother, naturally) which means he'll be safe.  Urgh... if the crew aren't bothered with the mystical aspect, either because they are ignorant of folklore / literature (which always bothers me when it comes up, why do they always have no idea of these things?) or they simply have no time for it when it can all be solved with an inquisitive mind and science.

It's not a secret that the 'vampirism' is a man made virus, that is clear from the beginning, what's more pretty early on Kirk, Spock & McCoy realise that they have stumbled onto a bio-weapon hot lab associated with Starfleet.  They are also right on the money when they name an initial suspect, although Kirk uncharacteristically flip flops between trust and distrust.  Dillard tries to throw red herrings out, but they are easily identified as such, and consequently much of the time I spent cursing the characters for their epic shortsightedness.

Speaking of characters, Kirk, Spock and McCoy were at times weakly written, which I think is a symptom of authors wanting to write their original characters how they wish and then bending to established characters to support their creations.  This weakness is confirmed as the story progresses, and the OCs take a step back and Kirk, Spock and McCoy wrestle control of the plot.  That being said, I did get attached to one of the characters - Stanger - who I thought was particularly well constructed.  However, as nice as he is he doesn't quite merit the amount of time lavished  on him and his companions  at the expense of good characterisation of existing characters.  I feel that they could easily have been substituted for other members of the bridge crew (who get very little time), which would be preferable to the security personnel soap opera, which kind of feels like 'upstairs, downstairs' in space.

The villains are a little wishy-washy, their motivations a little weak.  The 'vampire' is a pretty sinister character, satisfying to hate, but the other main villain (and his allies in Starfleet) is unconvincing.  The motivations of these people to do what they were doing was only understandable to a point, the scale in which they wanted to revenge themselves was far fetched and unreasonable to the extreme.

Additionally, there are many loose ends, for example the Vulcan spy, Sepek, or the fact that Starfleet knew about the research (because of Sepek) but did not step in to avoid pointless deaths or take any action.  Kirk was essentially left to his own devices and Starfleet stayed silent.  This just seemed very clumsy - Waverleigh didn't have to die, it was painfully obvious what was going on, why didn't Starfleet intelligence intervene?  How did the admiral and assistant get to Tanis?  Where was the ship which got them there?  How were they going to get away with it... we'll never know!

Anyway... Bloodthirst is ok.  Decidedly middling, nothing to really write home about, but not particularly offensive either.  I mean, you could always do worse I suppose?  If you like vampire stories you might want to give this one a go or, perhaps if you like 'strong' original characters then this might suit you.

3/5 - No Dracula