To Reign in Hell: The Exile of Khan Noonien Singh

Best of the series!:
This is a great adventure chronicling the events of Khan's exile on Ceti Alpha V. The writing is superb and imaginative. For those who want to know what really happened in the years after Kirk's first encounter with Khan, this story by Greg Cox fills in all the gaps. From the establishment of the first settlement on the planet, to the destruction of Ceti Alpha VI that led to the demise of Ceti Alpha V, to the discovery of the nature of the dreaded "Ceti eels," to the death of Khan's ex-starfleet wife, Cox paints a complete and vivid picture of this great tragedy in the history of Star Trek. The first two books in Cox's Khan series do a great injustice to this superb ending novel, but this one more than makes up for the loss. If you haven't read any books in the series (The Eugenics Wars) by Cox, you might skip to this one so that you won't be disappointed.

great read:
This takes the story of Khan up to just before Space Seed from the original Star Trek.

Good story, but flawed...:
A nicely done finale, but I felt that while the plot was good, it had a few weak points. The dialogue. Usually not bad, but... "No! Not that! Anything but that!" Twice. Once was too many. Granted, it didn't start with "I was a dark and stormy night..." but still.... The bits with Kirk & co were mainly there to explain away most of the larger plot questions. Even wild stretches of science couldn't provide a plausible explanation for how Khan's movie crew ended up all blonde when the original crew was from all over, so the best was a vague "for some strange reason..." - which I have to admit is probably the best you could hope for. It was interesting, but I felt the first two books were much better. In some ways, the third book feels kind of like Boston's third album. Like he would have been happy with the first two, but just couldn't get out of doing a third.

Good book:
This book fills in the story of what happened to Khan between Space Seed and The Wrath of Khan. The author created a plausible story of how Khan's band of enhanced humans were able to survive on a planet laid waste by a shifted orbit.

Excellent story.:
This third book filling in the missing years of the life of Khan Noonien Singh is by far the best of the three, in spite of the fact that the first two were themselves pretty good. It is a telling of the events between the original series "Space Seed" episode and the "Wrath of Khan" movie, and in addition to filling in a lot of blanks, it does a fair to middling job of rationalizing some slight plot-holes in the movie. Not perfect, mind you; in spite of Cox's extremely good best efforts, I still can't entirely accept that Chekov was as oblivious as he was in the movie: Here you are, in the same solar system with the planet where Khan was marooned around two decades ago; you are investigating what seems to be the very next planet over from his, which is supposed to be virtually uninhabited, and your instruments find only traces of possible lower life forms. (Cox's efforts have convinced me that, to this point, it is reasonable to say nothing.) You go down to the planet, and find a Starfleet-Issue cargo container like the ones left with Khan; there is absolutely NO other viable explanation of where it came from. Yet you enter the structure, and only realize what's happened when you see the "Botany Bay" nameplate? You'd have to be mostly brain-dead. Chekov wasn't always the cleverest character on the show, but he wasn't THAT dense. Still, the explanations given were always the best we've gotten so far, and in most cases were actually quite plausible. For Star Trek fans who enjoyed the episode and movie that this book is based on, it's a must-read. For others, it still might be worth a look. It's smoothly written, with excellent characterization and pacing and a quite plausible plot.