Review: Star Trek: Lower Decks - Warp Your Own Way at Strange Horizons

Long-time readers of this blog will know that I write about comics rarely, and about media tie-in fiction not at all, so I hope the fact that my latest review at Strange Horizons is of a book that is both of those things will, in itself, be a sign that this is a book worth looking at. Written by Ryan North, with art by Chris Fenoglio, Warp Your Own Way is a story set in the world of the just-concluded, animated Star Trek series Lower Decks. Also, it's a Choose Your Own Adventure-style story. The reader follows series lead Beckett Mariner on her day off, making decision as trivial as what beverage to order from the replicator, and as momentous as how to fight off Borg invaders. Which might sound amusing but slight, but before long Warp Your Own Way begins to hint that there is a meta-narrative at the root of this branching decision tree, and by its end the book reveals itself as a puzzle the reader must solve.

I was so excited by Warp Your Own Way's ingenious use of the CYOA format—not to mention the fact that it is a great Lower Decks story—that I felt I could only review it by way of homage. The good folks at Strange Horizons were kind—or mad—enough to let me do so, and thus I give you: a Choose Your Own Review Adventure.

Warp Your Own Way initially seems to be running afoul of its parent series's love of fanservice. The various perils Mariner finds herself in are very clearly a playlist of the franchise’s greatest hits, and it's hard not to sigh a little when the action pauses to note the specific Voyager episode from which a current storyline is taken. But as the repetitions pile up, Mariner herself begins to observe that something doesn't make sense. When Khan attacks the Cerritos, it's Mariner who points out that his presence, not to mention his newfound vendetta against the ship's captain, seems borrowed from another part of the franchise entirely.

Eventually it becomes clear, from hints dropped at the end of each individual run through the story, that something more is going on. The repetition of Mariner's day, each time with different choices leading to different results, is not just something the reader of the book is experiencing, but something that a character within the story is causing to happen, for their own nefarious purposes.

That sounds like a classic Star Trek story

That sounds like a classic metafictional conceit

I wouldn't have picked up Warp Your Own Way if it weren't for a glowing review by Adam Kotsko, in which he ranked it near the top for Star Trek tie-in fiction (Gerry Canavan, quoted in the review, goes further, arguing that Warp Your Own Way is "the greatest Star Trek tie-in narrative ever, in comic or novel format", and I think I might agree). Adam writes regularly about Star Trek (including tie-in fiction) on his Substack, and is also the author of the forthcoming Late Star Trek, a review of the franchise's streaming era incarnation, which is forthcoming from University of Minnesota Press's Mass Markets series, next year.