There might not be a man with gold chains tugging at his face but there is a mummified corpse with three inch rabbit-like teeth.

Eating Hickey’s soul is like ordering two tacos from Jack in the Box at 3am

Novelizations are a tricky thing, especially if you’re working from an earlier version of the script. There’s minute changes (Regulus vs Regula, Alpha Ceti V vs Ceti Alpha V for example), expanded scenes (a *lot* more Peter Preston, Joachim has serious reservations about Khan), things that existed in the novels only later conceded as Canon (Sulu was already a Captain transferring to Excelsior at the end of the month (yes, the ship was already named) Saavik’s half-Romulan heritage (which might as well be canon by this point), and things that only exist here (Sulu again, nearly killed on the bridge when Reliant attacks in the nebula, resuscitated by David Marcus and out of the action for the remainder of the scene, and Spock not knowing Jim’s Birthday until *now*, Peter’s crush on Saavik and her tutoring him).

Then there’s also tweaks, I don’t know how much of it is author’s liberty and how much is script vs screen, but after 37 years of knowing this movie the words don’t flow nearly as well here. The words are sometimes substituted or flipped around. It detracts a bit from the overall product. Kirk is also a lot closer to despair and closer to the breaking point than the movie shows us, theatrically so. Despite all this though, it remains a fun read and there’s a bit little more to discover.

Gonna admit I did remember Kirk avoiding the urge to scream Dive! Dive! Dive!. that’s the ONLY thing I remembered for sure from the last time (aside from again Peter Preston and Saavik expanded backstory)

Here’s some (a lot of) notes and highlights:

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On board Reliant, Khan Singh shut off communications to Regulus I and stretched back in his chair. Not quite what he had foreseen, but a most satisfying climax, nonetheless.

Thank you, Star Trek II novelization for confirming that Khan does indeed cum when Kirk shouts his name into the ether.