Across the Night

Zine
Title:	Across the Night
Publisher:
Editor:
Author(s):	Alice Hooker
Cover Artist(s):
Illustrator(s):
Date(s):	1993 or 1994
Medium:	print
Size:
Genre:
Fandom:	Star Trek: TOS
Language:	English
External Links:
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Across the Night is a 54-page Star Trek: TOS slash novel by Alice Hooker.

It is also a single story in Within the Mirror #8.

Summary

"Kirk is abducted by the M/U Kirk and Spock in order to help in their plans to overthrow the empire."

Reactions and Reviews

An imaginative plot, intriguing characters and great sex, but distractingly imperfect sentences. Mirror Spock has developed an interspacial transferrer, and will go to parallel (our) universe and get Kirk. Mirror Kirk and Spock are wild, rough, hot lovers, but M-Spock thinks of the gentle encounter (what a lovely way to put it; while M-Kirk calls Kirk a faggot) from the other universe. M-Spock's plan, along with others in league with him, of which M-Kirk knows nothing, is to overthrow the Emperor and put Sarek in his place. Kirk will be the Emperor's bed slave, drug him and disengage the force field. M-Spock captures Kirk on a starbase and takes him back. He wants so badly to fuck him, but must not; Kirk must remain a virgin for the Emperor. M-Spock seduces him, to get him used to the touch of a man. A beautiful, sizzling scene - they do make love but without penetration. Really fine sex and well written. Hot scene: captive Kirk has to watch M-Spock and M-Kirk have sex. I very much love Sarek in this story. The image of Spock and Sarek together, both bearded, such regal figures, is very powerful. This Mirror Sarek is a very compelling character. I love how M-Spock loves his Kirk, but that does not preclude him from loving the other Kirk. He sees in Kirk all the good that his own Kirk keeps hidden, but which Spock will spend the rest of his days dragging from him kicking and screaming. I certainly enjoy M-Spock in this guise. He knows love, and is so seductive. The Emperor is a Human/Romulan, fascinating. I like Shortie and Beanpole -amusing campy guys - I laughed. Kirk submits to being the bed slave of the evil, disgusting T'han'an and succeeds in his task; the overthrow is successful. Very heartbreaking when Kirk and M-Spock had to part... Back home, Spock had already resolved, while Kirk was away alone and in danger, to never let him be alone like that again. He will offer to bond. Kirk offers a meld, to see all the love he has discovered he feels. I missed having more of mainline Spock in this story. Even though sometimes difficult because of improper sentence structure, a wonderful read.

I have rather mixed feelings about this one, I like the fact that the plot is an important part of the story, and it is generally plausible. I liked the characterisation, which presented the main characters as interesting people with a mixture of good and evil, (the brief appearance of Sarek was tantalising). The moments of violent sex between Kirk and T'han'an (the mirror emperor) were thankfully somewhat glossed over, and the moments between the mirror Spock and our Kirk were suitably passionate. But, I felt that the story ended too quickly. From when Kirk begins to put his plans in motion to the end, the story seems hurried. This is such a shame as there were many things that I was looking forward to having explained. Though sometimes the missed items were, I thought, reasonably excluded—for instance, Kirk's debriefing (though it must have happened it would have made dull fiction). Other times however I was left curious to know what happened, e.g. how did Kirk actually know the correct code for the force field? And why was T'han'an slightly insensitive to the

sleeping drugs?. Oh and of course I would have liked to see our Kirk

and Spock together at the end, but to be honest the story does work without that final sex scene.