Klingon Bird-of-Prey Haynes Manual (Star Trek)

While general consensus among serious Trek fans was that Haynes' 2010 Enterprise manual was a bit of a shallow novelty item, this follow-up on the Klingon Bird of Prey is an improvement in almost every respect. Instead of simply rehashing the history of the I.K.S. Rottaran and serving up some basic factoids, this "manual" provides a pleasingly detailed technical overview of the vessel and it's systems, accompanied by a decent number of specially created computer illustrations, deck plans, and screenshots from the TV series and movies. My inner geek delighted in seeing so much effort put into describing this iconic but rather mysterious starship. The authors have put a great deal of effort into detailing what makes these ships such potent war machines, while setting aside ample space to describe their purely functional aspects. Along with descriptions of the ship's weapons and defensive systems, this book also describes the Rottaran's hull structure and armor, landing gear, sensors, warp drive and engineering systems, and a slew of minor systems. There's even a maintenance schedule (don't forget to replace the cloaking generator teleport waveform accelerator every 560 cycles!), descriptions of the roles of each crew member, and a handy Klingon-to-English glossary in back.I'm tempted to give this book five stars, but I have a couple reservations. Some of the illustrations are a little shaky, a couple looking a little too sharp, some appearing too soft. I found some of the attempts at making the book more "Klingon," such as having the subheadings and page numbers in both English and Klingon, and including a Klingon emblem on every bottom-left corner, a little hamfisted. That aside, I found this to be a very enjoyable, imaginative reference work. It's a lot more than detailed than it's 125 page length might suggest, and a pleasant surprise considering how disappointing Haynes' Enterprise manual was, and that the last "serious" Trek manual was the DS9 Technical Manual released back in 1998.

Interesting source with some great diagrams and comparisons. Lots of interesting lore in this, if you're fan of Klingons and the bird of prey.That said, I would have preferred a bit more detail around the history of the KBoP model, and how things ended up the way they are. I realize that's not what Haynes is trying to accomplish with their line of fictional vehicles, but it would have been awesome to have a chapter or two at the end about how the models were made, and why the KBoP we know and love came to be. For instance, knowing the early drafts of Star Trek III had Romulans as the main antagonist, and they started work on the model before switching to Klingons, explains a lot about the both the bird of prey and the backdated explanations for why Klingons have cloaking tech. I know they're trying to create the illusion of reality, but the real stories behind the development of the KBoP, Enterprise, Millennium Falcon, etc. are just as interesting as the fictional universes they exist within. In fact, I think the real histories can be more interesting and give clarity to the decisions made by designers, produces, directors, etc. Different book I suppose, but there's an opportunity missed in these Haynes books... the team obviously did their research, so I imagine they came across many of those stories along the way.

I am not a huge Star Trek fan but I enjoy the TV series and the movies. I have seen these Haynes manuals before for other off the wall things and thought it was a joke or something. I used to purchase Haynes books for every vehicle I owned back when you could fix your own car. I can honestly say I have enjoyed this book. It is full of information and I learned a ton of stuff about the Star Trek universe. The only reason why this is rated four-stars is the pictures and diagrams on the Kindle are hard to use. The deck plans are good example of what I mean. You can zoom in on a selected deck plan but the description is not on the photo. You have to look at the diagram and then close it and see what number '14' is as an example. If I had a do over button I would pay more for the printed format. I love my Kindle but some books just don't transfer well to a digital format. I give the book 5-stars but the Kindle version 4-stars. If you are looking for a gift for a Star Trek fan buy them this in the printed format. They will love it.

While this was just what I needed, and is now signed by Rick Sternbach, it did arrive with scrapes on the cover. I am fairly certain these happened in transit and am by no means accusing the seller of shipping a damaged item.

Not only does this book go into the design and workings of a klingon bird of prey, the authors were inventive enough to offer good explanations for the variations in the ships we've seen in the movies and tv shows.To further that dialog a good part of the book focuses on one particular ship and why that captain liked that ship and how he fought it.And as an appendix, there are size comparisons between bird of preys and other klingon ships including older designs as encountered by the USS Enterprise NX-01.Common klingon words are also included as well at a table showing klingon writing and their roman character equivalents.I am glad that I added this book to my library.

When I was given the U.S.S. Enterprise Haynes Manual as a christmas gift I was actually relieved it WAS a christmas gift as it was quite disappointing. Neat, but disappointing.Then the Bird of Prey manual came around and I was hesitant to purchase it at first, but seeing as the BoP is my favorite all-time ship from Star Trek I went ahead and put in preorder.Read it, loved it, would give it more stars than usual as it's incredibly in depth about a fictional piece of equipment and it's function. They go into a lot of good backstory about how one of these is commissioned as well which, canon or not, was well thought out.Highly recommended.

Could have been better. I was hoping for the "I bought one on eBay and this is how you fix it" type of book but it was more show based than I would have liked. Its a nice conversation peice though and I am did enjoy most of it.

The graphics and detail in this manual far exceeds the Haynes Enterprise Manual. Its more what this type of Starship technical manual should be the only negative was that the deck plans were too small they should have been on 11x17 folded out and laidout to maximize showing the deck arrangement. Thumbs up on this one

I doubt even the Enterprises database is as complet as this book. Great visual and illustrations of a classic Star Trek ship !

Every "Trekie" will love this book. Live long and prosper!

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