Heartwarming / Spock's World

• Spock's conversation with Sarek at the beginning, while couched in Vulcan logic, contains sporadic moments of good natured ribbing between the two, such as Sarek asking if Spock is indulging in human "small talk" and noting that it is logical that Spock should think of his mother and wish her well.
• Upon returning to the ship from shore leave, Kirk encounters two crewmembers who had just had their engagement party while planetside. Having learned that the groom's mother was uncomfortable with him marrying someone who outranked him, Kirk put the man in for a well-earned promotion...the orders for which arrived during the party, to everyone's delight.
• One word: Naraht. Just one of many of the Enterprise minor officers... except that he's a Horta. More so, he's a son of the Horta that Kirk and Spock rescued in "The Devil in the Dark." Now he's working with the crew who realized the truth about his people and about-faced their position to protect them. Just as one would expect from the Federation's policy that adopting new alien races to the fold promotes general well-being, Nahraht is quite happy in his new posting and the Enterprise's various departments are constantly battling over who benefits from his unique abilities. It may be an almost throwaway moment, but it's still quite heartwarming.
• Kirk's encounters at a party partway through the book, specifically Savesh and T'Mahdt. It's encouraging to see that, amidst all the arrogance and bigotry sometimes associated with the breed, there are decent Vulcans besides Spock himself.
• McCoy's compassion for the Vulcans. He really doesn't like their ideology, admits that they scare him sometimes, and could have had a major grudge against them for what they nearly did to his two best friends. But it's clear that he honestly doesn't want them to hurt themselves.
  McCoy: Pride and fear together have gone with all your falls before, and the one you're about to to take now if you're not careful. I would very much like to see you not take it. I am rather fond of you people. You scare me sometimes, but it would be a poor universe without you. But unless you move through your fear, which was the emotion Surak was most concerned about — and rightly — and come out the other side, the fall is waiting for you... Surak would be very Disappointed in You if you blew up the planet. And so would we.
  • McCoy's efforts to keep the planet from making this mistake grow more impressive when Spock mentions the two had a Side Bet on the outcome of the secession vote (which Spock won). The doctor may have bet that Vulcan would secede despite everyone's efforts, but his actions throughout imply he wasn't upset about being wrong. McCoy apparently didn't have much hope that things would work out, but he poured his heart and soul into the battle anyway...and succeeded.
• Surak. The Vulcan philosopher whose movement for Logic saves his whole planet as he hoped it would, even at the cost of his own life.
• Sarek's story, where he's taken from a tech lab and - for reasons he can't fathom at the time - sent to serve as staff for a new off-world embassy with this race the Vulcans just met called "Humans". He ends up enraptured by his experiences on Earth to where he impresses the Vulcan government - and his matriarch T'Pau - into being named ambassador.
  • And then he meets Amanda. And we find out why marrying her was "the logical thing to do."
  • The chapter ends with Sarek and Amanda staring down at their newborn son Spock, with the reader well aware of how important his character will become....
• At the very end, the leader of the secession movement, now in custody, asks to see Kirk, Spock, and McCoy. The three have some of the best reasons of anyone caught up in the recent crisis to be angry at this person, but they remain gentlemen. Furthermore, this stuns the secession leader, who had expected mockery, and Duane hints that it may surprise said person into letting go of their anger and changing their life.