Author Christopher Bennett returns to the Star Trek: Titan series of novels (chronicling the continuing adventures of Captain William T. Riker and the diverse inter-species crew of his new command, the deep-space exploration ship Titan) with the fifth installment in the series, Under a Torrent Sea.  (Click here for my review of book four, Sword of Damocles.)

The Titan crew discovers a water planet that, despite apparently having no land masses whatsoever, seems to contain sentient life.  Titan’s navigator, Aili Lavena, takes the lead in the investigation of this strange new world (which the Titan crew quickly nicknames Droplet), since she comes from a water planet and is fully comfortable exploring Droplet’s oceans without the aid of a shuttlecraft or environmental suit.  Guess what, things go wrong, and she soon finds herself stranded on the planet along with the injured Captain Riker.

Following on the heels of book four’s investigation into the background and character of Bajoran science officer Jaza Najem, Under a Torrent Sea provides us with a similarly detailed look at another Titan crew-member, the Selkie Ensign Lavena.  It’s great fun to read along as these novels explore these fascinating created-for-the-novels characters, while also continuing to throw lots of new wrinkles towards the from-the-TV-shows characters like Riker and Troi, and even the Elaysian Melora Pazlar (who appeared in one second season Deep Space Nine episode).

What I enjoy most about the novels written by Christopher Bennett is the time and space that he devotes to fully investigating and exploring the alien societies that he creates.  His previous Titan novel featured his extrapolations about the workings of an entire society of space-faring Cosmozoans, while Under a Torrent Sea contains a wealth of details about the conditions on a water-planet and the type of life that might be found there.  Of course this is all science fiction, but Mr. Bennett has clearly devoted time and attention to researching the scientific underpinnings of his story.   This brings his novel closer to speculative fiction than it is to pure fantasy, and enhances the engaging nature of the story being told.

All of this wouldn’t amount to much if he didn’t have a strong story to tell within that framework, and as always Mr. Bennett does not disappoint on that score.  I really enjoyed getting to know Ensign Lavena over the course of the novel and (spoiler alert!!) I was pleased that she wasn’t written out of the series at the end of the book, the way the focus of the previous novel was!  The strength of this main story keeps the book moving along at a quick pace.  It may be why I found myself enjoying this novel even more than Mr. Bennett’s previous Titan novel, Orion’s Hounds.  I really liked that novel, too, don’t get me wrong — but it was a bit dry in parts, perhaps because it didn’t have quite the same character through-line as this novel does.

I should also point out that this novel — while mostly quite series — contains one of the funniest moments in any Star Trek novel that I’ve read recently.  When an out-of-control Dr. Ree kidnaps the pregnant Deanna Troi, Tuvok must lead a security team to rescue her.  They encounter a planet whose inhabitants have structured their society on the principles of rigorous debate.  There’s a short sequence in which the logical Vulcan Tuvok attempts to out-logic one of the locals that is just marvelous. It’s a must-read.

While the film series has gone back to the beginning (exploring the early days of a young James T. Kirk) it’s a continuing pleasure to enjoy these novels that continue to push the Star Trek saga forward, both chronologically (telling stories set in the years after the final Next Gen film, Star Trek: Nemesis) and narratively (pushing the characters’ stories far beyond the familiar status quo).  I devoured this novel in short order, and am eager to begin the next one (Synthesis, by James Swallow)!

Previous Star Trek novel reviews:

Star Trek: Titan —  Book 1: Taking Wing, Book 2: The Red King, Book 3: Orion’s Hounds, Book 4: Sword of Damocles,

Star Trek: Deep Space Nine – DS9 relaunch overview, The Soul Key, The Never-Ending Sacrifice,

Star Trek: The Next Generation – The Sky’s The Limit, Destiny trilogy, A Singular Destiny, Losing the Peace,

Star Trek: The Lost Era — Book 1: The Sundered

Star Trek: Voyager — Full Circle

Star Trek: Mirror Universe (Books 1 & 2) — Star Trek: Mirror Universe: Shards & Shadows — Star Trek: Myriad Universes (Books 1 & 2) –

Beyond the Final Frontier — Josh’s favorite Star Trek novels

It’s been a bit of a while since my last review of a novel in Pocket Books’ Star Trek: Titan series, chronicling the post-Star Trek: Nemesis adventures of Captain William Riker and his new command.  After reading the first four novels when they were originally released, earlier this year I realized that I had fallen behind on the series.  Since a few years had passed since the series began (the novels have been published at a rate of about one or two a year), I decided to go back and re-read the first four novels before moving on to the fifth and sixth installments (which were published this year).  However, after finishing book three, Orion’s Hounds, I got a bit distracted by my project to re-read all of Arthur C. Clarke’s Odyssey series, and various other things.  But now I’m back in the saddle!

Entering a region of space never-before explored by manned Federation starships, the Titan encounters the planet Orisha, whose denizens have been menaced for centuries by a celestial phenomenon that they call “the Eye” which periodically wreaks havoc on their planet.  Many Orishans worship “the Eye” as a deity, one which sits in judgment of their society and regularly punishes them for their sins.  As the Titan crew attempt to investigate this phenomenal, things (predictably) go awry and the landing party is separated from the Titan and presumed dead.

Far from being deceased, the landing party find themselves stranded on the surface of a planet Orisha that seems much different from the planet they had observed from orbit.  As the crew (both on the planet and back on Titan) attempt to extricate themselves from the situation in which they have become enmeshed, they must struggle with aspects of the Prime Directive while also confronting questions about fate and destiny.

Sword of Damocles, written by Geoffrey Thorne, is another strong, enjoyable installment in this series of novels.  I’ve been pleased by how well the different authors have been able to maintain consistency in the voices of the many new-to-the-novels characters that make up the diverse Titan crew.  Mr. Thorne has a terrific grasp on the characters, giving each of them a distinct personality even as he weaves scores of alien Titan crew-members in and out of the narrative.  It was nice to see several members of the Titan crew — such as science specialist Jaza Najem, chief engineer Dr. Xin Ra-Havreii, and head of Stellar Cartography Melora Pazlar — get a lot of attention in the story, though I must confess some disappointment (small spoiler alert!) that one intriguing character was written out of the series by the novel’s conclusion, just when I felt that this crew-member was becoming a fascinating, fully-realized member of the ensemble.

What elevates Sword of Damocles above many other Star Trek novels are the magnificent final two chapters which bring resolution to a whole host of character threads without actually using any character’s name.  It is up to the attentive reader to determine which character is being referred to at which point.  That could easily have wound up being a jumbled mess, but Mr. Thorne’s strong prose turns those chapters into a beautifully poetic conclusion to the novel.  I don’t recall anything like that ever having been done before in a Star Trek novel, and Mr. Thorne (and his editor!) deserve great credit for his/their bravery.

I’m excited to have finished re-reading the four Titan novels that I’d read before — now it’s time to tackle the two latest books!  I’ve already started reading book five, Under a Torrent Sea, and I hope to be back here with a full report soon!

Previous Star Trek novel reviews:

Star Trek: Titan —  Book 1: Taking Wing, Book 2: The Red King, Book 3: Orion’s Hounds

Star Trek: Deep Space Nine – DS9 relaunch overview, The Soul Key, The Never-Ending Sacrifice,

Star Trek: The Next Generation – The Sky’s The Limit, Destiny trilogy, A Singular Destiny, Losing the Peace,

Star Trek: The Lost Era — Book 1: The Sundered

Star Trek: Voyager — Full Circle

Star Trek: Mirror Universe (Books 1 & 2) — Star Trek: Mirror Universe: Shards & Shadows — Star Trek: Myriad Universes (Books 1 & 2) –

Beyond the Final Frontier — Josh’s favorite Star Trek novels

Today I’m continuing my look at Pocket Books’ series of Star Trek: Titan novels, chronicling the post-Nemesis adventures of newly-minted Captain William T. Riker and the starship Titan.  (Click here for my review of Book 1: Taking Wing, and here for my review of Book 2: The Red King.)  While authors Andy Mangels & Michael A. Martin wrote those first two books, with the third novel in the series, Orion’s Hounds, they hand things off to Christopher L. Bennett.

The basic premise of the Titan series is that, following the cataclysmic events of the Dominion War and the other crises that followed, Starfleet has decided to attempt to return to its basic principles of peaceful exploration.  As such, they have commissioned the creation of a new class of starships, the Luna class, designed for deep-space exploration.  Will Riker commands the Titan, one of those new Luna class vessels, and he and his crew have been sent on a mission beyond the boundaries of the Federation (specifically towards the Gum Nebula, one of the largest astronomical landmarks in the Orion Arm of the Milky Way galaxy) to attempt to seek out new life and new civilizations.

As they travel into unexplored space, Deanna Troi and the other telepaths on board Titan find their minds touched by powerful consciousnesses that, while alien, nevertheless, feel somehow familiar to Troi.  The reason for that familiarity is soon made clear as the Titan discovers that the telepathic contact originated from a school of “star-jellies” — the same type of beautiful (and enormous) space-faring creatures that the U.S.S. Enterprise-D first encountered in the pilot episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation, “Encounter at Farpoint.”

However, along with the star-jellies in their natural habitat, Titan also encounters the Pa’haquel, a species that hunts the star-jellies as well as many of the other space-dwelling life-forms found in that part of the galaxy.  The Pa’haquel are actually able to manipulate the dead corpses of the jellies, turning them into their own ships in which they’re able to live and which they use as vehicles for their hunts.  Riker, along with many members of his crew, are horrified by the actions of the Pa’haquel, but as per Starfleet regulations they are reluctant to interfere in the culture of an alien race.

Of course, events (which I won’t spoil here) soon force their hand, and a member of the Titan crew commits an act that dramatically upsets the balance between the Pa’haquel and the star-jellies.  The repercussions of that event makes plain to the Titan crew that things aren’t quite so simple as Star-jellies=good and Pa’haquel=bad, and they discover that their actions have caused dramatic ripple effects that threaten to catastrophically disrupt the interconnected interplanetary ecosystem of this part of the Orion Arm.

Christopher L. Bennett’s Star Trek novels have all been marked by his efforts to infuse as much real science into the story as possible, and Orion’s Hounds is no exception.  In this novel, Mr. Benett asks (and extrapolates answers to) a number of questions that a consideration of the depiction of the star-jellies in “Encounter at Farpoint” suggest.  (How do these creatures live?  Where do they come from?  How do they breed?  Why do their interiors resemble the rooms and hallways found in inorganic starships?  Did they naturally evolve that way, or were they engineered?  Are these creatures sentient?)

But, most fascinatingly, Mr. Bennett goes further than that.  Over the course of the novel, Bennett makes reference to almost every space-faring organism ever depicted in the various Star Trek TV shows.  (There’s a particularly entertaining chapter early on, in which Mr. Tuvok discusses with Titan’s science officers all of the star-going creatures encountered by the U.S.S. Voyager over the seven seasons of that show.)  These creatures were the creation of many writers and special effects artists, separated by many years, who often had little to no thought about the scientific plausibility of their creations or, even less, how they fit together as a whole with the many other space-dwelling creatures depicted by other Star Trek episodes and shows.  But throughout Orion’s Hounds, Mr. Bennett attempts to provide some unifying scientific background for these creatures — how they live, and how they connect with one another in the larger galactic ecosystem.  This is fascinating stuff, and the careful thought that Mr. Bennett has given to these different creatures (often referred to in the novel as cosmozoans or astrocoelenterates) is almost as interesting as the main story being told.

As for that main story, I was delighted by its complexity.  This isn’t a simple tale with easily-defined heroes and villains.  At every turn, Riker and his crew learn that things are more complicated than they seem, and Mr. Bennett avoids allowing Riker any easy answers or simplistic solutions to his dilemmas.  On my first reading of the novel, I must admit to having been put off a bit by Riker’s indecision in the face of these complex challenges.  There are quite a number of pages of the novel that are devoted to the debates among the Titan crew as to the morality of their situation and the choices before them in terms of whether or not to get involved in the situation before them and, if they do get involved, what sort of action they should take.  But on a second reading, I quite enjoyed those philosophical debates.  In many ways, those portions of the novel hew most closely to classic Star Trek: The Next Generation types of stories, in which there was quite a lot of talking, amongst the Enterprise’s command crew, about the issues before them.

The Titan series’ greatest strength, or greatest weakness (depending on your point of view), is that these stories are all designed to be classic Star Trek stories of exploration, and that each novel is stand-alone.  Certainly there are character arcs that carry from one book to the next, but each novel presents an entirely new adventure, with new species and new phenomena.  This makes the Titan series rather different than the types of Star Trek novels that I have found myself most enjoying over the past few years.  I have written quite a lot about how much I have gotten into the increased interconnectivity amongst the last few years’ worth of Star Trek novels, now that there’s no new TV shows or movies that the books need to be careful not to contradict.  I’ve enjoyed that the novels have NOT been stand-alone adventures, but rather that each new book has moved forward the over-all story-line, often in dramatic and unexpected ways.

But the Titan series is different from all that.  As a result, I must admit that I have always found myself a bit less excited about each new Titan novel than I have been about a new DS9 novel, or a new post-Nemesis Next Gen novel.  That probably explains why the first Titan Novel, Taking Wing — which was very much a bout the complex political situation in the Alpha Quadrant following the events of Star Trek: Nemesis — has always been my favorite of the Titan series.  (We’ll see if that opinion holds when I have completed my journey back through the Titan novels.)  But upon re-reading the series so far, I have found myself pleasantly surprised by how much I have enjoyed the stand-alone exploration tales of novels like Orion’s Hounds.  When the character work is this solid (and represents solid continuity from book-to-book, even now that we’re venturing into the point in the Titan series in which each successive novel is written by a different author), and the adventure story is this interesting, consider me on-board.  I extend great praise to Mr. Bennett for his excellent work here.

Next up is Titan Book 4: Sword of Damocles.  I hope to be back here with my thoughts on that novel soon!

Previous Star Trek novel reviews:

Star Trek: Titan —  Book 1: Taking Wing, Book 2: The Red King

Star Trek: Deep Space Nine — The Never-Ending Sacrifice, The Soul Key, DS9 relaunch overview

Star Trek: The Next Generation — Losing the Peace, The Sky’s The Limit, A Singular Destiny, Destiny trilogy,

Star Trek: The Lost Era — Book 1: The Sundered

Star Trek: Voyager — Full Circle

Star Trek: Myriad Universes (Books 1 & 2) — Star Trek: Mirror Universe: Shards & Shadows — Star Trek: Mirror Universe (Books 1 & 2)

Beyond the Final Frontier — Josh’s favorite Star Trek novels

After being catapulted clear of the Milky Way galaxy at the end of Taking Wing (The first Star Trek Titan novel — read my review here), Captain William T. Riker and the crew of the U.S.S. Titan find themselves in the Small Magellanic Cloud, one of the Milky Way’s satellite galaxies.  This area of space also happens to be the home of the Neyel, the mysterious race of aliens with centuries-old ties to humanity first introduced in the novel The Sundered (read my review here).

While Taking Wing was focused on introducing Riker’s new ship and its extraordinarily varied interspecies crew, as well as wrapping up a number of dangling story-threads left by the end of Star Trek: Nemesis, The Red King (written by Andy Mangels & Michael A. Martin) is more of what the Titan series was billed to be: a story of exploration, in which Riker and his crew encounter strange new worlds and new life forms.  At the same time, The Red King is a direct sequel to both Taking Wing and The Sundered, as Riker and his crew work to locate Romulan commander Donatra’s missing fleet, figure out how to return to Federation space, and unravel the mystery of a terrible new threat to Neyel space.  (Readers, meanwhile, get to learn about what has happened to the Neyel since we last met them 100 years earlier during Captain Sulu’s time in The Sundered.)

My recollection was that The Red King was my least favorite of the Titan series, but in re-reading the novel I found quite a lot to enjoy.  Mangels & Martin have a nice, easy-to-read writing style that I always find very engaging.  The Red King is a fast-paced yarn, and it continues the exploration of the unique natures and backstories of the members of Titan’s diverse inter-species crew that was begun in the previous installment.  Most interestingly to me, we finally learn the details of the event that caused the thirty-years-and-counting rift between Starfleet Admiral Leonard James Akaar and Lt. Tuvok (who had been close friends aboard the Excelsior during the events of The Sundered).

But the novel does have some weaknesses.  Primarily, the emerging sentient protouniverse that is destabilizing space in the Small Magellanic Cloud doesn’t really present that compelling a scientific mystery (the Titan crew seem to figure out what’s going on pretty quickly) nor that compelling a challenge/adversary.  As a result, the novel sometimes seems to be without a central narrative thrust.  Riker’s crew comes up with a plan to contain the protouniverse about halfway through the novel, meaning that the whole second half of the book is without any real twists.  Oh, a lot happens, don’t get me wrong.  But all of the events seem very episodic.  Every few pages, Martin & Mangels take us to a different location and dramatic event.  Now we’re on the shuttlecraft Ellington as injured Titan security chief Ranul Keru attempts to rescue civilians from the doomed planet Oghen.  Now we’re aboard the Romulan warship Valdore, as Donatra finds herself challenged by her former uneasy partner Suran for command.  Now we’re aboard the Vanguard colony as a Neyel civilian flees from thugs convinced that the desperate situation means that the rule of law has gone out the airlock.  But each of those events (and the many others that transpire during the novel’s second half) are over and done with in the matter of just a few pages.  They’re all dramatic and well-written, but they don’t quite hang together as a suspenseful narrative.

Still, despite those flaws, I found myself enjoying The Red King far more than I remembered.  Mangels & Martin have done an excellent job in setting up the new Titan series.  They’ve created an engaging premise (a return to Starfleet’s original ideals of scientific exploration) and populated Riker’s ship with enough intriguing characters to give the series material for many novels to come.  I’m eager to move on to the next installment: Orion’s Hounds by Christopher L. Bennett.  I’ll be back with a report on that novel in a few weeks!

Back in 2003-2004, Pocket Books released a terrific series of novels entitled The Lost Era that chronicled the approximately seventy-five years between Captain Kirk’s death in Star Trek: Generations and the launch of the Enterprise-D in “Encounter at Farpoint,” the pilot episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation.

I thoroughly enjoyed this series when it was initially released, and I’ve been wanting to re-read these novels for several years now.  Since the cliffhanger at the end of Taking Wing (the first novel in Pocket Book’s Star Trek Titan series — read my review here — following the exploits of Captain William T. Riker’s new ship) referred directly to the events of the first Lost Era novel, The Sundered, I decided to go back and re-read that novel before proceeding on to Titan book 2, The Red King.

Set in 2298, five years after Star Trek: Generations, The Sundered presents us with an adventure of Captain Sulu and the U.S.S. Excelsior.  Star Trek VI introduced the idea that former U.S.S. Enterprise helmsman Hikaru Sulu had been promoted to captain of the Excelsior, and The Sundered picks up his story as the veteran master of that vessel.  Also aboard the Excelsior are several familiar faces: Pavel Chekov is Sulu’s first officer, Janice Rand is his communications officer, and Christine Chapel is his chief medical officer.  As established in the Voyager episode “Flashback,” the young Vulcan Tuvok is also on-board, though struggling to deal with the illogical nature of all of the non-Vulcans in Starfleet.  We also learn that a young Leonard James Akaar (born in the Original Series episode “Friday’s Child” and re-introduced in the last several years of Star Trek novels as a stern elderly admiral in the post-Nemesis Next Gen era) is on board as well, and had at the time a close friendship with Tuvok.

At the risk of repeating what I have written in previous Trek novel reviews ad nauseum, I am continually delighted by the interconnectedness of the last decade’s worth of Pocket Book’s Trek novels.  Though set almost a hundred years earlier, The Sundered fits in perfectly with the current batch of post-Nemesis Next Gen novels and with the new Titan series, providing a number of interesting pieces of backstory for characters featured in those other novels.  (It of course helps that The Sundered was written by Michael A. Martin & Andy Mangels, who also wrote the first two Titan novels, Taking Wing and The Red King.)

I haven’t even mentioned the main thrust of The Sundered‘s story yet.  Tenuous peace talks with the violent, xenophobic Tholians (enigmatic aliens first introduced in the classic Original Series episode “The Tholian Web”) are imperiled when the Excelsior crew discovers the Tholians’ escalating conflict with a race of aliens from outside the Milky Way galaxy called the Neyel.  Parallel to that unfolding story on the Excelsior, Martin & Mangels chronicle the tale of the ill-fated Vanguard colony, one of five L-5 colonies in near-Earth orbit that were constructed in the 21st century.  Beginning in 2053 (about a decade before Zefram Cochrane’s first warp flight, as seen in Star Trek: First Contact) we follow the travails of the men and women aboard Vangaurd… as well as their descendants as their story unfolds over two centuries following a disaster that changes their destinies forever.  No surprise, the story of Vanguard eventually crosses with that of Sulu & co. in 2298.

Telling two stories in parallel is a tricky bit of business.  It can be easy for one story to begin to overshadow the other, with the reader getting more involved in one tale and then resenting time spent away from those characters on the other story.  But Martin & Mangels do an excellent job of keeping the two unfolding narratives in balance, cutting back and forth from one story to the other without upsetting the flow of either tale.  They also take their time in allowing the Vanguard story to come to fruition.  Though attentive readers will certainly begin to guess how the two stories connect long before they actually do, the eventual revelations that Sulu & his crew discover arrive at what feels like a natural point in the story, before one gets impatient for the revelations or annoyed at why the Excelsior crew haven’t figured out what you already have.

The Vanguard storyline in The Sundered is a juicy old-fashioned sci-fi tale, which nicely balances the Excelsior portion of the story that is steeped in Trek lore.  It’s great to learn more about what happened to the featured members of Kirk’s command team after his death, and I also enjoyed Martin & Mangels’ exploration of the bizarre Tholians (a terrific alien species that was only seldom glimpsed during the various TV shows).

The Sundered is a very solid stand-alone Trek adventure story, but it is also a key piece in the ever-growing puzzle of the expanded Star Trek literary universe.  Martin & Mangels will continue exploring Hikaru Sulu’s time as Captain of the U.S.S. Excelsior in their excellent 2008 novel Forged in Fire, and the friendship between Tuvok and Akaar that is presented here plays a key role in their first two Titan novels, as does the Neyel race.

I’ll be back here shortly with my thoughts on the second Titan installment, The Red King, which functions as a direct sequel to The Sundered, even though it takes place about a century later.

I’ve written a lot on this site about Pocket Books’ series of post-finale Deep Space Nine novels, as well as the series of post-Nemesis Next Generation novels.  But I haven’t made much mention of another top-notch series of novels that has been a big part of Pocket Books’ exciting efforts to move the Star Trek universe forward: the continuing adventures of Captain William T. Riker and the starship Titan.

There have been six Titan novels published so far, with more on the way.  Before beginning the latest novel (set after the cataclysmic events of David Mack’s Destiny trilogy, which I reviewed here), I decided to go back and re-read the series in its entirety.  Over the next few weeks (hopefully it will be weeks, and not months!) I’ll be bringing you my thoughts on all the novels in the series.

Today, we’ll start with Taking Wing, the novel that kicked everything off, by Michael A. Martin and Andy Mangels.

After almost a decade of near-constant conflict with alien races such as the Borg, the Cardassians, the Klingons, and, of course, the Dominion, it seems that the United Federation of Planets has finally returned to a state of peace.  As such, Starfleet decides to return to its central mission of peaceful exploration and commissions the construction of a new class of starships, the Luna class, to be sent out into the unexplored regions of the galaxy to seek out new life and new civilizations.

Newly-promoted Captain William Riker (whose promotion to captaincy was one of the only decent story-points to be found in the final Next Gen film, Star Trek: Nemesis) is filled with excitement for this new mission of exploration, and he sets out to assemble the most biologically and culturally diverse crew in Starfleet history.  (More on the Titan’s crew in just a moment.)  Unfortunately, the events of Star Trek: Nemesis (in which the clone Shinzon led a Reman plot to murder the Romulan Praetor and every member of the Senate and usurp control of the Romulan Empire for himself, before he too perished in conflict with the U.S.S. Enterprise) have left the Romulan Empire fractured and in chaos.  Titan’s mission of exploration is postponed so that Riker and his crew can travel to Romulus in the hopes of mediating some sort of power-sharing agreement and stave off a catastrophic civil war.

Taking Wing is an absolutely phenomenal novel — probably the strongest of the Titan series, and one of my favorite Trek novels from the past several years.  I really loved the Romulan storyline.  I enjoyed the way Mr. Martin & Mr. Mangels picked up the pieces from Nemesis — they really considered things that the filmmakers did not, such as what the consequences of Shinzon’s failed plot would be, and they crafted a thoroughly exciting and engaging storyline out of those questions.  There have been several novels that have fleshed out the world of Romulus (particularly the works of Diane Duane and Josepha Sherman & Susan Shwartz), and this book stands proudly with those.  Indeed, I really appreciated the way this story made a number of references to those stories as well as to many of the different filmed Trek stories that featured Romulans.  I like the way they playfully address the two different names that have been given for Romulus’ capital city; I loved seeing Pardek (from the TNG episode “Unification”) again (albeit briefly), I loved seeing Donatra (from Nemesis) again, etc. etc.  I really love the Trek novels that take the time to delve into the politics of the Trek universe (such as Keith R.A. DeCandido’s terrific novel Articles of the Federation), and one of the reasons that Taking Wing really shines for me is the attention to detail given to the lengthy sections that describe the fractious Romulan political situation.  Martin & Mangels don’t shy away from the complexity of the situation, and they avoid a too-easy solution to all of the problems.

The other aspect of this novel that is a lot of fun is all of the “world-building” that Martin & Mangels do for this new Titan series.  Much time in Taking Wing is spent introducing us to Riker’s crew.  There are some familiar faces: his wife Deanna Troi is on-board as Head Counselor and Chief Diplomatic Officer, Christine Vale (introduced in the “A Time To…” series of novels) is First Officer, and there’s also Alyssa Ogawa (a familiar nurse on the U.S.S. Enterprise from many seasons of Next Gen) and Melora Pazlar (from the 2nd season DS9 episode “Melora”) who supervises Stellar Cartography.

But, as noted above, Riker has set out to assemble as diverse a crew as possible, and so we are introduced to a number of wonderful new characters, several of whom are from entirely new-to-Trek alien species.  Among this inter-species crew is new Chief Medical Officer Dr. Ree, who is a fearsome Pahkwa-thanh (resembling a small dinosaur); Chief of Security Lt. Keru (who was introduced in the novel Section 31: Rogue as the lover of Sean Hawk, who was assimilated by the Borg in Star Trek: First Contact), a Trill; Commander Xin Ra-Havreii, the Titan’s designer who takes over as Chief Engineer, who is an Efrosian (the same race as the President of the Federation in Star Trek VI and the “Deltan” Lt. Ilia from Star Trek: The Motion Picture); Science Officer Jaza Najem, a Bajoran: Engineer Torvig, a Choblik (a diminutive race equipped with bionic enhancements); Counselor Huilan, a S’ti’ach (who is described as resembling a blue-furred bear with extra arms and dorsal spines); Chief Geologist Bralik, a talkative Ferengi; Flight Controller Aila Lavena, a Selki (an aquatic species) and many, many more.

I haven’t even mentioned two other characters who I wasn’t expecting to see appear in this series, but who (as I was happy to see) have major roles in this novel.  The first is Lt. Tuvok, who I always felt was one of the only interesting characters on Star Trek: Voyager, and who is really well-used here (though boy is he put through the wringer).  The second is Admiral Leonard James Akaar.  Akaar’s birth was seen in the Original Series episode “Friday’s Child” — he was named after Kirk and McCoy because they helped save his mother’s life.  Recent Trek novels have made a major character out of the all-grown up Akaar, who is now an influential (albeit often grumpy) Admiral in Starfleet.

As you can see, there are an ENORMOUS number of characters who appear in Taking Wing.  (There are quite a few more who I haven’t even mentioned.)  But under the steady hands of Mr. Martin and Mr. Mangels, I never felt overwhelmed or confused, as a reader, by all the familiar and unfamiliar faces.  Instead, somehow, I felt that Martin and Mangels spent the time to give proper attention to each one of these myriad characters.  They strike a perfect balance between giving everyone something to do in this novel (no character felt extraneous to me) while leaving lots of room for the many interesting faces, new and old, on-board Titan to be further explored in future installments.

Taking Wing works successfully as a stand-along adventure, and also as the “pilot” for the new series of Titan adventures.  It is also a critical piece in the detailed, exciting post-Nemesis universe of interconnected Star Trek novels that the talented Trek authors have been producing for the past several years.  It is not to be missed.

My faith in the continuing DS9 saga is restored!

Last week I week I wrote about my disappointment with how the spectacular DS9 novel series has sort-of petered out over the past few years, but after reading the other DS9 novel published this year, Una McCormack’s spectacular The Never-Ending Sacrifice, I am again reminded about just how amazing this series can be.

The Never-Ending Sacrifice is a sequel, of sorts, to the intriguing second-season DS9 episode “Cardassians.”  In that episode, an elderly Bajoran man arrives on the station with his adoptive son, Rugal, a Cardassian child who was left behind when the Cardassian occupation of Bajor ended.  Allegations emerge that the Bajorans are raising Rugal to hate his own kind, and when his actual father arrives on the station, relieved that the son he believed dead still lives, the Cardassian government demands that Commander Sisko turn the boy over to them.  It’s a complex episode that fleshes out a lot of the show’s back-story — including a look at what went on during the Cardassian occupation and the reasons for their withdrawal (indeed, this was the episode that revealed that the Cardassians’ name for the station was Terok Nor), as well as a lot more about the deceitful web of Cardassian politics (including more information than we’d learned at that time about Garak and Dukat) and how life on Bajor was proceeding after the Cardassian withdrawal.  Despite all those great qualities, though, I was always troubled by the ending of the episode.  After all that build-up, Sisko’s decision is revealed in the closing moments in a simplistic commander’s log (it’s as if the writers just ran out of time and realized that they had to end the episode), and I couldn’t believe that Sisko actually decided to take the boy from his adoptive parents, with whom Rugal had expressed a clear desire to stay.

It was an episode that demanded a follow-up, but none ever came during the seven-year run of the show.  Luckily, Una McCormack has stepped in to fill that void.  The Never-Ending Sacrifice follows the life of Rugal from the moment he was taken by his Cardassian father-by-blood, Kotan Pa’Dar, back to Cardassia Prime, all the way through the tumultuous events of the series and through the post-finale series of novels as well.  Ms. McCormack has masterfully woven together the intimate story of Rugal’s young life with the epic tale of the rise and fall of Cardassia.

Both aspects of the story are extraordinarily compelling.  Rugal is an interesting protagonist.  Following the events of the episode “Cardassians,” I expected him to be depicted as an angry, hateful young man because of his forced separation from his adoptive Bajoran parents.  And, indeed, there is much anger in Rugal as depicted by Ms. McCormack.  But she also shows us his intelligence, his gentleness, and above all his surprising equilibrium even when caught up in extraordinary galactic events.

I also really enjoyed Ms. McCormack’s depiction of the larger story of Cardassia.  She has written almost exclusively about Cardassia in her work for Pocket Books so far (in the novel Hollow Men, set during the 6th season of the show, as well as the terrific novella The Lotus Flower from Worlds of Deep Space Nine volume 1) and she continues to flesh out that world and its culture, history, and politics here.  She also has great fun in weaving Rugel’s story in and out of the galactic events that we saw transpire over the course of the show.  She connects a lot of dots and addresses a number of plot points that the show was somewhat vague on.  (I particularly enjoyed the way she fleshed out exactly how the Detapa Council managed to seize control of the government from the Central Command, and what happened to that government once Dukat arranged the alliance between Cardassia and the Dominion.  Those events were all hinted at by the DS9 writers, but the details had always remained tantalizingly unknown, at least until now.)

There are a lot of other fun references and appearances by familiar faces that I won’t spoil here.  Well, OK, I will tell you that, of course, a familiar former tailor makes an appearance.  His answer to the question “Did you try to pretend Tora Ziyal was still alive?” is absolutely heart-breaking, and one of the most haunting things I’ve read in a novel in quite some time.  (It’s also a great testament to the power of the Deep Space Nine story as a whole, and all the wonderful work by every one of the writers, actors, and craftsmen involved in that series, that a small reference to events like that from the series can carry such emotion and meaning.)

The Never-Ending Sacrifice is an outstanding piece of work, one that fits well into the larger continuing Deep Space Nine story-line but that is also a perfectly complete tale all on its own.  Magnificent.

(Oh, and I also have to give Ms. McCormack props for the absolutely perfect title, a lovely reference to one of my very-favorite Bashir/Garak conversations.)

The post-Nemesis Star Trek: The Next Generation adventures continue in the latest excellent novel from Pocket Books, Losing the Peace, by William Leisner.

Following the calamitous destruction that the Borg have wrought throughout the Federation in David Mack’s terrific Destiny trilogy (see my review here), Starfleet’s exploration programs are all put on hold as every surviving starship is called upon to help pick up the pieces.  Whole planets have been destroyed, leaving countless displaced survivors stranded across space.  The surviving Federation worlds quickly find themselves overwhelmed by an enormous flood of refugees who have lost everything, and dramatic shortages of food and materiel strike everywhere.

Captain Jean-Luc Picard and the crew of the U.S.S. Enterprise bounce about the quadrant, attempting to help where they can and put out whatever “fires” they might come across, but the enormous problems facing the Federation seem much larger than anything that can be addressed by one lone starship.  Meanwhile, Picard’s command crew (many of whom are new faces who have been introduced in Pocket Books’ post-Nemesis novels) each must face personal struggles as they try to come to grips with the tragedies they have survived.

Losing the Peace may be a unique Star Trek novel in that there is no villain.  There is no alien threat to be overcome, no unique science-fiction mystery to be solved.  Rather, the problems that beset Picard & co. this time are of a much more mundane — though no less perilous — nature.  It would have been easy for Mr. Leisner to have added in some sort of more traditional antagonist — an alien race trying to take advantage of the chaos in the Federation, or something like that — and he is to be commended for avoiding that somewhat obvious way to add drama to the story.  Instead, Mr. Leisner takes the time to draw the reader into a variety of much smaller-scale dramas taking place amongst Picard’s crew and all around the devastated Alpha Quadrant.  These aren’t “fate of the universe” stories of a galactic scale — they’re very “human” tales.  One might think that could make for a rather dull Star Trek novel.  Quite the contrary — I thoroughly enjoyed this very realistic take on what the Federation would logically be facing following the galactic upheavals that took place in Destiny, and all of the “small” stories to be found in Losing the Peace accumulate into a tense novel in which the Federation seems to be in far greater peril than it ever has been before.

I was also pleased at how well Mr. Leisner was able to characterize both the familiar Next Gen characters who appear (Picard, Beverly, Worf, and Geordi) as well as the new characters who have originated in the novels (Miranda Kadohata, T’Ryssa Chen, Jasminder Choudhury).  Being able to create new characters who have just as much depth of characterization as the familiar ones was one of the reasons that I found Pocket Books’ post-finale series of Deep Space Nine novels to be so successful.  (You can read my thoughts on the stellar DS9 re-launch here.)  The post-Nemesis Next Gen novels, at first, had some trouble in this area (with inconsistent characterizations of some of these new faces from novel to novel), but I am thrilled to see how the latest batch of novels (including David Mack’s Destiny as well as Greater Than the Sum, by Christopher L. Bennett) have moved well beyond those early mis-steps.  Here in Losing the Peace, these new characters feel like real, interesting people to me, and I never find myself resenting time spent with them as opposed to with our familiar characters.  Luckily, those familiar characters, too, have some great material in Losing the Peace.  I am delighted that the current crop of Trek authors are allowing Picard, Beverly, Worf, and Geordi to grow and change as the novels continue and more and more years pass from their early days together (during the seven seasons of Star Trek: The Next Generation).  Picard and Beverly are married, Worf is the first officer… I love that the characters’ storylines are moving forward, rather than being stuck in the necessary status quo of a weekly television series.  Now, if only Geordi could get himself a girlfriend!!

As I have written before, these types of stories are what I always wished we’d gotten from the aborted series of Next Gen movies: tense, exciting tales with real dramatic stakes for our characters and for the Federation.  Can’t wait for the “Typhon Pact” series of Next Gen novels coming in 2010!

I can’t believe I actually purchased a book with Star Trek: Voyager in the title!  (For those of you just tuning in, despite my intense love for Star Trek, I have a rather large amount of disdain for Voyager, the most boring and uninspired of the Trek series.)  And even more than that — I can’t believe I liked it!!

Pocket Books has published Star Trek: Voyager novels before (though not for several years).  So what prompted me to pick this one up?

Following David Mack’s magnificent three-book Destiny series (which I reviewed here) that involved characters from all of the 24th century Trek TV shows (Next Gen, DS9, and Voyager) and wreaked an enormous amount of havoc within the established Trek universe, I have been chomping at the bit to see where the story goes from here.  Keith R.A. DeCandidio’s excellent novel A Singular Destiny was the first follow-up (reviewed here), and two subsequent novels have been released over the past few months: Over a Torrent Sea, by Christopher L. Bennett (which explores the ramifications of the events of Destiny on Captain William Riker and his crew on the U.S.S. Titan, and which I’ll be reviewing here soon), and Kirsten Beyer’s Voyager novel, Full Circle, which bridges the gap between the series finale of Voyager (and the handful of Voyager novels that Pocket books released soon after) and the events of Destiny.

Full Circle is a lengthy book (clocking in at 561 pages) that really feels like two books combined into one.  (That is not a complaint.)  The bulk of the first half of the novel follows up on a storyline begun in the latter days of the Voyager series: the idea that a sect of Klingons has become convinced that Miral, the daughter of Tom Paris and B’Elanna Torres, is the Kuvah’magh, the long-predicted Klingon savior.  Upon Voyager’s return to the Alpha Quadrant, B’Elanna takes sanctuary with Miral at the Klingon monastery on Boreth, where she seeks to discover the truth behind the prophecies of the Kuvah’magh.  Of course, it isn’t long before Miral is kidnapped and Torres, and the rest of the crew of Voyager, find themselves swept up in a Klingon feud that is thousands of years old.

The second half of the novel jumps back in forth in time over the course of the next few years, catching the Voyager story-lines up with the events of the last few years worth of Trek novels that culminated in Destiny.  Voyager is home, and back on active duty with Starfleet in the Alpha Quadrant.  But none of the crew has had an easy time re-adjusting to life at home, and terrible tragedies continue to befall them.

I was very impressed with the way that Ms. Beyer was able to craft an engaging, emotional story-line for every main character from Voyager.  Each character has his/her own journey to travel in this book — many of them, excruciatingly difficult ones.  Despite watching seven seasons of Voyager TV episodes, I never felt the characters were fleshed out to any sort of degree — they never felt like real, living people to me.  Yet in Ms. Beyer’s book, I found myself actually caring for these characters!  I was totally swept up in each of the stories being told, and the book’s chronological jumps, that could easily have been confusing or distracting, were instead exciting and revelatory.  And I loved the sense of continuity the book created, as the stories connected to many different plot threads from the last season of Voyager and also to the recent other Trek novels (particularly the shocking death of a MAJOR Voyager character in Peter David’s Next Gen novel, Before Dishonor.)

While it definitely works as a complete story, Full Circle is also clearly an attempt to launch a new series of Voyager novels (in the fashion of Pocket Books’ successful post-finale series of DS9 and Next Gen novels).  There are a lot of story-lines that are left hanging (not in a disappointing way, but more in an “I can’t wait to see what happens next” sort of way, which is a tough balance to find).  And I really can’t wait to see what happens next!  Unbelievable.  Between Full Circle, “The Mirror-Scaled Serpent” (the Voyager novella by Keith R.A. DeCandido in the Mirror Universe anthology), and “Place of Exile” (the Voyager novella by Christopher L. Bennett in the Myriad Universes anthology), I am forced to admit that a rocking Voyager story can indeed be told!  (Too bad the actual TV series was never this good!!)

Star Trek fever continues here at MotionPicturesComics.com!  Did you miss my list of the Top Twenty Episodes of Star Trek?  Then check it out!  Previously this week I’ve written about Pocket Books’ excellent two-book Star Trek: Mirror Universe series, as well as their follow-up Mirror Universe collection “Shards and Shadows.”

Based, I presume, on the success of the two-book Mirror Universe series in 2007, this past summer Pocket Books released a similarly formatted two-book collection (each containing three novellas, just like the Mirror Universe volumes) entitled Star Trek: Myriad Universes.  While all six Mirror Universe novellas charted the future-history of that one particular parallel universe, Myriad Universes contains six stories that are each set in entirely different alternate universes.  These aren’t return visits to alternate pasts or futures that we saw in any of the Trek TV shows — these are all completely new creations of the authors involved.  As with the Mirror Universe stories, these tales are all fantastic fun.

Volume I: “Infinity’s Prism”

A Less Perfect Union, by William Leisner — In the final episodes of Star Trek: Enterprise, as Earth took its first tentative steps towards uniting with the nearby alien races it had once feared and hated (the Vulcans, the Andorians, the Tellarites) to form what would one-day become the United Federation of Planets, a xenophobic hate-group called Terra Prime began gaining influence and followers on Earth.  In this story, we are introduced to a United Earth where the followers of Terra Prime convinced Earth’s government to reject the nascent interstellar alliance and instead expel all aliens from the planet.  Nearly a hundred years later, Captain Christopher Pike, in command of the U.E.S.S. Enterprise, comes across a distress signal from an old Earth vessel that has apparently crash-landed on a distant planet called Talos.  Astute readers will immediately recognize the story of the original Star Trek pilot, The Cage.  Unfortunately, things go a little differently for the United Earth Starship in this reality than they did in our familiar version of the story.  Captain Pike, along with several members of Earth’s government, begins to realize that the time may finally have come for Earth to once again reach out to its neighbors in the galaxy… and the one surviving member of Jonathan Archer’s Enterprise might be the key.  From the brilliant first chapter, which tells a so-familiar yet so-different version of the famous opening scenes of The Cage, right up through the parallel version of the Babel Conference (originally told in the great Classic Trek episode “Journey to Babel”) which forms the bulk of this novella, this is a marvelous story.  It is emotional, intense and, at the same time, hopeful, as all the very best Star Trek stories are.  A terrific read.

Place of Exile, by Christopher L. Bennett — In his Mirror Universe story, A Mirror-Scaled Serpent, Keith R.A. DeCandido did the impossible and actually made me care about characters from Star Trek: Voyager.  Well, Mr. Bennett performs the same miracle here.  His story begins towards the end of Voyager’s third season cliff-hanger, “Scorpion,” in which the U.S.S. Voyager finds itself in the middle of an enormous inter-stellar war between the unstoppable Borg and a mysterious foe from another universe, Species 8472.  In the televised episode, Kathryn Janeway is able to guide Voyager safely through the conflict.  Here, though, Voyager is crippled in a vicious attack by Species 8472, and the stranded crew is forced to take refuge with a nearby race of aliens called the Vostigye.  The longest story in this collection, this novella chronicles the months and years that follow, as the crew of Voyager is forced to scatter and make the best of their new lives trapped in the Delta Quadrant.  But all the while the looming Borg/8472 war draws closer, threatening total annihilation… and a determined Captain Janeway stubbornly refuses to give up her dream of rebuilding Voyager and resuming their course for home.  Holy cow, what a great story.  Bennett does everything right that the writers of Voyager did wrong.  First of all, he creates a story in which the Voyager faces an enormous and yet realistic set-back (as opposed to the show, which always depicted the ship in perfect condition, never wanting for supplies or equipment).  Secondly, he allows the characters to really grow and develop as people, as each of them respond to their new circumstances in different ways.  (Again, this is in contrast to the actual show, in which there was little-to-no character development, Janeway never had to face any real challenges to her determination to maintain Starfleet discipline even 70,000 light-years from home, and, just to pick another random example, Harry Kim remained an Ensign for seven years.)  Finally, Mr, Bennett has crafted far more satisfying resolutions to many story-lines that the Voyager writers choose to abandon, most notably the wonderfully sweet ending he gives to the Kes-Neelix relationship.  Beautiful.  A thoroughly engrossing tale.

Seeds of Dissent, by James Swallow — It’s Space Seed in reverse: Almost 400 years after Khan and his genetically enhanced followers conquered Earth, the Terran Khanate rules their corner of the galaxy with an iron fist.  But things start to unravel when Princeps Julian Bashir and his starship Defiance discover a centuries-old sleeper-ship, the Botany Bay, carrying cryogenically preserved refugees from Khan’s conquest — almost a hundred un-enhanced “basic” Humans.  Swallow’s story is a lot less epic than the other two novellas in this collection, but it is every bit as engaging.  As the story opened, it seemed that Bashir would be the main character in the tale, but as things unfolded I found myself most interested in Ezri Dax, the Trill who has spent 300 years in servitude to the Khanate.  When presented with the Botany Bay survivors, and the inflammatory evidence they possess about the true story of Khan’s bloody rise to power, Dax must make a terrible choice.  

Volume II: “Echoes and Refractions”

The Chimes at Midnight, by Geoff Trowbridge — OK, now this is an obscure one.  In the Animated Star Trek episode “Yesteryear,” a mishap involving the Guardian of Forever results in an alternate universe in which Spock is killed as a young boy on Vulcan.  As a result, years later, it would be an Andorian named Thelin, not Spock, who would serve as First Officer on the USS Enterprise under Captain Kirk.  Of course, by the end of “Yesteryear,” history is corrected and young Spock is saved, but this novella explores a universe in which Spock was never saved and that alternate timeline continued.  After a brief prologue, the story opens on the bridge of the Enterprise, in which a desperate Kirk calls out, “Scotty!  I need warp speed in three minutes or we’re all dead!”  These are the climactic moments of Star Trek II, and the crippled Enterprise is trying to escape the detonation of the Genesis wave.  In the movie, we all know that Spock’s sacrifice saves the ship — but how will the Enterprise escape without Spock’s presence?  As this clever story progresses, we follow this alternate history through the years chronicled by the rest of the original Star Trek movies (II though VI).  It is great fun seeing those familiar stories play out slightly (or, in some cases, a lot MORE than slightly) differently.  I was particularly pleased to see the way in which, in this universe, Carol Marcus and her knowledge of Genesis are involved in the aftermath of the alien probe (from Star Trek IV)’s attack on Earth (thus correcting something that has always bugged me about the later Trek films: how everyone seemed to conveniently forget about the Genesis technology).  The character of the Andorian Thelin is well fleshed out, making him a compelling character with whom to travel through this story.  I was also very pleased by the attention given to David Marcus and Saavik, and I was really tickled by the ways in which their stories intertwined.  As a kid growing up, I was captivated by Vonda N. McIntyre’s novel adaptations of the early Star Trek movies.  She always wove a lot of additional character details into those novels — and one that I always loved was her invention of a much deeper relationship between David and Saavik.  I don’t know if Mr. Trowbridge was similarly inspired by Ms. McIntyre’s work, but either way, I loved this particular story development.  If I have any complaint, it is that the end of the novella felt rushed.  There is a very dramatic event involving the Klingons late in the story, which was followed by a five year jump.  Well, I really wanted to know more about the events of those five years, and I wanted to get some more build-up to the momentous decision that Thelin makes at the story’s end.  This story cries out for an additional 50-100 pages!

A Gutted World, by Keth R.A. DeCandido — This rivals Places of Exile as my favorite novella from this series.  It is a world where the Cardassians never withdrew from Bajor.  What I expected to be a relatively small-scale story about Bajorans and Cardassians quickly escalates into an enormous epic, as the events of the later seasons of Deep Space Nine play out dramatically differently without a Federation presence in the Bajoran sector.  This is a sprawling tale that interweaves the stories of an incredibly large number of familiar characters, taking place across numerous worlds throughout the Alpha Quadrant.  Two of the main protagonists are Kira Nerys, a Bajoran resistance fighter who is given staggering information by “plain, simple tailor” Elim Garak, and Captain Jean-Luc Picard, who, immediately after stopping a Borg plot to change history, must take the Enterprise E into Klingon space to help the Klingons fight an increasingly vicious war with the Romulans.  As in so many of Mr. DeCandido’s other works, this story is jam-packed with Trek details and minutae.  Almost every character, no matter how minor, has been drawn from an appearance in a Trek episode (Ro Laren!  Damar!  Gowron!  Shelby!  Sonja Gomez!  Koval!  Erika Benteen!  Jaresh-Inyo!  Scotty!) or one of the recent Trek novels (Edmund Atkinson!  Miranda Kadohota!  Gilaad ben Zoma!  David Gold!  Charivretha zh’Thane!), and this gives great weight to their small scenes.  In one chapter we meet Federation Ambassador Krajensky — DS9 fans who recognize that character (who only appeared in one episode) and know what became of him will be put on their toes immediately, and that adds tension to the story.  The myriad Trek references enables the reader to have a lot of fun extrapolating for ourselves how these familiar characters arrived at the place where we meet them in this alternate universe.  It is apparent that Mr. DeCandido has given very careful thought to the many ripple effects that the Cardassians never leaving Bajor would cause as the events that were chronicled in the seven seasons of DS9 unfolded in this universe.  These “ripples” include what seems like a throw-away reference to both of Klingon General Martok’s eyes (in DS9, Martok lost one eye in a Jem Hadar prison camp, which never happened here because Benjamin Sisko never discovered the wormhole to the Gamma Quadrant) or a mention of Admiral Leyton having commanded a fleet against the Borg (in DS9’s fourth season, Admiral Leyton was disgraced for allowing his paranoia about shapeshifter infiltration to prompt him to stage a coup against the Federation President; but in this universe without any Federation contact with the Gamma Quadrant, none of that happened, so Leyton would be free to take command of the fleet defending Earth against the Borg during the events chronicled in Star Trek: First Contact, which took place during DS9’s fifth season.)  The story isn’t weakened in any way if you don’t get these references.  But for a Trek fan who does, they add great depth and richness to this dramatic, action-packed story filled with heroism and sacrifice.  Absolutely phenomenal.

Brave New World, by Chris Roberson — Working on Omicron Theta, Dr. Noonien Soong perfected the creation of positronic androids.  Only a few decades later, Soong-type androids can be found throughout Starfleet and the Federation.  Even more ground-breaking: utilizing Ira Graves’ work in synaptic mapping (from the Next Gen episode, “The Schizoid Man”), Federation citizens now have the ability to transfer their consciousness into nearly indestructible android bodies, prolonging life indefinitely.  But a situation brewing in the Neutral Zone threatens to disrupt the Federation’s fragile peace with the Romulan Empire, and soon Captain Picard and the crew of the Enterprise-D are confronted by the return of someone they never expected to see again: the android Data, missing for 10 years.  Like Seed of Dissent, Brave New World is a much less epic story than most of the other novellas in this collection.  But, as a smaller, more self-contained story, it remains quite entertaining, and I enjoyed this exploration of ideas that Trek often played with but never really fleshed out: specifically, how the spread of synthetic life forms and android technology might effect life in the Federation (as well as their relationship with their allies).  There are some weaknesses: I found Data to be a surprisingly passive character, and would have preferred to see him more active in developing the crisis’ ultimate solution.  Also, coming after Mr. DeCandido’s novella, in which I felt that his alternate universe was very carefully mapped out (in terms of how the central change — the Cardassians never leaving Bajor — would have effected future events), there were a lot of things in this story that seemed different just for difference’s sake, and not as a result of a change caused by the spread of Soong-type androids or Data’s disappearance.  As an example, it is clear that the Enterprise never encountered the Iconian gateways (as depicted in the second season Next Gen episode, “Contagion”), although I have no idea why that event wouldn’t have occurred, Data or no Data.  But there’s still a lot of fun to be had in this novella.  And it has a great last line.

My long anticipation is almost over — at  7:00 tonight I will be seeing J.J. Abrams’ Star Trek on IMAX!  Come back tomorrow for my full review!!  I’ll see you then!

Yesterday I discussed the two terrific collections of Star Trek: Mirror Universe novellas, “Glass Empires” and “Obsidian Alliances.”  I commented that my only real complaint was that so many of the stories ended on cliffhangers that seemed to beg for further tales to be told.

I still sense that there’s a lot more to the Mirror Universe story that we have yet to see, but for now I have to be content with Pocket Books’ recent follow-up, “Shards and Shadows.”  Rather than a collection of novellas, “Shards and Shadows” contains twelve short stories written by a “who’s-who” of great Trek authors and spanning hundreds of years of Mirror Universe future-history.

Nobunaga, by Dave Stern — Continuing the story begun in the Enterprise two-parter “In a Mirror, Darkly” and the novella Age of the Empress, this story follows the sad final days of Charles “Trip” Tucker.  His body has been broken and his mind scrambled by too many years working in close proximity to the dangerous energies produced by starship warp engines.  But beyond the pain of dying, Trip is tortured by scattered memories of something he can’t quite recall.  Was he involved in a plan by Empress Sato to construct a second ship like the miraculous 23rd century Starship Defiant?  If he was, what happened, and why can’t he remember?  Dave Stern’s story is a great mind-bender of a fractured narrative.  It also hints at what happened to the character re-introduced in the final pages of Age of the Empress, but I am still left wanting to know more about that character’s full story!  Hopefully some-day soon…

Ill Winds, by Dayton Ward & Kevin Dilmore — A story of the Mirror Universe Robert April (commander of the Enterprise before Christopher Pike and James T. Kirk).  April and his crew aboard the I.S.S. Constellation are sent to investigate the rumors of a new super-weapon being constructed by the Klingons, but which crew will prove to be the more ruthless?  A great, brutal ending fits right in with the Mirror Universe.

The Greater Good, by Margaret Wander Bonanno — It’s the tale of how James T. Kirk gains command of the Starship Enterprise, how he meets Marlena Moreau and how he gains possession of the powerful Tantalus Device (a key plot device in the very first Mirror Universe episode, Classic Trek’s “Mirror Mirror”).  It’s one of the most well-written stories in the collection, gripping and fast-paced.  At the same time, it’s a little disappointing in that it all seems a little too, well, easy.  Kirk just happens to find the Tantalus Device?  I’d have hoped for a more epic story about his acquisition of that amazing and mysterious machine, and perhaps more information on its origin.

The Black Flag, by James Swallow — This is a Mirror Universe story about one of Pocket Books’ recent new series of novels, Star Trek: Vanguard, the story of a Federation space station in The Tantalus Reach, a turbulent region of space near the Klingons and Tholians.  I haven’t read any of the novels in that series, so I wasn’t familiar with any of the characters (well, except one, the Vulcan T’Prynn, who was part of the back-story of Elias Vaughn, a character in Pocket Book’s DS9 re-launch series of novels), but Mr. Swallow’s pirate story was still engaging and fun.  

The Traitor, by Michael Jan Friedman — This is a Mirror Universe story about another of Pocket’s series of novels, Michael Jan Friedman’s Stargazer series that followed Jean Luc Picard’s adventures before becoming captain of the Enterprise.  This is an older series than Vanguard, but it’s also one that I haven’t really followed.  So again, this story might have lost a little of its impact as I wasn’t really familiar with the characters whose Mirror Universe versions were introduced here.  However, as with The Black Flag, this is an engaging story nonetheless, filled with some great twists and turns.  It also features, in a lead role, a character that I absolutely did not expect to see.  Although the first mention of the name of that character’s ship should have tipped me off!

The Sacred Chalice, by Rudy Josephs — A throughly twisted story in which we learn that, after the total destruction of Betazed, Lwaxana Troi gathered together whatever surviving members of her race that she could find in order to form, well, the galaxy’s best brothel.  Lwaxana and her people are able to use their telepathic powers (the existence of which is a tightly-kept secret known only to other Betazoids) in order to create the perfect fantasy situations for their guests.  Things get over-turned, though, when young Deanna Troi discovers the secret that her mother has been keeping from her about her sister Kestra, long believed dead… at the same time as two Klingon visitors, Lursa and B’Etor, arrive at Lwaxana’s establishment. 

Bitter Fruit, by Susan Wright — This story picks up the tale of the surviving Mirror Universe Voyager crew-members following the events of The Mirror-Scaled Serpent.  Tuvok is still keeping Kes hidden away, for fear of her telepathic abilities being discovered by the Alliance.  But a new threat in the form of the half-breed they thought they had killed, B’Elanna Torres, brings Tuvok and Kes out of hiding.  It’s another great story, but as with Nobunaga this wasn’t quite satisfying in terms of tying up loose ends left hanging by the previous Mirror Universe novellas.  This is a complaint but also a backwards compliment about the quality of the writing — I want to read more about what happens to these characters! 

Family Matters, by Keith R.A. DeCandido — Mr. DeCandido must have a thing about using letters to tell a story.  His most recent novel, A Singular Destiny, used correspondence to start each chapter, and this short story is told entirely through back-and-forth messages.  This is a Mirror Universe version of DeCandido’s series of Klingon novels (another series that I haven’t read much of — boy, I thought I read a lot of Trek novels, but the holes in my reading are showing!!), but it features so many familiar faces (Gul Dukat, Gul Macet, Worf’s brother Kurn, Martok’s son Dex, and Captain Klag) that I had no trouble jumping right in.  

Homecoming, by Peter David — This short story continues the Mirror Universe New Frontier story begun in the novella Cutting Ties.  Calhoun and his motley crew aboard the Excalibur have been gathering allies and fomenting rebellion along the edges of Alliance territory.  But when they discover a Romulan plot to develop a terrible weapon utilizing Thalaron radiation (a nice nod to Star Trek: Nemesis), their strategy changes and Captain Calhoun begins to consider a terrifying plan.  My only complaint with this story?  Peter David also continued his story-line of the Mirror Universe New Frontier characters in a terrific recent 5-issue comic book series published by IDW, and I was really hoping for this story to connect to that one somehow.  Oh well!

A Terrible Beauty, by Jim Johnson — Taking place very shortly after the devastating events of Saturn’s Children, this story follows “Smiley” O’Brien’s attempts to pick up the pieces of the rebellion against the Alliance.  Flashback stories fill in the background of the Mirror Universe Keiko Ishikawa,who was introduced in Saturn’s Children.  This story DID answer some big questions posed by that novella, although the story of the final fate of Smiley’s rebellion is yet to be told.  The most recent DS9 novel, Fearful Symmetry, ended with Smiley’s stronghold on Terok Nor under brutal attack.  Hopefully the next DS9 book, coming this summer, will bring resolution to some of these fascinating story-lines!

Empathy, by Christopher L. Bennett — A Mirror Universe story of the Pocket Books’ Starship Titan series.  (Yes!  One that I have read!  This on-going series of five-and-counting novels follows the post-Nemesis adventures of the Titan, commanded by William Riker.)  A band of rebels, including Captain Ian Troi, Tuvok, and the savage William Riker come across an Alliance experiment that could spell great trouble for the struggling rebellion.  Can Tuvok get through to the Bajoran scientist leading the Alliance team, and convince him to change his plans?  As expected, things don’t go smoothly.  A tough, twisty tale, this story also contains a number of fascinating scientific notions, something that I have found to be a mark of Mr. Bennett’s work.

For Want of a Nail, by David Mack — What started as a rescue mission by Rebel operatives K’Ehleyr and Reg Barclay turns into something much more desperate when then discover that Alynna Nechayev has decided to defect to the Alliance.  Nechayev carries the secret to Memory Alpha, a critical component to the long-dead Spock’s far-reaching plan (introduced in the novella The Sorrows of Empire) to one day defeat the Alliance.  The adventures of the Mirror Universe team of K’Ehleyr and Barclay (two characters I never expected to read about in the Mirror Universe) is a blast — their pairing is an inspired notion.  I have high hopes that, in stories that are hopefully soon to come, we will see the culmination of Spock’s grand plan!  Nechayev’s certainty that his plan cannot succeed is alarming.  I wonder if the x-factor that will tip things over the edge in their favor is the quest to find the Mirror Universe’s Emissary, a sub-plot that began in the last DS9 novel, Fearful Symmetry.  We’ll see…

I can’t wait for more stories!  Meanwhile, more Star Trek fun tomorrow!  (And I am seeing J.J. Abrams’ new Star Trek film on Thursday night, so my full review will be posted on Friday!  Don’t miss it!)

One of the most delightful surprises about the last few years of Pocket Books’ Star Trek novels (about which I have waxed poetic here, here, and here) has been the way the writers and editors have fleshed out the Mirror Universe.

This concept was first introduced in the Classic Trek episode “Mirror Mirror,” written by Jerome Bixby.  A transporter accident throws Kirk, Bones, Scotty, and Uhura into an alternate universe where the beneficent United Federation of Planets has been replaced by a vicious, evil Terran empire populated by darker versions of all the familiar Trek characters.  Year later, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine explored the idea further through a series of episodes (”Crossover,” “Through the Looking Glass,” “Shattered Mirror,” “Resurrection,” and “The Emperor’s New Cloak”) in which we discovered that the Terran Empire had been conquered by an even more brutal alliance of Klingons and Cardassians.  Finally, the two-part Enterprise episode “In a Mirror, Darkly” gave viewers a look at the origins of the dark Terran Empire.

That’s quite a number of Mirror Universe episodes that I just listed, but the Star Trek authors and editors at Pocket Books clearly felt that there was a lot more that could be done to flesh out the Mirror Universe, and thank goodness for that!  The Mirror Universe has played a large role in the recent Deep Space Nine novels, but it was really pushed into the limelight with the two-part series Star Trek: Mirror Universe, each of which contained three novellas by some of Pocket Books’ best Trek authors.

Volume I: Glass Empires

Age of the Empress, by Mike Sussman with Dayton Ward and Kevin Dilmore — This story picks up moments after the end of Enterprise’s “In a Mirror, Darkly,” with the newly-crowned Empress Sato in command of the fearsome 23rd century Starship Defiant.  It’s not long, though, before her rule is threatened by enemies from without (a band of rebels with whom T’pol has gotten involved) and within (a coup organized by Sato’s consort, the Andorian Shran).  The tale is just as much of an action-packed romp as the two Enterprise episodes were, although it fails to answer my biggest question that was left hanging by those episodes, which is what happened, ultimately, to the Starship Defiant?

The Sorrows of Empire, by David Mack — The highlight of the series.  Spock’s exposure to “our” universe’s Captain Kirk (in the original Trek Mirror Universe episode) has convinced him that the Terran empire is illogical and must be replaced by a kinder, more just society.  Mack’s tale unfolds over the decades that follow, as we watch Spock’s eminently logical plan unfold, step by step.  In a fascinating twist, Mack casts Spock as a Trek version of Isaac Asimov’s Harry Seldon (from the magnificent Foundation novels).  Spock knows that his efforts to change the Terran Empire are ultimately doomed to failure, but he develops an enormously long-term plan-within-a-plan to ensure that a better society will one day rise from those ashes.  I have read that Mack is working on expanding this story into a full-length novel, and I for one cannot wait.  This novella is phenomenal.

The Worst of Both Worlds, by Greg Cox — Terran archaeologist Luc Picard has created a decent life for himself, hunting down the universe’s treasures for his master, the Cardassian Gul Madred.  (This is the fellow who tortured Picard in the famous “there are four lights” two-part episode of Next Gen, “Chain of Command.”)  But when the beautiful resistance fighter Vash convinces Luc to help her save the life of an elderly terran scientist, Noonien Soong, Picard’s life crashes down around him.  Soon he finds himself all alone against a threat even more monstrous than the Klingon/Cardassian Alliance: the Borg.

Volume II: Obsidian Alliances

The Mirror-Scaled Serpent, by Keith R.A. DeCandido — Terran rebels Chakotay, Tuvok, Annika Hansen, and Kate Janeway rescue a tiny ship from the Badlands.  Its occupant, an unusual alien named Neelix, has apparently been flung across the universe, 70,000 light-years from his home. DeCandido’s reverse version of the pilot episode of Star Trek: Voyager is a remarkably clever and engaging tale.  I was far more interested in the plights of the characters in this story than I ever was watching actual Voyager episodes!  And I absolutely loved the story’s connection to the Classic Trek episode, “The Cloudminders.”

Cutting Ties, by Peter David — A Mirror Universe version of David’s popular New Frontier series of novels, Cutting Ties follows the sad, harsh life of M’k'nzy of Calhoun, a young slave of the Romulans who is consigned to a miserable death in the mines of Remus.  Somehow he survives and many years later enters the service of a young Romulan woman named Soleta.  Many of David’s New Frontier characters make appearances over the course of the story (and several meet with rather grisly ends).  Cutting Ties is the only story in this series to feature any sort of a crossover with the “regular” Trek universe.  It’s only a brief moment, and critical to the story, but I rather liked the way all the other stories were exclusively set in the Mirror Universe without any reference to the regular time-line.  Other than that, though, this story is another winner from Peter David.

Saturn’s Children, by Sarah Shaw — This story picks up the plot threads left dangling at the end of the final Deep Space Nine Mirror Universe episode, “The Emperor’s New Cloak.”  The Terran rebels controlling DS9 and lead by “Smiley” O’Brien have scored an enormous victory against the Alliance, capturing the Regent Worf; and the once-proud Intendant Kira finds herself at the brutal mercies of her Klingon superiors.  But fortunes are about to change as Kira plots to regain her former station, and the overconfident rebels make a terrible miscalculation.

All six of the above novellas are enormously excellent.  They are fun and engaging, and together they flesh out various aspects of the Mirror Universe in some really interesting and well thought-out ways.  The only down-side is that almost every one of these stories ends on a pretty enormous cliffhanger (most especially the first and last novellas, Age of the Empress and Saturn’s Children).  This down-side will turn out not to be much of a down-side, of course, if it means that more Mirror Universe stories are coming!

In movies, in TV shows, in books, and in comic books, a big cataclysmic event is always a lot of fun.  But it only becomes meaningful and worthwhile if that big event leads to great new, interesting stories about the aftermath of whatever has happened.  

Did something BIG and DRAMATIC happen in some show’s season finale or season premiere?  Well, great!  But is everything back to normal in the very next episode?  Or are the repercussions of the exciting event explored in the episodes that followed?  Since, as you can tell from the headline, we’re talking about Star Trek today, let me give a Trek example: “The Best of Both Worlds” is possibly the high-point of Star Trek: The Next Generation.  (As anyone reading this article is probably aware, it’s an amazing, action-packed two-parter in which Captain Picard is assimilated by the Borg.)  But, for me, an enormous part of what made that event so great is the episode that follows, “Home,” in which we explore Picard’s attempt to recover from the intensely traumatic event that he went through.

David Mack’s trilogy of novels, Star Trek: Destiny, (which I reviewed here) was an incredibly exciting, ambitious story that left the established Star Trek universe in chaos.  I enjoyed Destiny thoroughly, but I was even more excited about that story’s follow-up: A Singular Destiny, written by Keith R.A. DeCandido.  That many of Mr. DeCandido’s books rank among my favorites of the recent Trek novels certainly added to my anticipation, but mostly I was just excited to see what sorts of new, exciting stories the Trek authors would be able to tell in this brave new post-Destiny world.

I am happy to report that A Singular Destiny is a terrific read, and that this new novel continues to contain all of the elements that I have so throughly enjoyed in so many of Pocket Books’ recent Star Trek novels.

As the book begins, we are introduced to a new character: Professor Sonek Pran.  Once a valued advisor to a series of Presidents of the United Federation of Planets, he has fallen out of favor and settled into a life of teaching University students on Mars.  But he is called back to service to help with the diplomatic situation within what’s left of the fractured Romulan empire (the result of the events of Star Trek: Nemesis as well novels such as Death in Winter by Michael Jan Friedman and Taking Wing by Michael A. Martin & Andy Mangels).  Needless to say, what seems like an isolated incident turns out to be only a small piece of a larger, galaxy-wide puzzle.  Before long, Professor Pran (and the readers!) have witnessed the emergence of a new, dangerous threat to the beleaguered Federation of Planets.

A Singular Destiny is an epic tale, spanning many worlds and involving many characters (plenty of familiar faces as well as a number of new DeCandido creations).  Although the main thrust of the novel follows the journey of Professor Pran, many chapters jump away from his story in order to give us a taste of events happening in a variety of different planets in the Federation, as the known galaxy tries to pull itself together following the massive destruction that occurred in the Destiny trilogy.  (I am being purposefully vague about the events of Destiny, so as not to spoil those wonderful novels for anyone!)  In addition, DeCandido utilizes a clever device of beginning each chapter with a letter, a news report, a starship log entry, or some other form of correspondence.  Some of those texts connect to the stories of the main characters in the novel, though many do not.  Their purpose is not so much to advance the plot but to give the reader additional information about the events transpiring all around the galaxy, and the personal costs and impacts of those events.  

As always with his work, DeCandido fills the novels with a number of “easter eggs” and cameos of familiar names and places.  These are carefully done — they don’t intrude upon the story being told, but they will surely bring a smile to the faces of long-time Trek fans, and they help add to the sense of the Trek universe as a large, connected tapestry.  

Speaking of which, it is clear that this novel is just one piece in the growing tapestry of Star Trek novels.  In my previous articles about Trek novels I have mentioned repeatedly how much I have enjoyed the way the last few year’s worth of Trek books have all fit together into a larger, connected universe of developing characters and stories that move forward from book to book.  A Singular Destiny is no different.  The novel’s main focus, in its second half, is to introduce us to The Typhon Pact, a new coalition of foes that looks to be giving our heroes significant trouble for the next year or two’s worth of novels.  There are also a lot of little hints about other story-lines that I am sure lie ahead in future novels.  For example, one chapter in the middle of the novel begins with a lengthy list of casualties from the fighting in one sector of Federation space.  When I was first reading the book and I got to that list, I read the first few names then skipped the rest and moved on.  On a lark, when I was done reading I went back to that list to read through it.  I’m glad I did, because there were some real shockers in there.  It seems that several pretty major Star Trek characters have met their ends — I am sure those stories will be told in future books.

A Singular Destiny is exactly the type of Star Trek story that I love (no matter what type of media it is in): a BIG, galaxy-spanning tale filled with real dramatic stakes that is filled with connections to and explorations of many of the different characters, worlds, and races that have been developed by the previous Trek movies, TV series, and novels.  It’s a winner.

A few months ago I wrote about some of the exciting Star Trek fiction that Pocket Books has released over the past several years, picking up story-lines left hanging by the now off-the-air 24th century Trek series (Star Trek: The Next Generation, Deep Space Nine, and Voyager).  The over-all quality of these books has been terrific, and I have really been enjoying the sense of a coherent, connected universe that the novels have created.  Story-lines from one novel lead into the next, characters are growing and changing in ways they seldom did on the TV shows that needed to preserve the status quo from week-to-week, and there’s been a strong sense of the over-all narrative moving forward towards something really exciting.

That something exciting is Star Trek: Destiny, the three-novel series by David Mack that serves as a sort-of “season finale” for all of the Trek novels released recently.  Multiple characters from all of the Trek series, as well as a variety of new characters that have been introduced and developed in the novels, converge in this enormous storyline.

Half a decade after the end of the Dominion War, Captain Dax of the U.S.S. Aventine has discovered in the Gamma Quadrant the wreckage of Earth’s second Warp 5 starship, the U.S.S. Columbia NX-02, lost for centuries.  (The Columbia and its Captain, Erika Hernandez, were a big part of the fourth and final season of Star Trek: Enterprise.)  Meanwhile, the moment the Federation has long dreaded has arrived:  The Borg have launched a full-scale invasion of Federation territory, with hundreds of cubes.  Captain Jean-Luc Picard and the crew of the U.S.S. Enterprise attempt to lead the remains of Starfleet in a last-ditch effort to protect the core systems and somehow halt the Borg advance, but as world after world falls, their struggle becomes increasingly hopeless.  

Destiny is an ambitious, far-reaching story that tells several (interconnected) tales simultaneously.  We follow Captain Picard and the crew of the Enterprise as they fight to find some way to defeat the Borg, as they have so many times in the past.  Meanwhile, far outside of Federation space on a mission of deep-space exploration, the hopelessness of Captain William Riker and the crew of the U.S.S. Titan at being too far away to help their friends and family is compounded when they find themselves in an impossible situation, trapped by the highly advanced species called the Caeliar.  This long-lived race is connected to the mystery of the Columbia, which Dax and the Aventine are investigating in the Gamma Quadrant.  (And, not surprising, both stories are connected to the Borg’s invasion of the Federation — although what IS surprising is the remarkable nature of the ultimately-discovered revelations about the Borg.)  We also follow events on the political side of the Federation — President Nan Bacco (from the novel Articles of the Federation by Keith R.A. DeCandido) as she struggles to hold together the surviving members of the Federation, as well as several of their former enemies, in some sort of coalition in the face of annihilation by the Borg.  Finally, there is the sad tale of the terrible fate of Captain Hernandez and the crew of the Columbia, whose story slowly unfolds over the course of the trilogy and is connected in surprising ways to all of the terrible events unfolding.

Mack tells a ripping yarn, no question.  The trilogy follows the stories of scores of characters (each starship featured has a host of major and minor characters, all of whom get face-time over the course of the story), and it is to his credit that there were only one or two times when I had any confusion over who exactly was where.  Mack is able to give each character his or her own distinctive voice, which brings life to the tale and also helps the reader keep everyone straight.

I have waxed poetic before, and I will certainly do so again, about the terrific continuity between the recent Trek novels.  It has been very exciting to see the familiar Trek TV characters grow and change over the course of the recent series (Picard and Crusher finally moving forward with their long-simmering relationship which had been hinted at ever since the very first episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation — and same goes for Riker and Troi).  It’s also been neat seeing all of the new characters introduced in the novels become integrated into the over-all story-line — characters like Sam Bowers (Dax’s executive officer on the Aventine), Christine Vale (Riker’s second on the Titan), Federation President Nan Bacco, and many others.  The novels have also been great at bringing back and breathing life into obscure characters from the various TV shows, characters like Melora Pazlar (the woman from an extremely low-gravity planet featured in one early episode of Deep Space Nine) and Simon Tarses (the young Enterprise officer put through the wringer in the Next Gen episode “The Drumhead”), all of whom are now important members of the over-all ensemble.

Freed from the constraints of having to leave their toys in exactly the same place that they found them, recent Trek authors have made some dramatic changes to the characters and to the status quo — but none more-so than Mack, who really turns over the apple cart with this trilogy.  It’s safe to say that our heroes aren’t all annihilated at the end, but the Federation suffers some shocking defeats over the course of the story, and there’s no magic reset button at the end to set everything back to normal.  In addition to some enormous changes to the galactic situation, many of the characters go through some pretty interesting personal journeys over the course of the story, and find themselves in very different places at its end than they were at its beginning.

I wish they were making huge, epic Star Trek stories like this for TV or the movies!!  Failing that, though, I couldn’t be happier with the recent Trek fiction by Pocket Books, and David Mack’s Destiny trilogy is a major achievement.  I cannot wait for the next novel!!  (That’d be Keith R.A. DeCandido’s A Singular Destiny, charged with picking up some of the pieces left by Mack’s epic.  I’ll let you know how it is…)

In addition to the great series of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine novels that I discussed yesterday, Pocket Books has really stepped up their game across the board.  They have released a number of marvelous novels in the past few years dealing with ALL the different series in the Star Trek franchise.  With few exceptions, they all have the same great things going for them that the DS9 books do — tight continuity from novel to novel, strong character arcs, and terrific attention to detail in terms of picking up old plotlines from long-ago episodes of the different Trek shows, or in taking minor characters from old episodes and bringing them back in unexpected and fun ways.  I have never seen the Trek UNIVERSE treated so much like a cohesive universe before — where things that happen in one novel, or that happened in older episodes of the series, aren’t just forgotten about.  Rather, the consequences and repercussions of those actions are explored… and characters that might have been one-dimensional in the past are fleshed-out and deepened.

For example, Ensign Ro was a well-loved character introduced in season five of the Next Generation.  And yet, after her initial introduction we never learned a whole heck of a lot about her, other than that she was tough and didn’t much like authority figures.  But she has been magnificently fleshed out in the DS9 books, where she has had to struggle to figure out where she belongs as Bajor begins the process of becoming a member world of the Federation.  Will she return to Starfleet, an organization in which she has failed twice?  Will she remain on Bajor, a planet and cultural heritage she rejected and fled from in her youth?  There’s a lot of interesting drama to be had there.  Here’s another interesting example: In the second season of Deep Space Nine, there was an episode in which it looked like Bajor was going to renounce its partnership with the Federation, and a team of Bajoran officers attempted to capture the station.  The leader of those officers was a Bajoran general named Krim.  He only appeared in that one episode, but I always thought the actor made a great impression — he was a memorable character, one who was tough and extraordinarily loyal to his home planet of Bajor, but also calm, rational, and open-minded.  Well, I guess I wasn’t the only one who thought he was a great character, because the Trek novel writers have brought back Krim in the role of Bajor’s first representative to the Federation Council.  The character has played a major role in the “Bajor” novella from the Worlds of Deep Space Nine series, by J. Noah Kym, as well as in Keith R.A. DeCandido’s novel Articles of the Federation, which I’ll discuss more in a moment.  Its great fun to see this that this character hasn’t been forgotten, but that he’s now been made an important part of the continuing story!

There are LOTS more examples like that — but I’ve gotten off track and I’m back talking about DS9, when what I wanted to do today was to highlight some other great Trek novels that have come out over the past few years.

Let’s start with the afore-mentioned Articles of the Federation, by Keith R.A. DeCandido.  This novel is, in essence Star Trek meets The West Wing, and it is genius.  The novel takes place over the course of one year in the life of the Federation (specifically, the year immediately following the events of the last Trek movie, Star Trek: Nemesis).  Whereas all of the Star Trek TV series have focused on the military — people in Starfleet, working on starships and space-stations, this novel focuses on the civilian arm of government: The United Federation of Planets.  Specifically, the President and her many advisors.  This is an entirely unexplored aspect of the world of Star Trek, and DeCandido does a phenomenal job of imagining for us what life in the President’s circle must be like.  This novel also contains an extraordinary number of little nods and references to all sorts of Star Trek episodes, characters, alien races, etc.  That really enriches the novel, and enhances what I described before: that sense that the different Trek series and novels are really all part of one shared fictional universe, which I think is really fun.

Titan: Taking Wing, by Michael A. Martin and Andy Mangels — One of the only interesting notions put forth by the really-so-bad-its-painful Star Trek Nemesis was the idea that Will Riker had finally, FINALLY, gotten command of a starship of his own.  Well, this book launched what is now a five-book (and sure to be more soon) series of Will’s adventures in command of the Starship Titan.  As the book that launched that series, this one remains my favorite.  A lot of interesting new characters are introduced (and some familiar ones are there as well) as part of Riker’s command crew.  I also really enjoyed the Romulan-centered storyline.  The events of Nemesis left the Romulan society rather a mess, and there were a whole host of questions left unanswered by that movie — such as what the heck happened to the militaristic Romulan society after its senate had been annihilated?? — that this novel addresses.

Star Trek: The Buried Age, by Christopher L. Bennett — Mr. Bennett has written a number of interesting Trek books over the past few years, but this one is my favorite.  It steps back from the “current” Trek storyline (taking place post-Nemesis), and examines the years of Captain Picard’s life after the destruction of the Stargazer, and before he took command of the U.S.S. Enterprise in “Encounter at Farpoint” (the Next Gen premiere episode).  This is a time period that wasn’t much discussed by the Next Generation series, and yet Bennett constructs a truly engrossing story that presents these years as a pivotal time in the life of Jean Luc Picard, in which he went from a man almost-broken after the loss of the Stargazer to the confident Captain who we met in the opening moments of “Encounter at Farpoint.”  Along the way, Bennett also fleshes out a variety of interesting aspects of the back-story of the Trek universe, piecing together a number of disparate hints and references from numerous Trek episodes into a coherent and surprising picture.  I love that sort of thing!  Once again (am I repeating myself unnecessarily??) different stories are made to fit together into a unified fictional Trek universe.

Crucible: McCoy, by David R. George III — Having sung the praises of the way all the modern Trek novels fit together, let me now praise one that really stands on its own.  David R. George III wrote a three-book celebration of the 40th anniversary of the original Star Trek, with one novel focusing on each one of the central trio of Trek, Kirk, Spock, and McCoy.  It is the McCoy novel, though, (one of the longest Trek novels I’ve ever read) that is the most extraordinary.  George III takes possibly the most pivotal episode of classic Trek, “The City on the Edge of Forever,” and uses it as a jumping-off point to tell two parallel tales.  One follows McCoy after the traumatic effects of that episode, in which Edith Keeler is allowed to perish back in 1930 in order to restore the proper timeline of history.  In what is a marvelous act of attention to detail and narrative creativity, this story takes place in and around many of the familiar Trek episodes that followed “The City on the Edge of Forever” in the run of the series and beyond, casting those adventures in an entirely new light.  The other, parallel storyline follows McCoy back in the past.  What if Kirk and Spock never travelled back in time after him, and McCoy was able to save Edith and wound up living the rest of his life in the past?  For much of the novel, these two stories proceed side by side, and it is only towards the end that we begin to understand the connections between them.  Each tale is haunting and powerful, and it succeeds in doing the near impossible — taking the well-known character of McCoy and forever changing my perception of that character.  This is a novel I look forward to revisiting many times in the future.

Before Dishonor, by Peter David — Over the last two years, Pocket Books has attempted to do for post-Nemesis TNG what it so successfully did for DS9: launch a highly connected series of novels to take those characters forward from their last filmed adventure.  But the Next Gen relaunch has been a bit shakier than the DS9 series was.  The first three novels were each written by a great Trek writer, and each one tackled what looked to be a great topic.  Death in Winter by Michael Jan Friedman addressed the Picard-Dr. Crusher relationship.  Resistance, by J.M. Dillard, brought about the return of the Borg.  And Q & A, by Keith R. A. DeCandido, featured (of course) a return visit from Q, and a story-line that linked together ALL the previous Q tales.  And yet, while each of those novels was good, none of them proved to be a stand-out.  All three novels were, surprisingly, rather short, and all seemed to me as if they could have been much lengthier, more complex stories.  And while the DS9 novels had phenomenal continuity, particularly in terms of the characterizations of the new characters from novel-to-novel, the Next Gen novels seemed to have have rather disparate depicitions of the new characters from book-to-book.

Which brings us to Peter David’s Before Dishonor.  Visit some on-line Trek sites and you’ll see that this was the most controversial of the Next Gen relaunch books.  Many were very critical of David for his depictions of the new characters, as much of their characterizations as built up in the prior novels seemed to have been ignored.  There were also a lot of objections to a shocking turn of events early in the book.  (If you don’t want to be spoiled, STOP READING NOW!)  As the novel opens, it seems that the new Borg threat introduced in Resistance has only grown stronger.  A massive Borg cube invades the Alpha Quadrant, and the Borg’s first step is to take care of an individual who has consistently defeated them:  Kathryn Janeway.  And in the shocking introduction to the novel, the Borg finally succeed in assimilating Janeway.  And she is NOT rescued by the end of the novel!!  Many Voyager fans were shocked, but I for one found this a wonderfully surprising twist — and a deliciously ironic one at that, as I had always found the Janeway character to be shockingly arrogant in terms of her attitude towards the Borg.

As for the rest of the novel, I loved it!  It contained a number of fascinating connections to earlier novels by Mr. David (most particularly his previous Borg opus, Vendetta).  It was a relentlessly paced tale, full of the mix of high-stakes drama and great humor to be found in most of David’s novels.  And I particularly loved the way the Borg were really made a scary threat to the Federation again.  (I found it somewhat silly how easily they were defeated in all the Voyager episodes that featured them.)  Although this novel is very different in tone and characterizations than the previous Next Gen relaunch novels, I think this is the one I’ll be re-reading the most in the future.

Well, there have been LOTS of other great Trek novels that I’ve read recently, but I think you get the idea.  I’ll close by mentioning several of the novels that have either been recently published, or are coming out soon, that I can’t wait to read!

Greater Than the Sum, by Christopher L. Bennett — Picks up the pieces left by Before Dishonor.

Enterprise: Kobayashi Maru, by Michael A. Martin and Andy Magels — Yes, even though I found the Enterpise TV series to be pretty weak, I am actually excited about a new Enterprise novel.  Why?  because this one promises to tell us the actual story of the Kobayashi Maru, an event preserved in Starfleet lore as the no-win scenario test given to all Starfleet Cadets, as memorably depicted in the opening scenes of Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan.  (This novel will supposedly be followed next year by another Enterprise novel, this one depicting the Romulan War, a major event first mentioned in early Original Trek episodes!)

Star Trek: Destiny, by David Mack — a three-book crossover that promises to feature characters from almost ALL the different Trek series of TV shows and novels, and to bring the continuing Borg storyline to an explosive climax.  (Pocket Book is keeping the plot of the trilogy very tightly wrapped, but there are hints that this story will also have some connection to the tragic fate of Captain Hernandez, first introduced as the captain of the second NX-class starship in the final season of Enterprise.)

Enough to keep me busy for quite a while!  I can’t wait!  Its enough to almost make me forget that its been a long time now since there have been ANY new filmed Star Trek adventures, on TV or at the movies.  But with novels this good, who needs ‘em?

The other day I mentioned here that there hasn’t been any truly great Star Trek around since Deep Space Nine went off the air back in 1999.

Well, that’s not entirely true.  Believe it or not, in the past few years, Pocket Book has put together a terrific line of Star Trek fiction.  You heard me right!

I have found most novels based on sci-fi TV shows or movies to be, as a rule, disappointing.  Most are saddled with the restrictions of having to adhere to the continuity of the show or movie being written about.  In other words, nothing of great significance can happen to any of the characters, because they need to be in the exact same place at the end of the book as they were in the beginning.  Well, that takes a lot of the fun out of the story!  I’ve been reading Pocket Books’ Star Trek novels since I was a kid.  Even though I got a lot of enjoyment out of the books back in the day, I quickly recognized that most of the books followed the same basic framework: the Enterprise (either Kirk’s or Picard’s) visits a new planet, has an adventure, and then our heroes head on their merry way.  There were several authors who spun some terrific Star Trek tales within that framework (Peter David being one of my favorites), but after a number of years of reading those novels I eventually drifted away.

But over the past few years, with no new Star Trek TV series or movies on the horizon (and the more recent development of J.J. Abrams’ new Star Trek movie looking like its going to be some sort of reboot in its own continuity), Pocket Books’ editors and authors have been free to move the 24th century Star Trek characters forward in exciting and unexpected ways.  Suddenly, characters from the different series can interact… old familiar characters head in dramatically different directions (some are even — gasp! — killed off!)… new characters are introduced and developed… in short, lots of exciting things happen, and the over-all Star Trek story is moved forward.  Even more exciting to me is the CONTINUITY that now exists between the Star Trek novels!  As I have written about before on this site, I LOVE continuity in my entertainment (be it in TV shows, comics, etc.)  This continuity in the Star Trek novels is delightful, as each book now has significance — with one leading into the next — and with plot twists now having weight and repercussions.  Of something happens in one novel, that is reflected in the storyline of the next novel!  And all the novels begin with a “historian’s note” that dates the events being depicted, showing how each book relates to the rest, and moving the Star Trek story forward from the last new piece of filmed Trek, the dreadful Next Gen movie Nemesis.  All of that makes each book feel like one piece of a larger, epic story.  And I’ve found myself waiting for the publication dates of upcoming novels the way I count the days until the opening weekend of an anticipated movie!

The series of books that, for me, embodies all of those good things outlined above — and the series that got me started reading Star Trek novels again a few years ago — is Pocket Book’s relaunch of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine.  DS9 was my favorite Star Trek series, and I was very sad to see it end.  (Particularly when the series that followed it, Voyager, seemed so much simpler and less sophisticated in its storytelling.)  So when I heard that Pocket was coming out with a series of novels, making up something of a “season eight” for the show, I was interested — although it took me a while to finally take the plunge.  When I finally read the first novel, Avatar, I was blown me away and immediately hooked.  Here are a few novels of note from the DS9 re-launch series:

Avatar Books I and II, by S.D. Perry — This duology launched the DS9 “season eight,” and it is a magnificent reintroduction to the series.  The book begins some months after the events of the DS9 series finale, “What You Leave Behind,” and right away I was thrilled to see the story picking up many of the interesting character threads left by the series finale.  Kira is in command of the station… Jake is struggling with the loss of his father…Kassidy Yates is about to give birth to a child… Odo is in the Gamma Quadrant, trying to curb his people’s hatred of all solids… the controversial Lieutenant Ro has taken over as head of station security… Bajor has finally become a member of the Federation… and then DS9 is brutally attacked by a Jem Hadar warship, and Captain Picard (yes, Next Gen characters are in this DS9 book, the first indication of the wonderful increasing interconnectivity of the Pocket Book Star Trek novels) and the crew of the USS Enterprise discover a new Orb of the Prophets…  

Its a marvelous novel, filled with all the things that made Deep Space Nine so great — action, a focus on the ever-changing political landscape between all the great powers in the Alpha Quadrant (the corner of the galaxy in which most Star Trek stories are set), and great, great characters.  Attention is paid to all of the major DS9 characters (at least, all those left alive at the end of the TV series), and a whole host of interesting new characters are introduced.  Its a neat trick to make a bunch of new characters as engaging and worth of the reader’s attention as the familiar ones from the show who viewers got to know over seven seasons. But S.D. Perry accomplishes that here, and one of the really surprising things (to me, at least) about the series of DS9 novels that would follow Avatar is the way these characters developed and changed.

A Stitch in Time, by Andrew Robinson — Mr. Robinson played the enigmatic Cardassian Garak on the show, and this wonderful novel provides an enormous amount of background on the “plain, simple” tailor.  There have been other Star Trek novels written by actors (William Shatner’s series featuring Kirk is a most notable example), and most of those have been, in my opinion, rather mediocre.  Also problematic to me: I found Garak to be an interesting character on DS9 precisely because of his mysterious background, and I didn’t have much interest in finding out all about his true life story.  And so it was that I was very dubious about this novel — and therefore I was stunned to find this to be my favorite of all the DS9 novels.  The narrative is very sophisticated — Robinson interweaves multiple stories set at multiple different points in Garak’s life: his youth spent in a Cardassian military school like something out of Ender’s Game; various experiences during his years as an operative in the Obsidian Order (Cardassia’s secret intelligence unit), including the much-hinted at but never revealed in the show tale of Garak’s involvement in the fate of Gul Dukat’s father; Garak’s struggles on DS9 during the Dominion War; and the sad circumstances of the ruined Cardassia, left devastated after the DS9 finale, “What You Leave Behind.”  Each one of these stories is powerful and affecting — the book as a whole is rather melancholy (not surprising, since the end of DS9 showed us the terrible fate that befell Cardassia)…and yet also uplifting.  A marvelous piece of writing.

Unity, by S.D. Perry — After the four-book series entitled “Mission Gamma,” S.D. Perry returned to the DS( re-launch series to pen what in many ways served as the “finale” of the “Season Eight” series of novels.  In this story, a great number of the myriad storylines built up in the preceding eleven DS9 novels come to a head.  A major character has been assassinated.  The Federation and Bajor face a horrifying attack from an enemy long-forgotten — the parasitic aliens last seen all the way back in the FIRST SEASON of Star Trek: The Next Generation.   A Trill secret threatens to come to light.  And Jake Sisko returns from the Gamma Quadrant, bringing with him a familiar DS9 character thought long-lost… but its not Bejmanin Sisko!

Worlds of Deep Space Nine, by various authors — If the novels from Avatar to Unity represent “season eight” of DS9, then this three book series launched “season nine.”  Each book contains two novellas, focusing on different worlds important to the DS9 saga: Cardassia, Andor, Trill, Bajor, Ferenginar, and The Dominion.  At first I was concerned that, after the engrossing climax of the storylines in Unity, these books would be something off a “digression.”  But there’s not a loser in the bunch.  Each novella is an engrossing tale with an enormous amount of “world-building” — giving the reader a lot of insight into these different, fascinating alien cultures.  But, as noted above, these stories aren’t just interesting asides, there to add some depth to various alien species.  Rather, each one moves all of the characters’ stories forward in dramatic ways.  The Trill secrets revealed in Unity come to a head, causing tremendous upheaval to Trill society, and putting Ezri Dax to a dramatic test.  The Bajoran village of Sidau (seen in the first-season DS9 episode “The Storyteller”) is massacred; a character not seen since season two of DS9 is named the new Bajoran representative to the Federation; Jake Sisko gets engaged; a mole is discovered on the station; and the Jem Hadar Taran’atar stabs Kira Nerys in the heart (not a dream, a hoax, or an illusion!).  The shape-shifter Laas (from the seventh season DS9 episode “Chimera”) rejoins the Great Link, setting in motion a chain of events that causes the Changelings to make a desperate decision.  And, in my favorite story, Paradigm, written by Heather Jarman, two of the new characters created in the DS9 novels — the Andorian Shar and the Starfleet Ensign Prynn Tenmei — must navigate the complex structure of Andorian society as Shar returns home to bury his beloved.  It is a powerful, romantic, sweet and sad story that I have subsequently re-read several times.  Great stuff.

Warpath, by David Mack — The most action-packed of all the DS9 novels, this book takes place over the course of about two days, as the crew of the Defiant races in pursuit Taran’atar; a mysterious Cardassian woman makes her way to a fateful rendez-vous; and we witness the brutal demise of yet another Kira — the Indendant, from the Mirror Universe.  This book ends with a cliffhanger of the most brutal kind, and unfortunately it took Pocket Books TWO YEARS to release the next DS9 novel!!  Sheesh!!!  

Yikes!  I’ve gone on for a while now.  Tomorrow I’ll continue with Part II of this column, writing about several OTHER great works of Star Trek fiction that have been published over the past few years.