I
probably picked the wrong book for the mood I was in. David Mack is great at
writing complex stories that have multiple plot lines that eventually all start
to tie together. Unfortunately, I wanted the exact opposite thing- a simple
Trek story with only two plot lines. Needless to say, I was left with a bit of
a bad taste in my mouth after reading Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Warpath.
I
really should have picked a different Star Trek author for my mood but I was
intrigued by the idea of David Mack doing a DS9 novel when I saw his name come
up in my eReader library. I tend to enjoy his books a lot since he does a great
job of working with characters and he helped to write two episodes of DS9. So
curiosity killed the cat.
Warpath
is a bit of a classic David Mack stand alone book. He tries to do too much. He
has several different story lines: Kira’s life and death battle, Ro’s injury, Taran’atar
kidnapping Prynn, Vaughn chasing after Taran’atar, the mirror universe and a
wrench in the system at the end which I won’t spoil. But in 344 pages, that’s a
lot to cover. Let alone to do it well.
It’s nice that most of these story lines will have moments they overlap.
Unfortunately for the reader, that means there is a lot of repetition of events
from shifting points of view and gaps in other aspects so the story can be
driven along.
I was
surprised by a couple of the characters in the book: mainly Ro Laren and
Commander Vaughn. They weren’t characters I was expecting in a Deep Space Nine
book since I don’t see these characters in books before and after. Especially
with Ro Laren. Last I remembered, she was a member of the Maquis and I thought
she was killed in battle but apparently I’ve either misremembered something OR
missed something from previous books and they were killed off later on. Well
Vaughn I remember hearing his name but not much else. I will admit there are several books that I’ve
missed in the chronology so it’s not unheard of.
This
book did remind me of a conversation I had with one of my old philosophy
professors. Stacey pointed out how the Bajoran/Cardassian conflict was very
reminiscent of the conflicts in the West Bank.
Then in this book, Kira was having discussions with the prophets about
how Bajora had the same religious foundation as another religion, En’voq, and
they had to unite in order to save the fortress from the Ascendents. Bajor is
still the Jewish/Islamic and in this story they are tied to the Christians by
teaming up with the En’voq. It was nice to be reminded about a conversation
that I had over seven years ago.
The
book was gappy for my taste. I would have preferred the mirror universe to be
left out. I know he used it as an important way in the end but every time he
went into the mirror universe it just felt out of place. Then the dream within
a dream by Kira was a little much for me. I would have preferred it to be only
the talks with the prophets.
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