Recently I’ve been reading a lot of Star Trek tie-in fiction. Specifically, Deep Space Nine novels written and published during the first few years of the show’s run. rather than run the risk of repeating myself in separate reviews, I’ve bundled them together for your perusal and my sanity.

Fallen Heroes, by Dafydd ab Hugh

One of my biggest complaints about these books is that they end with a reset button. All the truly consequential action takes place in the show, after all. But what ab Hugh does here is use that reset to full effect. Fallen Heroes sees Quark and Odo thrown several days into the future, only to find the station devoid of life. As they piece together the events of the prior days, we are treated to an incredibly bleak series of scenes in which main characters are killed off one by one. Every character has a heroic moment in the spotlight (the best of which must surely be Bashir’s defiant last moments), while the Quark and Odo dynamic is as good here as it ever was on screen. Easily the strongest of the batch, this is a great read for any DS9 fan.

Betrayal, by Lois Tilton

Betrayal draws on a lot of the elements that come from long-running storylines in DS9. The Cardassians are prominent, and the station finds itself at the centre of a potential political disaster during peace talks. One of the stranger elements of this one is that a new Cardassian is introduced, who is clearly a stand-in for Dukat, who I assume could not be used for larger arc reasons. Yet the explanation for Dukat’s absence is bafflingly swept aside, and an entire Cardassian revolution may as well not have happened. There are good moments in Betrayal, and the idea of a Cardassian seeking asylum is a good one, but I feel like the larger state of play was too weak to support its role in the story.

Station Rage, by Diane Carey

Zombie Cardassians! Okay, so not exactly, but that’s basically the plot here. An ancient group of Cardassians are discovered on the station and soon try to take control. This book earns major points for its use of Garak, who is seen in a far less sympathetic light than other recent appearances. Garak is at his best as a complicated man, despite his protestations, and his attempts to curry favour with the new Cardassian leadership is brilliantly done. At the same time, however, this book’s depiction of Cardassian history and society didn’t really fit that well with what has been established elsewhere.

Objective: Bajor, by John Peel

Finally, we have the weakest of the batch. We start off with typically over-the-top stakes. A planet has been destroyed, and now both Bajor and Caradassia are on the hit list of an overwhelmingly powerful alien force. Star Trek is at its best when the stakes are somewhat lower, and since we know these two planets are going to be fine, the tension simply wasn’t there. The idea behind the Hive aliens is at the least interesting, but I found Peel’s prose to be too flat to make the most of those ideas.

Station Rage and Objective: Bajor were read as part of Space Opera September, where they fulfil Challenge Three: Read a book from a popular franchise.