After what seems like forever, Warpath is finally out. The latest Star Trek: Deep Space Ninenovel has a lot on its plate, with two cliffhangers from the previous three books to resolve. Trek fans have been waiting with bated breath for it, and the enormous sigh of relief as I got it into my grubby little hands was almost audible. I raced through it in less than a day and then took a little time to formulate my thoughts. There's a good and a bad side to this, however. The good thing is that the book is very good, satisfying that DS9 craving that I've had for a while, and making the wait until April 2007 very long (though at least we *have* a date, which sometimes we don't in the Trek universe). The bad thing is that heightened expectations usually lead to at least mild disappointments. That's also the case here, though the good definitely outweighs the bad.
At the end of the previous series of books (Worlds of Deep Space Nine), we were left with two cliffhangers: who destroyed a Bajoran village and why did the only survivors of the carnage get very scared when they saw Captain Kira rescue them, and why did the Taran'atar, the Jem'Hadar that Odo sent from the Dominion to study how humanoids lived, go on a rampage and almost kill Kira and Ro Laren? Surprisingly, this deals with both of those issues (I was only expecting the Taran'atar situation to be resolved). Taran'atar is on the run, and he has a hostage: Ensign Prynn Tenmei, Commander Vaughn's daughter. Vaughn takes the Defiant after him, but begins to wonder at his heading. All will be revealed at a desolate Cardassian colony, a former prison, where things get even stranger. All is not as it looked at the beginning, and Taran'atar is hovering on the edge of sanity (which is pretty thin, considering he's a Jem'Hadar to begin with). Who did destroy the village, and what does it have to do with Taran'atar's attack? Ghosts of the past return to haunt our crew and things will get even stranger before they get better.
First, let me get this off my chest. ANOTHER CLIFFHANGER?????
Ok, that's done. What about the book? Anybody who regularly reads Trek fiction knows that David Mack is one of the best action writers around, and that nobody's safe in his hands. That's why one of the climactic instances in Warpath, one of those seemingly clichéd "will he/she survive?" moments, actually seems dangerous. The action scenes are plenty in this one, though some of them seem a little superfluous. All of them are well-done, though, gripping the reader despite the fact that we don't know any of the people involved in some of them. The ones that don't quite work aren't because the action is badly written, but because they seem tacked on to make the Cardassian seem even "cooler." There are three or four sequences scattered around the novel where bounty hunters are chasing this Cardassian woman, and each one ends up reaching the same conclusion, just in different ways. Yes, we get the fact that she's a bad M-F, we don't really need to see it repeated ad nauseam. However, the scenes themselves are quite good, written in perfect Mack style.
Mack captures the regulars perfectly, making them a joy to read about. Taran'atar is a tortured soul (though we don't find out why until the middle of the book), but he's still intelligent and a formidable adversary. The way he tricks Vaughn to get off his trail for a few hours is quite ingenious (which unfortunately leads to a lot more Vaughn angst about his daughter, which I wish we would see the back of). I loved the way Nog and Bashir piece together exactly what's happening, and I even liked how Bashir at first began to doubt the ethics of creating a weapon using Taran'atar's last brain scan, mainly because it might kill him. I also really liked the Quark/Ro scenes, showcasing how, even though they've decided not to pursue a relationship, they are still quite close. A lot of the Ro tension (will she ever be able to walk again?) seemed a bit forced because there's always some kind of technology in Trek to make that not an issue, but the reactions were right on the money.
This brings us to Kira. While she's in a coma, she has visions of the Prophets (the wormhole aliens who are the Bajoran gods) and they warn her about the coming of the Ascendants (first revealed in Rising Son). They also reflect back to another story where Kira was sent back into the ancient Bajoran past, and now she's back there again. She's the leader of the Bajora, an ancient people, who are trying to enter a city occupied by the Eav'oq just as the Ascendants are coming to obliterate everything. These visions definitely mean something, as the Acsendants have been "coming" in the real world for some time now. Ben Sisko warned of their coming as well when he returned. The visions are important, but at times they just dragged the story down to a halt. I liked the relationship between the names of the characters in the vision and the ones we know and love (I won't say what it is for those of you who will read it), and I definitely got a rising sense of foreboding from these visions, but I didn't enjoy reading about them that much.
The writing of Warpath is very good, but the difference between Mack's writing and David R. George III's writing (from Olympus Descending) is quite jarring, so be prepared if you're reading one right after the other. Both are good, but they are quite unique from each other. As I said earlier, the action scenes kick butt, but the other scenes are good too. The continuation of the Deep Space Nine saga is an excellent novel marred by a few missteps. I just wish we didn't have to wait another year for what may be the resolution (or might not be). What felt like the "secret" of the book was let out really early, which made the climax of the story almost jaw-dropping. What seemed like it would be a rather pedestrian plot kicks into overdrive just as the book ends. It will definitely leave you wanting more.
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