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Published: 2013 Acquired: April 2019 Read: November 2020 |
22 August–1 September 2385
As much as I have often been critical of Destiny-era fiction, I
would say that it has all reached a basic level of competence: they are
all stories about people trying to accomplish things against obstacles
placed in their way. Now, this might seem like damning with faint
praise... but it's praise one cannot bring to Revelation and Dust, a book where almost nothing happens for the first 250 pages.
No one is trying to accomplish anything and encountering obstacles;
rather, we just get a series of dull scenes intended to establish what
all the Deep Space Nine characters have been up to since they were last seen in Raise the Dawn.
Sisko thinks a lot while Yates makes dinner in a replicator. Ro thinks a
lot while looking at a park. Quark thinks a lot while looking at his
bar. O'Brien thinks a lot while putting on his dress uniform. Nan Bacco
has meetings that don't really go anywhere, but I assume are meant to
set up things that will happen in later installments of The Fall. There seem to be an interminable number of scenes where people go to memorials or other ceremonies. But nothing actually happens.
A lot of the book seems to be there to set up the new Deep Space 9.
There are paragraphs about things like turbolift design and the layout
of Ops and what the new hospital is like and what the names of every
counselor assigned to the station are. Quite frankly, I don't care what
it all looks like if there's not a story it's all in support of. In any case, as long as the station gets rebuilt and replaced, there's no way destroying it could really change the fundamentals of DS9
storytelling in a meaningful way. It's like when a comic book crossover
kills off a minor-but-beloved character to prove the situation is
serious... it doesn't prove anything at all, because you know that the
next time a writer wants to use, say, Firestorm, he'll be back, and
he'll be fine. DS9 is back, and it doesn't matter if "Ops" is now called "the Hub," everything was fine.
The one exception to this is the Kira subplot. Kira was on a runabout that exploded in the wormhole in Raise the Dawn
(I guess? I actually totally forgot about this), and we find out what
happened to her here. First she spends her time observing a, I shit you
not, 25-page line-by-line recap of every single wormhole scene from
"Emissary." It is so boring. I have seen "Emissary," and whatever new spin one might gain on it is quickly drained away by the fact that Kira is way behind the reader in terms of what is happening. I have no idea what this was supposed to be in aid of.
I should have counted my blessings, because soon Kira is in the ancient
past of Bajor, inhabiting the existence of someone named "Keev," and it
is 100% people you don't care about with space names interacting with
other people you don't care about with space names. The novel never
gives you a reason to want Keev to succeed, and I quickly turned to
skimming these chapters when they appeared. This is actually the third time in the DS9 relaunch there's been an extended sequence of Kira in Bajor's past (it also happened in "Horn and Ivory" and Warpath), so this is a well that's been gone to a bit too much at this point. As my friend Brendan pointed out, "all they ever feel like is a thematic crutch. Why not have Kira evolve and learn lessons based on events in her actual life?"
SPOILERS: Two thirds of the way into this book, Federation president Nan
Bacco is assassinated. You might thing this would kick the book into
high gear, but instead, people sit around and think about how sad they
are. The investigation has little sense of urgency, and not all the
actions Ro and Blackmer take make a lot of sense. (Ro announces Bacco is
dead, and it doesn't occur to her that all the other heads of state might have security concerns until they contact her.)
The lack of urgency is exacerbated by the fact that at this point the
Keev chapters increase in frequency, now alternating with present-day
events, so every time something does happen, you're promptly jerked to something you don't care about.
I like David R. George III as a writer-- Twilight and Serpents among the Ruins rank among my favorite Star Trek books-- but his Destiny-era stuff started out feeling misguided, and seems to keep getting worse.
- The O'Brien family moved to Cardassia in 2376, if I recall correctly; O'Brien was then assigned to build the new Deep Space 9 in 2383. That means he lived on Cardassia for seven years... as long as he lived on the original Deep Space 9! To be honest, I just don't feel it, and I don't know if I ever will.
- Also, why has Nog essentially been demoted in responsibility? Before his assignment to the Challenger in Indistinguishable from Magic he was chief engineer of Deep Space 9; now that he's returned, he's assistant chief engineer! And he's assistant to a guy he considerably outranks.
- Copy editing is a bit poor. On p. 45, for example, we're told Kira "didn't care much for the sport [of baseball]-- or really even understand it," and then two paragraphs later that Kira "[a]lthough she had eventually learned the rules of the sport, she had never really understood it." Yes, I got it the first time!
- There's also some very clunky dialogue, such as a sequence where
O'Brien, Nog, Bashir, and Sarina discuss how many heads of state are on
the station: "'I'm not talking about worlds,' O'Brien said, 'I'm talking
about empires and unions and hegemonies.' 'Don't forget alliances,' Nog
said, doubtless speaking about his Ferengi origins" (p. 239).
- To be honest, I feel like it's hard to justify Ro and Blackmer keeping their jobs. They had one station sabotaged out from under them, and then on the day the next one opened, the president of the Federation was killed! What kind of operation are they running?
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