Category: Deep Space Nine

Story: The discovery of an ancient prophecy about 10,000 deaths before the birth of the Avatar – the son of the Emissary – worries Kira and Ro. When Vedek Yevir is summoned to investigate the ancient book, he instantly denounces it as the writings of a Bajoran heretic cult that turned away from the teachings of the prophets. But Kira isn’t so sure – all of the prophecies thus far have come true. She doesn’t have time to worry about it, however, when a new crisis arrives – the Jem’Hadar soldier who claims to have come to DS9 under orders from Odo breaks out and goes on a killing spree, making his way toward the station’s reactor core to overload it. Commander Vaughn, having just arrived aboard the recently-docked Enterprise-E, helps Kira to prevent the station’s destruction, but the two only survive with the help of another Jem’Hadar who claims to be on the same mission. A Starfleet attack force masses in anticipation of a new Dominion War, unless the new Jem’Hadar arrival can prove what he says to be true – and Kira unleashes chaos on Bajor by revealing the forbidden prophecies to the general population…only to discover that the prophecy of 10,000 sacrifices has already come to pass.

Review: I was sharply critical of the first volume of the two-book “Avatar” because it seemed like it was all setup. Book two is all payoff, and it really does redeem the story as a whole. Maybe this is a better relaunch for Deep Space Nine than I was really capable of giving it credit for after reading only the first book. … Read more

Story: Only a few months after the end of the Dominion War and the disappearance of Captain Sisko in the Fire Caves of Bajor, things still haven’t quite returned to normal aboard space station Deep Space 9. Colonel Kira Nerys has become the station’s commander, though she is shaken when a friend of hers, a Bajoran Vedek, is brutally murdered on the station. Even worse, a surprise attack by Jem’Hadar comes at the worst time, with both the station and the U.S.S. Defiant undergoing much-needed refits. The damage is severe, and Dr. Bashir can’t save everyone. The station’s new security chief, former Starfleet officer Ro Laren (now in Bajoran uniform following the dissolution of the Maquis), seems to be achieving nothing but getting on Kira’s bad side. As Kasidy Yates-Sisko prepares to leave the station and settle in the house that her missing husband built on Bajor, Jake Sisko returns from Bajor with a new mission: a Bajoran Vedek slipped him a few pages of an ancient prophecy that seems to foretell the son of the Emissary retrieving his lost father from the Temple of the Prophets. Jake secretly prepares to undertake this mission, even going so far as to buy his own shuttle from Quark, but what he doesn’t know is that this same Vedek was Kira’s murdered friend – and that the rest of the prophecy, which Ro finds in a book that was in the Vedek’s possession at the time of her death, foretells something else: death on a massive scale on Bajor, something which apparently must happen before Sisko’s second child can be born.

Review: When Pocket Books relaunched its Star Trek: Deep Space Nine novel series in the wake of the TV show’s demise, the possibilities seemed endless. Ever the bastard stepchild of the Star Trek franchise, DS9 was effectively being handed over to the authors and editors, who had carte blanche to advance the storyline without having to bring things around to the status quo so the book wouldn’t interfere with future filmed adventures (a requirement that had chased me away from any Trek novels years ago). This almost sounded too good to be true. … Read more