January 2021: This cover is bad (like so many Star Trek books for some reason), but The Lives of Dax is a rad anthology. It’s fans-only for sure and the insight into each of Dax’s lives is a cool idea.
S.D. Perry knocked her two stories out of the park. (“Rad” and “cool” surely capture the essence of these authors’ work.)
February 2021: Left Hand of Destiny is an epic on the scale of Lord of the Rings featuring Martok, my favorite Klingon (sorry, Worf). For that reason alone it’s worth reading, but the authors do good work in further poking the bear that is Klingon politics.
April 2021: And A Stitch in Time is a Godfather-like exploration of the devout man’s fall from grace. It removes the vale that is central to Garak but it’s worth exploring after watching the TV show.
July 2021: Taking a side road through short fiction (my favorite trips) with Prophecy and Change. I like that these books open the tracks for more philosophical and metaphysical exploration of these characters.
January 2022: The Avatar duology from S.D. Perry is phenomenal! I love the focus on Kira as commander of the station and that Bajoran faith and religion continue to play a vital role.
As a post-war trauma narrative, it’s also fascinating to see them deal with their feelings in the aftermath.
March 2022: Millennium:
The Fall of Terok Nor – Classic setting aboard DS9, I’m with you.
The War of the Prophets – Holy shit, that’s dark.
Inferno – Fun time travel shenanigans. Wraps up too neatly after traumatic events but these characters do have to get back to season 6 of the show.
June 2022: This cover for a collection of short stories makes me deeply uncomfortable. Beyond that, I really have to look at the publication year of 2004 to try and understand why they thought this would be a good idea. It may be intriguing to see what various characters were doing during the Dominion War arc of Deep Space Nine, but this book’s jingoism is rough.
August 2022: The Nexus is a fascinating artifact of 90s Star Trek, written by actors of a TV show and performed as their characters from that show, but not official in any way. But I liked it, a kind of resolution to unresolved moments from the TV show.
August 2022: A neat little adventure, although it’s part of a series and many characters lack development that I’m sure is doled out over the course of several of these short novels. Focusing on a crew of mostly engineers gives this that lower decks vibe, a definite plus.
November 2022: Okay not a Deep Space Nine-branded book, but I read all of these Myriad Universes collections because some of them are centered around Deep Space Nine and I couldn’t just skip over some stories. They’re all worth the read even if the first thirds of most stories are weirdly consistent at dragging before the pace picks up. The DS9 story in this book is the third and final novella, Seeds of Dissent. All of these books present “what if?” scenarios and this one focuses on an alternate history in which Khan creates his own version of the mirror universe with genetically augmented humans ruling the alpha quadrant with an iron fist. It’s centered on Bashir and Dax (Ezri), but they bring in elements from ENT, TOS, and even a flashback character from Voyager. It’s also funny to see someone like O’Brien as a meathead augment. I don’t know if I buy Bashir’s turn in the story but it was a nice romp where the good guys put on their evil goatees for a while.
December 2022: DeCandido’s story, A Gutted World, is the only reason I started reading these books, because it presents the most compelling question: "What if the Cardassians discovered the Bajoran Wormhole?“ And let me tell ya, it gets rough. Expect copious death. I didn’t appreciate jamming Picard and crew in as the central figures when you had a perfectly good Sisko in the mix as well, but still an interesting look at how all the factions of the Dominion war might’ve gone about things if the Cardassians had lucked upon the wormhole first.
January 2023: Honor in the Night is the final story in this book and of all of the Myriad Universes series. It starts out with TOS events centered around the “The Trouble With Tribbles” episode, but unlike most stories in this series, you’re not following one of the captains around. Instead, it plays like a century-long mystery, dipping in and out of an alternate history that explores how a change in that TOS episode could elevate minor characters to critical players in galactic politics. (Imagine Citizen Kane but Star Trek.) The early bits can get confusing as the story skips around between different dates and characters, but it eventually gets very intriguing and does wind its way onto DS9 and Bajor. This may actually be my favorite of the Myriad Universes stories, precisely because we get to hang out with characters who aren’t one of the main cast of the TV show. But as much as I enjoyed all these alternate histories, I’m glad to wrap it up and get back to the DS9 relaunch books.
What a journey. I’m kinda sad not to receive further correspondence from my good friends in 19th century England. At least now I see how much hornier Francis Ford Coppola made his version of events.
