Last week I reviewed Gods of Night, the first book in the Star Trek Destiny series. This week I will review the last two. The second book in the series is Mere Mortals. I enjoyed this book more than the first. By this book, the reader has a pretty good handle on the crews and what they have gone through, and it’s easier to follow.
While the story of the Columbia continues (now in the distant past), Dax has been forced to stop her investigations in the present without a final determination of what happened. She has discovered some things, but the rest remains a mystery. Meanwhile, Captain Riker and his crew have discovered the Caeliar on a new planet, along with Captain Erika Hernandez of the Columbia, miraculously youthful.
Picard and Dax are now both battling the Borg, and the war is still not going well. But there is more on the horizon for these two crews. They discover and explore subspace tunnels that have appeared in their sector. There they encounter hostile species from the Delta quadrant who they must defeat before they can get back to their fight with the Borg.
In this book, things are more interesting and intriguing. Although there seem to be several separate stories, they are coming together, but will really coalesce in Lost Souls.
Lost Souls follows Riker, Picard, and Dax in their fight against the Borg, but now they have a new ally — Captain Erika Hernandez. In addition, there is another story taking place in the far distant past — another part of Hernandez’s crew trying to survive on a hostile planet.
As you might expect, all of these stories must combine in some way to make a satisfying end to the story. And they do. Although about one-third of the way through the last book, I was able to guess a pretty substantial truth about the Borg, there were more surprises to come.
I liked the trilogy Star Trek Destiny. I liked the fact that there were a lot of female characters in command positions and that it used characters and storylines from all the Star Trek series except TNG. That being said, as mentioned before, it was hard to keep the crews straight and especially to keep track of all the new characters. It was also hard to remember all the references from the TV shows and movies. I rewatched the last three movies and had been near the end of streaming DS9 while I was reading, so that helped, but there were still some references I could not get.
David Mack is a good writer, and I thought he stayed true to the original characters. The only problem I really had was viewing Ezri Dax as a starship captain, though I suppose, after getting used to her symbiont and growing in her career, she might have made it to command. The only other fault I can find in Mack’s writing is that he spends too much time in certain scenes that aren’t necessary to move the plot along.
Do I recommend it? If you’re a Star Trek fan and don’t mind wading through 828 pages to get to the goodies, go for it! There are some revelations in the final book that are worth it.