Dreadful. The first 150 pages is spent summarizing the previous Typhon Pact books - poorly, I might add - while simultaneously adding absolutely nothing of consequence or new to what I read in Zero Sum Game through Fallen Gods. The rest of the book, rather than do any character work or justify the bizarre choices the author chose to send the DS9 characters in in "Rough Beasts of Empire" spends page after page after page detailing the most mundane minutia of DS9, the Gamma Quadrant, and Sisko's out-of-character and boring life as a Captain. There is no *story* here; when this same writer wrote the first "Mission Gamma" novel, he managed to weave character work into this minutia and it was brilliant, but here it seems as if he needed to fill a page, so explains, again, that the Enterprise-D crashed on Viridian ten years ago; or that Kira used to be Captain of DS9. None of the summaries are for important events - for the Ascendents, for the Founders - since the last Deep Space Nine book - Soul Key - which left some huge threads dangling. Instead, he reminds us of unimportant nonsense that the most casual of Star Trek fan either already would know or wouldn't give a shit about. It is written a lot better than "Rough Beasts of Empire"; but it stinks of a disrespect for the reader, whether casual or fan. It continues to sideline and diminish the import of necessary players (killing two viable characters in Empress Donata and Praetor Tal'Aura for a boring and personality-less Praetor of his own creation) and simply writing off a brave and noble character into a death-coma, despite the startling potential and fresh-breath Commander Vaughan brought to the Deep Space Nine Relaunch way back in "Avatar". There's no consistency of tone, of character, or of plot. It moves from set piece to set piece for no reason except that it has to in order for the author to get all his chess pieces where he wants them... then he does nothing with them. There are two scenes of any worth in this book. The one is the scene between President Bacco and the Cardassian Castellan. The other is the Khitomer - Typhon Pact meeting. Both political self-aggrandizing, but actually fun to read. The rest of the book is nonsense, and if not for that shock end, I'd suggest giving this a pass...God knows that he'll summarize this whole book in the first 200 pages of the next Typhon Pact book, "Raise the Dawn". Another "bridge" book in the Typhon Pact series, however, this one gives a lot of good insight into the motives behind the Romulan Empire and the Typhon Pact blowing up DS9. And for the most part, the book does a good job of setting it all up - hopefully the plots get resolved in the next book.However, there are some problems here. First, Ben Sisko is again written out of character and he's a total shit toward Kassidy. Similarly, Worf and Picard are distrustful of the Romulans and so they just...ignore that feeling and go on with their stupid joint mission. It seems like everyone in the book is suspicious of everyone else and all the while not paying clear enough attention to the stuff that's going on.
What do You think about Plagues Of Night (2012)?
Now THAT is a Star Trek book. plenty of missteps, but a hell of a story.
—nithinudhaya
Really enjoying the series - loved all the action in this one
—Kkbest
Withholding a review until I finish the duology.
—billy
