Customer Reviews

Inferno (Star Trek Deep Space Nine, Millennium Book 3 of 3)

5 star:		(10)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Well, that was a fun ride. This trilogy is the best Trek prose story in years. Please let the Reeves-Stevens write more Trek. This trilogy feels much more "epic" in scope than most Trek series, even the other multi-book series. The multiple time jumps are quite a feat of editing, and the way everything finally falls together reminded me a bit of the end of Back to the Future II. The writers and characters do a wonderful, dizzying tap dance around past events, creating a nice interlocking puzzle that must be unravelled. If you've been avoiding the Trek books due to the feeling that they were getting repetitive, give these a try. If you've been following them all along, be prepared for a wake-up call. MILLENIUM raises the bar on what Pocket should be publishing from now on.

...but it eventually settles down to the inspired level of the first two. But, as Meatloaf put it; "Two out of three ain't bad". One of the most powerful characters throughout the series is a "secular" Bajoran Starfleet officer (she grew up on a newer colony without much "old world" influence) becomes in this volume a religious fanatic who gets brainwashed into a breakaway sect whose "emmisary" is a Weyoun clone (! ). Another feature is Jake Sisko's opportunity to play a real adult role rather than Ben's kid. Odo is just, well...Odo. The type of dude you can always count on. I'm not going to give away any more of the story--with a tale this big, you can give the ending away a lot earlier than with just one book. But here's a warning--you can't just buy this book and come away satisfied--you gotta get the other two. Hell, buy all three at once, it's worth the 16 bucks and will save you on shipping. The Reeves-Stevens household has apparently decided to take the "lightweight" out of Trek fiction and I hope it becomes a habit. As well as rubbing off on other Trek authors.

As far as I can see, there are two kinds of readers: Those who have read the previous 2 books of the Millennium series, and those who haven't. To people belonging to the second group, I don't advise to read this book. Although the authors really try to give all necessary background information, they, most unfortunately, don't succeed. As a result, you will be unable to understand important parts of the plot and to feel the charm of "Inferno".

For the other group of readers, this book is a real MUST!

The story seems to be quite simple: The Universe has collapsed and the only existing realm is the wormhole. Starship Defiant, Klingon battlecruiser Boreth and Deep Space Nine itself are caught in the nonlinear realm in bubbles of space-time, the only remnants of the old Universe. Those bubbles are extremely unstable and dissolve quickly, so that the crews of the Defiant and the Boreth have got only about thirty hours to save the Universe, to bring it back from nothingness. If they fail, they are doomed to share that nothingness with their former Universe.

Now you probably want to know how it is possible to save something that doesn't exist anymore, that has physicaly never existed and will never exist. I confess I don't know either, and that is the first negative point about this novel. There are certain physical processes going on, but the authors obviously don't consider them too important to explain them.

Exactly the same can be told about time travel which is extremely important for the story. In the first two books (particularly in Book 2), methods of time travel were explained using the most modern theories concerning space-time. Even though I am not a physicist, I liked them very much and wanted to find out more about them in "Inferno". But I wasn't given an opportunity to do it. Furthermore certain processes in this book stood in direct contradiction to the explanations from Book 2. That was a pity. The authors probably haven't thought it out all too well.

But apart from these two points, "Inferno" and the entire Millennium series were a real fun. I consider those three books as masterpieces of Star Trek fiction. Judith and Garfield Reeves-Stevens are really geniuses. The characterizations throughout the series are outstanding; the books are full of irony, humor, gripping action, suspense and strong human feelings, which make the story more realistic in my eyes. Furthermore they deal in a unique way with difficult religious and philosophical questions. And, last but not least, the novels bring back into action the crew of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine we have missed so much since the end of the series on TV.

I, for my part, liked the Millennium series, and if you read it, you will certainly not regret it either.

This is not a perfect book - the ending is rather unclear and surprisingly rushed. However, the scope of the book, carrying the cast from my favorite Trek series up to and beyond the seeming end of the universe, and the way the characters face desparate odds and still overcome them, is fantastic. The Reeves-Stevenses know how to tell an epic story. That's something that Star Trek rarely does well, even at its best. This would have made a spectacular bit of television.

And once again, Garak - not content to have his own book - steals the show. This book is worth reading if only to see what happens when Garak has a conversation with Garak!

If you're a Trek fan, these books are pretty much a must-read. If you're not a Trekkie but enjoy epic space fantasy, you'll be lost at first, but you'll have fun. And you might even decide to go back and give reruns of DS9 a try.

Amazingly, someone other than Peter David has written a series of Trek books that are just as good, if not better than, their source material. This trilogy is hands-down enjoyable, with a truly epic feel to it and some great foreshadowing of events that take place in season 7. This story picks up after the end of DS9 but quickly jumps back to season 6 and from there to an alternate reality that is chilling. One of the best portrayals of Weyoun I've ever seen! The new characters, esp. Arla, are interesting and well fleshed out. If you like deep plots (sometimes almost too deep, I admit) and strong characterization, I urge you to try this series.

A great end to the Millennium books. I really liked it. I would like to write a very long review but then I would give away the plot, so i'm just going to say GREAT!

Time travel paradoxes give you a headache? Then this book is not for you. However, if you like good, old-fashioned, this-happend-already-we're-going-through-it-again-because-you-killed-your-grandpa time travel headaches, then you should loooooove this book. I won't give anything away, but the ending will leave you wondering, "What was that all about?" Anyway. Long live Judith and Garfeild! LL&P, Trekkers!

This book is a good read, although not quite as good as the first two books in the trilogy.

One thing that I call to your attention is that I spent the whole book wondering how the writers could possibly extracate the characters from the time-travel paradox that seemed destined to befall them. It was the expectation of that resolution that kept me glued to the pages of the book.

Unfortunately, the authors never properly resolve the paradox, leaving two versions of each character alive at the end of the novel (although they don't address the issue and pretend that only one version of each character remains).

For such a great set of books, the ending was simply not thought through.

This series as a whole I would rate four stars, but since no individual book in the series stands on its own, I dock them each one star when rating them individually. The series as a whole is a very ambitious project, over 1000 pages of story with a very convoluted plot involving multiple time-travel interconnections of cause and effect, a very difficult concept to pull off well. The authors MOSTLY manage the concept well, but I'm not certain that they actually succeed; it's all just too complex for me. I suspect that multiple reading in a short time would be required to actually judge the effectiveness with which they carry out their concept, rather than one reading in fits and starts over a couple of months, but frankly, I didn't find the book compelling enough to justify giving it that much attention.

Book II ended with Sisko in hell, and so I immediately jumped into book III. I was not disappointed. It took me only 3 days to complete, making this trilogy my fastest ever read trilogy.
The description of peoples' intellectual rather than physical hell was interesting. Question: was Worf in hell or did the Pah-Wraiths not know what got to him? Anyways, that's a moot point.
The authors themselves lay claim to being experts with the theory of nonlinear time (and time travel), and I must say this book (and the series in general, especially the Prologues with the Prophets) deals with it VERY well. This book is very good. I was so glad to see events from Book I portrayed from another viewpoint as the crew traveled back in time to DS9 during the Cardassian withdrawal and the destruction of the station. The way the crew jumps back and forth through time (corresponding with shifts from the blue to the red wormholes/temples) was brilliant! I was so very impressed by the lack of plot holes, or rather the consistency of the plots and how they tied together nicely and often quite surprisingly.
Garak vs Garak...what can one say? I've been wanting to see that for ages, and it was pure hilarity! Garak's final comments when Sisko observes him secretly handing something to past Garak is bang on what I expect of him. GREAT writing here! Sisko's constant worrying for his son was handled well. Jake finally doing something was much welcomed. Kira hugging Arla was pure emotional gold. Simple, yet beautiful. The 3 great Bajoran prophets! I assumed I knew who they were and the ending confimed that assumption. Quite funny, sort of like the Ferengi on the VOY episode. Btw, what happens to Vash? Surely she's not stuck in the past...I'm sure Q will bring her back to the 'present'. Regardless, a paradox still remains as reviewer Shuster points out. That it wasn't completely solved is understandable, and considering all the other plot holes that could have occured but did not, I am overall very impressed and pleased with having read these books.
Oh, and how about Weyoun's hell.. that was soo utterly sad and depressing I actually felt bad for him. Couldn't believe the writers could make me feel that way.
SPOILER: Dax killing future Dukat is absolutely pure brilliance seeing as the books take place the episode before Dax is killed by Dukat ("Tears of the Prophets").
The series actually has some subtle forewarning to what happens in Season 7 of DS9. Worf and Dax's concerns over who will die first is more profound knowing Jadzia Dax dies on the show. Simple stuff like that really make this series outstanding. Oh, and Vic's reappearance and philosophy is quite mind-rattling...(as it is in "Lives of Dax").
Once again the characterizations are spot on.
I also agree with reviewer Gawrisch that this book should not be read alone. Although it could be, it has so much more weight and value to it, AND INTRIGUE, having read the first two books first. Reviewer Clark hadn't read the first two and still gave the book 4/5 rating and called it the best DS9 book written. Had she read the first two she may have to change her mind (or some of the newer DS9 relaunch books).
Oh, and the Epilogue ties in nicely with the other DS9 relaunch books, paving way for Perry's novels Avatar, Rising Son and Unity.

All in all this is to date the best Trek trilogy written.