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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
The Return to the Beginning, July 12, 2000
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.
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by S. D. Perry
