A serial killer is loose aboard DS9 and it's not just any serial killer, it's a shapeshifter. Can Odo put a stop to the murders before the station runs out of red shirts? And will Odo be able to find out about his people from the murderous shapeshifter? (Spoiler: this is a season one story, so no!) And in what would constitute the b-plots in a regular episode of Deep Space Nine, an alien evangelist and his family show up to annoy everyone around them, O'Brien tries to learn a magic trick to impress a toddler, and a spurned former business rival of Quark's shows up with a wild scheme to buy the entire space station from the Bajorans.
Despite being a fan of Star Trek since my youth, I have never read one of the novels related to the series until now. I'm not really sure what kept me away from the books, other than perhaps intimidation at the sheer number of them in existence. Seriously, just take a gander at the list of Trek novels on Wikipedia sometime. These damn things reproduce faster than a Tribble.
However, I recently came across a listing for a whole batch of Trek books on an auction site for a steal of a price, and the majority of them were Deep Space Nine books, which made the deal even more enticing for me. Deep Space Nine, if you didn't know, is proven to be the superior version of Star Trek appreciated by real manly men who are desired by all the womenfolk and frequently bench-press like Jesse Ventura getting prepped for a role in Predator. I don't make the rules, folks! Just letting you know how it is...
So anyway, The Siege by Peter David (not to be confused with the season two episode of DS9 of the same name). What a hell of a book to begin my journey with Star Trek in prose with. I didn't do much research, but from what little I did, I gather The Siege has something of a dubious reputation in some fandom circles. Some people with more delicate sensitivities hate it. Those people would be nerds. Me, an intellectual... well, I loved it.
Let's consider for a moment all the dark and dire things in The Siege:
-Quark has a holosuite sex program featuring Jax and Kira. Finally, a Trek writer acknowledges what the majority of us would end up using the holosuite for: porn.
-Bashir has a program created in said holosuite featuring a dying child. He then tricks the mother of said child into the holosuite so she can watch the child die in order to coerce and traumatize her into accepting Bashir's treatment for her actual child's terminal illness - a treatment that goes against her and her son's religious beliefs AND ultimately causes her to lose her faith in her god AND results in her getting divorced AND sees her and her son now exiled from her own people. Our Man Bashir delivering the highly ethical Hippocratic results as always!
-Oh, and there's the killer on the loose too. We read about a series of exceedingly brutal, gruesome, and graphic murders - one of which a small child and her sexual assault survivor mother are witnesses to. Just peachy.
And... most heinous of all...
-Keiko O'Brien *shudder*
And of course, there's Odo's insane shapeshifting power levels where he's doing Mr. Fantastic-esque feats of stretching and maneuvering, including some hilarious fight scenes with his shapeshifting rival towards the end of the novel. I suspect the author actually knew better, but he tries to make excuses for Odo's over the top feats in the preface by telling us the book was written at a time early in DS9's run when only five episodes had aired. I call bullshit, because armed with only those five episodes and the series bible, the author was able to nail the tone of all the other characters, especially The Sisko™, who is afforded several moments of badassery - both with a phaser trickshot and as the 'don't fuck with me' style diplomat in the face of two hostile ships bearing down on the station. No, I think the author just had a vision in his mind of Odo being able to have his hands turn into weapons like Robert Patrick in Terminator 2 or magically shapeshift wheels from his ankles so he could skate around the villain and he wasn't backing down from that goofy vision, series continuity be damned. And I am strangely okay with it.
It may sound like I'm complaining, but I only do it in good fun. The Siege is a solid, breezy read if you can get past the occasional haymaker towards continuity. If nothing else, it got me in the mood for more literary Trek.
Rating:
Dr. Recommended!
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