Book Review: Star Trek: Typhon Pact – Raise The Dawn

The second (and final) part of David R. George III’s new Typhon Pact duology is due to hits the bookstore shelves this week. TrekMovie’s Rob Lyons has already blazed through his copy, and has some thoughts to share. Check out the TrekMovie review of “Star Trek: Typhon Pact: Raise the Dawn” below.

 

 

REVIEW: STAR TREK: TYPHON PACT – RAISE THE DAWN
by David R. George III
Massmarket paperback – 400  pages
PocketBooks – April 2012 – $7.99

Warning: This review contains some spoilers from last month’s novel, “Plagues of Night”.
 

Benjamin Sisko is stripped of his senses, the détente with which Praetor Kammemor has engaged the Khitomer Accord signatories appears headed right out the window, and the cinders of battle still cool across the Bajoran sector. This is the opening that greets you as you enter into David R. George’s second Typhon Pact novel of the year, “Raise the Dawn”.

This month’s story traces a winding road for the crew of Deep Space Nine, Federation leadership, and for several key players in the DS9 saga. At the same time, plenty of time is spent among Romulan leadership and in some unsavory Cardassian backwaters… all of which leads to some extremely significant alterations to the post-Nemesis environment.

“Raise the Dawn” is a highly ambitious novel. Within the covers, George weaves a tapestry that, if listed might sound overwhelming… but the tapestry works. More than working, it shines.

In Romulan space, the Praetor find herself trapped in a fight to determine how thoroughly her government has been compromised, drawing herself into a major, though delightfully understated, confrontation with Sela, Tomalak, and the Tal Shiar. Kammemor, a ‘new kind’ of praetor for the Empire, shows her unorthodox side while remaining quite comfortable with the Machiavellian nature of Romulan politics. Unafraid to employ subterfuge when necessary, and consistently putting the best foot of Romulus forward, she comes across as the real game-changer in relations between at least Romulus and the Federation (if not the wider Khitomer Accord powers). This thawing comes at a curious time, since the new timeline created in 2009’s feature film gives us only a few years remaining until the destruction of Romulus. George’s expansion of Kammemor’s leadership style and aims already begin to tug one into wondering what Romulus might become, and leave the reader lamenting for what surely must happen.

In the meantime, a quite cadre Typhon Pact scientists, engineers, and warriors form an alliance, bringing to bear their own unique way to reach level the playing field between the two great powers… one that is both as ingenious in its conceptualization as it is dangerous in its potential ramification. To be absolutely certain, this technology is going to change the Star Trek universe significantly in one very important aspect… at least, for the foreseeable future. One can only wonder who will bear the brunt of that particular cost.

Federation President Nan Bacco has significant face-time in “Raise the Dawn”, all of it very well executed; but even the president isn’t the star of the show.

No, the real hinge point of “Raise the Dawn” is the Bajoran Wormhole, and its effects on Ben Sisko, Kasidy Yates, Elias Vaughn, Kira Nerys, and even Odo. While the unfolding of the Wormhole’s vector in this story has a much broader and, ultimately, more significant geopolitical import, George crafts a deeply engaging experience that brings a gratifying and meaningful resolution to many open questions in the current continuity of the post-Nemesis story line.

In my review of “Plagues of Night” I wrote: “In the case of Vaughn’s story line, a simple death seems anticlimactic, and I can’t help but feel that something odd needs to take place… should take place… before his character is finally retired from the pages of Trek lit. On the flip side, Sisko’s story is crying out for a very human resolution. Oddity wouldn’t serve his familial relationship well – though, given his years of experiences with the Prophets, one would have to wonder if an ‘orb experience’ would be ‘mundane’ enough to close out this chapter of his life.” I am immensely gratified to say that I was pleased and even touched with the elegance of the resolution, and the fact that both ultimately left me extremely satisfied with George’s resolution of these ongoing threads in Trek Lit.

To be sure, there is also a measure of bittersweetness. Kira has been my favorite Deep Space Nine character since the beginning of the TV series, and her amazing arc in this month’s novel was superbly written, emotionally gripping, and completely unexpected. At the same time, neither will Odo, who now is left pondering the future in a way that was equally unexpected as one opened the pages of “Raise the Dawn”.
In two months, George has managed to turn the literary Trek universe on end, upset more than a few apple carts, and – after a bit of a slow start – rapidly accelerate the current novel continuity into overdrive in a way that makes me want to quote Simon Pegg’s Scotty…. “It’s exciting!”

DO NOT MISS THIS BOOK.

"Star Trek: Typhon Pact: Raise the Dawn" is scheduled for release tomorrow (Tuesday, June 26). The preceding book "Star Trek: Typhon Pact: Plagues of Night" is available now. 

 

MORE: new and upcoming Star Trek novels

Other recent Star Trek fiction releases Greg Cox’s "Star Trek: The Original Series: The Rings of Time," Dayton Ward’s "Star Trek: That Which Divides" (TrekMovie review), David Mack’s
"Star Trek: Vanguard: Storming Heaven" (TrekMovie review), and Chris Bennett’s "Star Trek: DTI: Forgotten History" (TrekMovie review). 

 

The next novel (following the second part of David R. George III’s Typhon Pact duology), continues the story of Captain Riker and his exploration of the Beta Quadrant. In July Michael A. Martin’s "Star Trek: Titan: Fallen Gods
" due in July. 

 

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I picked this up on Friday (God bless B&N for having it out a few days early) and it is truly phenomenal. I’m really excited for the future of DS9. It’s been so long since it was really cohesive, and now that it’s caught up with the rest of Trek Lit, it is now fully paved for newer and better stories.

I don’t really care about the current state of trek literature but are there any plans about some books whithin the series timeline for ds9’s 20th anniversary? I would like to read something new about my favorite characters from the series.

I gave up the novels and I’m not interesting in reading this but out of curiosity was the ds9 station replaced?

Can we take some novels taking place during the series run? I’m fine with the continuing saga really but from the 12 novels we get every year at least 5 of them should set before the relaunches. There are important characters (Data, Janeway, Jadzia, ‘O Brien etc) that are not part of the current continuity or they don’t have prominent roles and there are fans who would like to read about them too. I thought the Star Trek novels were for the fans of the series, all the fans not just some elite who religiously follow every novel. The original series does that why not the rest?

So wait, let me get this straight … the stations is really gone?

Only 5 hours left till my kindle gets it, could be a long night tonight.

It’s been awhile since I’ve picked up a ST novel (been reading Stephen Ambrose…sorry), so, is it necessary to read the first book before picking up this one?

Kindly….

Oh yeah, the station is gone, all the good characters are gone and I’m done with the novels.

#4 I agree, there should be room for all the fans in the novel-verse.

POCKET: “Hey, CBS? Can we blow up Deep Space Nine in the next book? Is that cool with you guys?”

CBS: “Deep Space Nine? What ship was that?”

POCKET: “It was actually a space station…”

CBS: “Hey, Carl! Did you know that there was a space station in one of those Star Wars-”

POCKET: “Star Trek”

CBS: “- Trek TV shows?! The book guys wanna know can they blow it up? ”

CBS #2: “Harry, as long as the sell the damned things, they can have Shatner and Dr. Spock walking around in a tutu for all I care.”

I’d like to thank a very dear friend of mine who convinced me to start reading all those books I should’ve read years ago, and stop with all the Trek novels, I like David George, and I really enjoyed the books of his that I read… But destroying DS9 itself I think is something that should not happen in a novel. I know we’ll never see DS9 again on screen, but I think this is a step too far.

Destroy half the Alpha Quadrant with about a 1,000 Borg Cubes. That was great fun and a great read. Set up a power bloc to rival the UFP and the Klingons. That was OK. Bit uneven at times for me, but hey ho. Then almost every book I picked still seemed to be going on about the Borg Invasion and Typhon Pact this and Typhon Pact that… I just got bored really, because I don’t have the time to read all these (slightly) interconnected novels. Trilogies like Destiny are fine, but when I read something, I want it to be done in two weeks, and move onto something new. This Typhon Pact stuff could go on for years yet, and I don’t have the interest to be honest in hanging around to see will they get the Andorians back into UFP and how will they resolve the Typhon Pact stuff.

To be blunt, they lost my interest in the post-Nemesis stories after the fourth Typhon Pact novel. I’d much rather see one or two books a year set during the run of the show than trying to carry all this baggage in my head.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to read some more of Hunter S. Thompson’s exploits in 1971 Las Vegas.

4,

Actually, they’ve been bringing back a lot of the main characters. And yes, the station was replaced with a Federation base.

And I don’t get why people are so opposed to change in the Trek universe… there is now a cohesive plot taking place amongst ALL the series and the characters are evolving and changing as the years pass. Isn’t that what Trek is supposed to be about?

Things change, get over it….

Thanks alot for the “Spoiler Alert”, he said sarcastically.
I’m in the midst of reading “Plagues of Night” when I started reading the above review. %&#@!!!!

I guess it’s to be somewhat expected now that the Trek novels are more serialized, but, seriously, *MAJOR* spoilers…

I know I’m really nitpicking something arbitrary here, but here was your spoiler warning:

Italics: Massmarket paperback – 400 pages
Italics: PocketBooks – April 2012 – $7.99

Italics: Warning: This review contains some spoilers from last month’s novel, “Plagues of Night”.

Honestly, I zoned it into the publication information and skipped right past it. “Some spoilers” is one thing, but “Deep Space Nine got destroyed” seemed like it deserves a bit more of an emphatic warning…

Honestly, DS9 is gone? Man, that sucks. I’m a fan of the relaunch-series but with DS9, they’ve taken it too far. I know that people live on and separate, both in personal and business life. But with DS9, I really wish we’d see all characters back in the place where they belong. However, I will continue buying Pocket Books, don’t worry. ;-)

I just finished reading Raise the Dawn it is just as good as the review says. I too was shocked they destroyed DS9, but honestly all the Enterprises have been destroyed or retired so why not DS9. They even destroyed the Defiant in the television series, but they got a new one. So now there’ll be a new Federation space station that is Starfleet and not Cardassian so it doesn’t make a big difference to me.

Regarding the current state of Trek Literature. I too would like it if they had some more books that took place during the television series with our favorite characters, but they only seem to release one book a month and with so many ongoing series it would be very hard to keep those going and have stand alone books that took place during the shows.

I don’t mind the new storylines because they’re interesting and continue the post-Nemesis Star Trek storyline. Plus, the things that have happened in the books can probably be traced to things that also happened onscreen before. So I’ll continue to read the books for the unfolding Star Trek saga and to see if they link up with the Countdown comic or try to blaze their own path.

11,

I’m not against change or continuity; I just said that from the 12 novels we get every year, 5 of them could take place during the series run in order to be accessible to the fans of the series that don’t have the time or the will to follow every book and not only the hardcore lit verse fans (Pretty much how the TOS novels do). I haven’t dismissed the current continuity (personally I don’t enjoy the novels as I used to but there are fans who do and that’s great.) There is room for everything! I’m just saying that ALL the fans should have something to fit their liking. Not to mention that novels are not canon so why not more variety?

I have lost my enjoyment for the novels a long time ago and I don’t care to catch up but it would be nice if some stand alone novels set during TNG, DS9 AND VOY original run were come out once in a while so I could revisit my favorite characters every now and then!

I too support the notion to publish more novels during the series. I miss so many of my favorite characters! A little more diversity in the books doesn’t hurt.

I’ll pass, the resent novels have destroyed everything I loved from the series! Killing off Janeway, not bringing Data back, making the unworthy Ezri Dax a captain before more worthy characters and destroy completely all the great characters from the series have turned me off.

War after war, death counts, consecutive character’s angst and desparation is not what Star Trek stands for.
The current novels have give us an unimaginative, doom and gloomy universe I’m not fan of.
Star trek supposed to be imaginative, fun, optimistic and hopefull.
It’s like the authors have dismissed all the elements that made star trek fun and “unrealistic” (by their own messures) in order to make it a hard copy of reality. Sure, fine. whatever, I’m done with that.

I can’t wait till the pocket books kill all the characters and destroy the universe so we can get a reboot of the novelverse. Untill then goodbye!

If DS9 got destroyed why can’t starfleet make another Nor-type station, are they too lazy or do they want their own styled-starbase?

Terok Nor, as it became DS9, was an aging Cardassian mining station. Building a new station makes room for new characters and stories as the region settles into more peaceful times. Would make a great TV show continuation.

@21:

Why would they want to copy a station that was an originally designed to be an orbital ore refinery? Starfleet had to retrofit most of the station just to make it usable to begin with. I loved the look of Terok Nor, but it’s not the design I would use if I were starting from scratch to make an efficient star base.

The original Trek universe is finished on TV and film, so I think the books should do whatever they want and go epic. The Doctor Who novels went wild between 1990 and 2005 and told some amazing stories! Better that than churned-out drivel that can be contradicted by the show even before publication!*

*Not to say a lot of the apocrypha isn’t worth a look – check out Christopher Golden’s Pretty Maids All in a Row from the Buffy novels!! ;)

I agree with many of the comments regarding the interconnectivity of the post-“Nemesis” novels. It’s nice in concept, but I just don’t have the time, the energy, or the will to follow up on every single thing, and what I’ve seen of these novels doesn’t interest me at all. The only ones I’ve bothered to pick up were the two that revolve around the Department of Temporal Investigations, and that’s mainly because I’m a time travel/alternate universe junkie. Those novels are sprinkled with quite a bit of post-“Nemesis” references, but I can usually infer from context (and other things are usually spelled out), thus they don’t interfere with my enjoyment of them. I also picked up the TOS-era “Rings of Time” for the same reason. Other than that… meh.

I’m still pissed they killed Janeway.

#15- Yeah, I was shocked to say the least when they destroyed our favorite station, but then when I read what you wrote, I started thinking “You know, they DID retire the NX-01, destroy the original Enterprise, retired the Enterprise-A, went back and detroyed the Enterprise-D AND DS9’s Defiant, and we all survived”. And let’s not talk about the pounding the Enterprise-E took in the last movie!

Like the very last shot of ST III:TSFS states: “…and the Adventure continues…”

Count me as another who’d like to see more of the old style episodic novels set during the various series. The Trek novels were at their best back in the 80s. Some were clunkers, but a lot of them were very good. I just can’t get into the Trek novels coming out these days. I read one of the books set during the big, “final” Borg invasion and it seemed like a bunch of over-the-top fan wank with huge space battles and ridiculous melodrama. Every novel I’ve tried to read, or read a review of, for years seems to be super serious, fate of the galaxy hangs in the balance! kind of stuff.

I agree with many comments here that there should be a number of stand alone novels set within the timeline of each series. The tv series although part of a larger universe were very much self-contained and they were telling different stories with few crossovers. And each series has its own fanbase. I don’t get why a fan of – for instance – TNG has to read a tone of novels about DS9 or Titan or mixed crews in order to keep up with the TNG and vise versa. As some others have said here the star trek books should be able to appeal to the fans of the series, not only to the fans of the unofficial continuity of pocket books. After all the books are not canon and they can be contradicted by canon material any time, so why not take the opportunity to tell epic and awesome stories without be restricted by a sometimes tiresome continuity? I’ m not suggesting that they should abandoned continuity – not as long as there are fans who enjoying it – but there should be an equal amounts of novels outside the current continuity for the other fans.

From a business perspective, it seems unnecessarily limiting to stick to this expanded continuity almost exclusively. Maybe it does drive ardent fans of the book series to buy each one in turn, but it also creates a massive barrier to entry for the casual reader.

Count me in on those who would like to read something different for a change. I hope for ds9’s 20th anniversary next year we’ll get something like the millennium trilogy. I miss the characters from the series and their dynamic mostly Jadzia and Worf.

Pick up the 800 page omnibus of ST Destiny. I read that and I knew everything that I needed to know. It was a great jumping on point for the relaunch series. And, sure, a lot of stuff came before, but the books help you figure it all out. After I finished Destiny, I fell in love with Trek all over again and went right on to the next and the next and the next and I’m loving them. I’m in the camp that says, if they can blow up the Ent 1701, retired the A after 8 years of service, destroyed the Ent 1701 D, tear apart of the E, and even go as far as to blow up the Defiant, then I think it’s fair of them to blow up the station and build a new one. Sort of a cool idea really, I think. It’s about time, and by doing something such as this, they are really making this relaunch iteration of Trek ‘theirs’ and something new and original, and I cant wait to see how this all turns out!!

11–I tend to agree. I like the relaunches. However I don’t have a problem if Pocketbooks were to commission some novels set during the series runs, but I doubt it. As time passes, it seems interest by the general population in the spin-off series seems to be waning. We’re probably lucky to just have the relaunches at this point. Look at Enterprise. They decided to end the Romulan War books prematurely and I doubt you will ever see another Enterprise book. At some point, Pocketbooks may pull the plug altogether on books taking place on DS9 and Voyager altogether (TNG may survive).

I do like the idea of a continuing story, with the various authors working to stay consistent with one another. It makes it easier to follow the story of Star Trek.

I liked books from the 80’s and 90’s in general. However, one thing that always bugged me back in those days was the complete lack of any attempt to maintain any continuity whatsoever. Books back then outright contradicted each other at times. It made it difficult to come up with a coherent back story for some characters.

I’m not a huge Star Wars fan. However, one area I give Lucas credit for is making sure the Star Wars novels follow a continuity and avoid contradictions. I don’t want Star Trek to become Star Wars, but I do like that they are starting to follow some of the same ground rules as far as the novels go.

Also, I got my novels backwords. I went to B&N yesterday to pick up my next novel. I accidently picked up Raise the Dawn (they obviously released it a day early) thinking it was the next book which was really Plagues of Night. Now I have to go back to pick up the right novel.

Here, I started reading Raise the Dawn and the first line was “Deep Space Nine exploded.” I was thinking George really wanted to start with a bang. Well come to find out I picked up the wrong book first. Oh Boy.

I’ m against the bleak and humorless universe of the novels and i’ d like to read something that would again capture my imagination and travel me where no one has gone before. There are so many epic stories to tell: from parallel realities and what if possibilities to unthinkable new lifeforms and lost civilizations. If they need the “guess who’s gonna die next” card or “nobody’s safe” to keep the readers interested then there’s a serious problem of imagination, innovation and originality. Then we can have a death count at the beginning of each novel (the are ….. that survived the Borg war, there are ….. that survived the typhon pact conflict… there is one more cylon to be revealed…oops sorry…they all died for a reason…the island…sorry universe wanted them dead…..sorry couldn’t resist).

#35 – I recently purchased the Kindle version of Diane Duane’s “The Wounded Sky,” which definitely fit what you describe to a “T.” It was one of my all-time favorites, and reading it again brought that whole era back to me. It really was quite a remarkable era for Trek books, and while there were no shortage of clunkers, there were also a lot of real gems, like “Sky” and “My Enemy, My Ally” (which eventually became the first book in Duane’s Romulan saga, a view of Romulans that, frankly, I much preferred over what we eventually got in TNG onward). I don’t see a lot of that these days, which makes my Trek book purchases few and far between. Before the two DTI novels and “Rings of Time,” the only Trek books I had purchased were Cox’s Khan novels and the final three books in Duane’s Romulan saga (I had only read “Ally” and “The Romulan Way”). Before that… hell, I don’t even remember, it’s been so long!

I dunno about anyone else, but I really wanna see what the completed new DS9 station is going to look like?

#37 – I believe it’s on the cover of the book…

36 “‘My Enemy, My Ally’ (which eventually became the first book in Duane’s Romulan saga, a view of Romulans that, frankly, I much preferred over what we eventually got in TNG onward)’

– I always liked that book and her take on Romulans. I’d wished they’d adapted it for TNG with Picard (or, heck, for a new Trek movie now with Kirk), before TNG turned the Romulans into cartoon characters and kind of ruined them.

The new station is so ugly, I think I’m going to cry!

My dishonor as a Klingon is complete.

# 36
I’ve read “The wounded sky” and I agree with you! I’d like to see something like that or something like “The Yesterday’s saga” or “Time’s enemy” or “Federation” publish today (along with the relaunches) and not only in the original series era but for the 24th century series as well.

I don’t see why we can’t have a little bit of both. We can have the relaunches continuing the current storylines adding new characters, ships etc (TNG-R, DS9-R, VOY-R, Titan) and and we can have 2-3 novels each year that would take place between the series and bring back the original crews from the series and give us new adventures with the characters that don’t appear in the relaunches (my favorites Data, Jadzia, Janeway and more)

#41

Maybe I’ll grab an old novel to read. I remember loving My Enemy My Ally and The wounded Sky.
Recently I’ve read Federation and The Millennium trilogy from Reeves-Stevens and are without a doubt among my all time favorite Trek novels.

I googled it a little and I see that Time’s enemy is DS9′ entry for the Invasion crossover series and that’s my next read and it also focuses on Jadzia Dax which is my favoirite DS9 character.

Thanks for the suggestions

Frankly I just got bored with the Typhon Pact books. Destiny was fun. But reading the pact novels got to be a chore. So I went back to my library and noticed that I had wasted a lot of time reading something mildly interesting when i could have been reading a bunch of books by great authors that I had been stupidly ignoring. I’ve been tearing through Heinlein as of late. Reading what I gather were the “youth series” novels. Those are loads of fun.

Yar I think I would rather read Trek books that take place during the series runs.

whist i agree with a lot of what is being said here …. we are lucky to have the novels we have at all. i highly doubt pocket make an awful lot of money on these so im not surprised they dont want to go series specific. If you were a ds9 fan but didn’t like voyager you wouldn’t pick up a voyager book but if there are 12 novels out a year and 6 of them are a continuing interwoven story line with all tng , ds9 and voyager all included your going to get them

Lets face facts cbs and paramount are not going to go back to the prime timeline for any kind of dvd / film release while the reboot is doing so well. Be grateful for what we have got.

They DID NOT just destroy… (SPOILERS)

…Deep Space Nine! Are you freaking serious? They killed Janeway. Fine, whatever. They wiped out the Borg. Ugh, FINE. They create that stupid Typhon Pact. Whatever. But now, they’ve gone too far.

What the hell? DS9 has been practically ignored for the last few years, and in the first novels to finally feature it again, THEY DESTROY IT?! Trek Lit has been going downhill more and more lately, but I’ve held on and tried to get used to this new, Janeway-less, Borg-less, annoying Typhon Pact universe. If they don’t bring it back (Empok Nor, “the last two books were nothing but a dream” Dallas-style, whatever. And a whole new starbase doesn’t count.) then I’m done with Trek Lit. Screw that.

Excuse me now, I’m going to go cry in a corner. Curse you Pocket Books.

#38 – I mean, I want to see the station finished, and not under construction and surrounded by scaffolding… I know I cant be the only one…

Who’s “Captain Riket”?

The T and the R are right next to each other on the keyboard. My guess is that that’s supposed to say Riker. :)

I believe the station on the cover of Raise the Dawn is just a standard starbase rendering and if you read the description on the last page of the book it describes a different looking station. It says the new station is a sphere surrounded by three interconnecting rings. So imagine old DS9 with a sphere in the middle and the docking ring with four docking ring arms that connect to each other at the poles of the station. That’s how I interpret the description of the new station and it sounds pretty cool.