Product Description

The Borg have found a secret passage through subspace and are using it to attack the Federation. But the passage is only one of many that the Enterprise crew have discovered inside a nebula. Working together, Captains Picard and Dax must find the right one before they can lead a counterstrike to stop the Borg invasion. Meanwhile, Captain Riker and the crew of the Titan are being held hostage by the powerful reclusive aliens know as the Caeliar. Their freedom hinges of the action of fellow-prisoner Erica Hernandez, commander of the long-lost starship Columbia. Hernandez has lived among the Caeliar for centuries, enduring disasters, accidental time travel and interstellar exiles. After so long, can she be persuaded to fight for her freedom, or is it too late for the Titan as well as for her?

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #12562 in Books
• Published on: 2008-12-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Mass Market Paperback
• 448 pages

About the Author
David Mack is the author of numerous Star Trek novels, including the USA Today best-seller A Time to Heal and its companion volume, A Time to Kill. Mack's other novels include Star Trek: DS9: Warpath, Star Trek Vanguard: Harbinger, Star Trek: S.C.E.: Wildfire, and numerous eBooks and short stories. Mack also cowrote two episodes of Star Trek: DS9, "Starship Down" and "It's Only a Paper Moon."

Customer Reviews

Destiny: Mere Mortals
Well constructed, as one would expect from a writer let loose on a franchise such as Star Trek; moreover, a writer thought so highly of he was allowed to spin a tale such as this that one suspects introduces fundamental changes to the Star Trek universe. However, a few lines in this novel irked me - there were also echoes of this in "God of Night", the first novel in the trilogy - something that on the face of it seems so trivial yet spoilt for me what would have amounted to an excellent novel deserving of 5 star rating. I refer to how the writer describes the response of federation personnel to the deaths of several million Caeliar, and I quote:

"Do you refer to the crew of the Columbia?" Tuvok (federation personnel) asked.
The Caeliar turned toward him. Yes. Members of its crew, whom we'd welcomed as guests here in Axion, resorted to violence in their bid for escape. Their methods caused the deaths of millions of Caeliar, and the loss of one of our cities"
Vale (federation personnel) cut in, "there are other cities?'


Isn't that just crass? Vale doe not show, shock, revulsion or even astonishment at the deaths of so many individuals, let alone at the hands of Federation people, instead, he is more concerned about the existence of another city.

I did not think long or hard about why this mattered to me - yes, I do have a life - I knew straight away. I felt it mattered because at the core of Roddenberry's Star Trek was the fundamental belief in humanity's innocence, goodness, ability to empathise and so on, which would lead to a brighter just and free society. In the times we now live in, such ideals seem even more salient. Yet, in the novel, there appeared precious little of that. Moreover, these omissions and insensitivity made the book seem the novel equivalent of cinema's obsession with special effects over human story. In addition, don't you just hate it when in modern films people greet the sudden appearance of some terrifying creature with hardly a raised eyebrow? Well, the lines in the novel that I refer to, do the same thing. Although small, such things have the powerful effect of disengaging you from the media. In my case, I nearly discarded the book entirely. Fortunately, the entirety of the novel was engaging enough to persuade me to persevere, I did and enjoyed it.

Grear trilogy!
This is the second book part of a great triology. Would recommend buying all three books in one go so you don't have to wait to see what happens. Takes many elements of previous Trek books and TV series.

A very second-novel-in-a-trilogy feel
The second novel served as a good continuation of the story - although it still had a little of the second novel in a trilogy feel to it.

The action has focused more on two of the four crews that featured in the first novel, and on one character in particular, and starts to join together the different plotlines into one.

I don't have a lot to say about this novel - it was good, kept up the pace and kept me attached. The mixture of flashback and present day scenes was well done, each in turn revealing just the right amount to keep the reader interested.

My only criticism of the series so far is its' fleeting use of the starship Voyager in both novels, which seems to be there just as a tip of the hat. There's plenty of opportunity for some emotional focus on those characters here but they only appear for a couple of scenes - hardly enough to warrant their inclusion - unless it's building up to something bigger in the finale.