Product Description

Chakotay and his sister, Sekaya, are imprisoned on the formerly Cardassian-occupied planet of Loran II. They soon discover that their tormentor is an old enemy: Arak Katal, the Bajoran who betrayed Chakotay's comrades, the Maquis, to Starfleet. Worse still, he is also Chakotay's second-in-command, Lieutenant Andrew Ellis - for he is in fact a Changeling, a shapechanger, a renegade Founder who has been rejected by the Great Link for his evil actions. On Loran II he has teamed up with Cardassian scientist Crell Moset, who he hopes will restore his Changeling powers to the full. But that is only part of their plan: Moset intends to create a new race, a superspecies to do his will, as the Jem'Hadar serve the Founders. With Chakotay's Sky-Spirit DNA, they may just be able to pull it off - and stopping them could cost Sekaya her life.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #177579 in Books
• Published on: 2005-01-03
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Mass Market Paperback
• 292 pages

Customer Reviews

Is the 'Enemy of my enemy' a friend?
I loved this book. One of Golden's best. It brings together a unique blend of old and new heroes, villians and of course the famous ship itself. We see Chakotay, and a few others confront the demons of their past and a few secrets from 'Homecoming and The Farther Shore' are reveled.The writing is excellent throughout, the plot well thought and the ending, fabulous. If you enjoyed book one this is a must have. However, if you were expecting something like The Farther Shore you'd be disapointed as this is completly original. Although the entire crew are envolved somewhere, maybe not as we would all hope!
Fab book - Highly recommended!

That was...uh...better?
After reading Old Wounds, I was left to wonder whether a book series could get any worse. I was almost dreading picking up the second book, Enemy of my Enemy, but since I had already bought it, there didn't seem to be much reason not to. Whatever its problems were, Old Wounds was a quick read, so this one promised to at least be the same (despite being 30 pages longer). I am happy to say that it is a lot better than the first book. I am unhappy to say that the reason for this is because the first one is so bad, not because this one is that good. Enemy of my Enemy doesn't have near the number of howlers as Old Wounds did, but that's mainly because it's using the same story and characters and thus we are used to them.

Enemy of my Enemy contains many of the same problems as Old Wounds, but they aren't as prominent, mainly because there is actually some action and intrigue in this book. The cat and mouse game between "Chakotay" and the doctor got interesting at times, even if some of the scenes were just laughable (especially the scene where Kaz sneaks into Kim's quarters to wake him up. What, the door buzzer doesn't work?). While I didn't buy how long it took for everybody to figure out that something was wrong with Chakotay (as spiritual a man as Chakotay is leaving behind the body of his sister when it would be very easy to retrieve her? That's not the Chakotay I, or most of the others, know), I was able to put that aside and let some of the individual scenes wash over me. Granted, there weren't many of them, but there were a couple. The problem with this plot is that it's not even remotely believable. Not retrieving Sekaya's body is one of the main points. Sure, it makes everybody think that something's wrong, but nobody seems to realize that Chakotay's grief in no way explains it like they seem to think it does. It drags out the plot a lot longer than it should have (but then it'd be a pretty short book, wouldn't it?)

Golden's "romance novel" language is slightly toned down in this one, or at least I didn't notice it as much. There is one "heaving breasts" reference which I had to laugh at, but overall it's not too bad. The prose itself is fairly wooden, but at least I didn't feel like putting my finger down my throat. She has an annoying turn of phrase at times. One time, referring to Kaz and Kim, she actually says "The two Voyagers exchanged glances." Excuse me? Ugh. Golden also continues to have problems keeping continuity within her own books. In Old Wounds, Kaz's previous host's personality keeps coming to the forefront of his mind because his isoboromine levels were too low. Then, on page 97 of this book, he claims that his problems were caused by "elevated" isoboromine levels. Which is it?

Golden gets most of the other characters right (or at least close), but one character continues to stick out as being horribly designed. That is Astall, the Huanni ship's counselor, who continues to be written as overly emotional and, thus, unrealistic as a counselor. "Her huge purple eyes searched his, and tears welled in them. She blinked them back, striving to maintain her professional demeanor despite her almost overwhelming emotions." This is a counselor?

One of my earlier complaints was that the scenes with the holographic doctor and Seven of Nine didn't appear to have anything to do with the story. I still believe that, but at least their few scenes in this book actually did have a little relevance. The same can't be said for Torres' scenes. Torres is on the Klingon monastery world of Boreth, and she begins delving into the prophecies that may involve her daughter. This storyline is clearly intended for subsequent books and just feels shoehorned into this one, bringing what little tension there is in the main plot to a screeching halt. The Deep Space Nine relaunch series does have a lot of continuing plotlines that carry from book to book, but at least all of the characters are interacting within those plots. The O'Briens had gone back to Earth, and they weren't featured in any of the books until they returned to the station. Torres is so far removed from this story that she seems completely out of place in it.

All in all, Enemy of my Enemy is a marginally better book than Old Wounds. Some of the scenes are more interesting, the writing foibles are toned down slightly, and it didn't irritate me nearly as much. Consider it a mild sunburn to the poison oak of Old Wounds. I'm still not going to try any more of these Voyager relaunch books unless they get good reviews from people who are known to have hated these two.

David Roy

Fairly solid outing
This book had a lot more pace and action to it than part one, which was a nice surprise. I think as the eloquent Mr Roy put it though, there's still far too much romanticising and Astall can be a little bit OTT at times with her almost bipolar attitude swinging between holding back tears and hugging people.

I did commend Golden on bringing the various plot threads together, and especially on the increased pace of the book around page 200 until the end. It's good to see that the seemingly unrelated plots introduced in Old Wounds were actually leading towards the main plot, rather than just giving Janeway and the others not on Voyager something to do.

There are a couple of things that bothered me though - I'd worked out where the Paris story was going early on, and it seemed a bit convenient and cliched to me. Also the characters seemed to keep calling the Maquis traitor Arak Katal by his 'friendly' name, rather than Arak, which struck me as odd.

It did seem to take the crew - and only two of them at that! - quite a while to start questioning Chakotay's behaviour. It makes me think the new security chief isn't up to the job!

I was taken aback again at how quickly the book was resolved - literally in the last couple of pages, as with The Farther Shore. I was hoping that all the plot threads of the relaunch to date would be tidied up and new ones allowed to start with the upcoming Full Circle (under a new author's supervision). Particularly Libby Webber's story.

I'm having a hard time telling if the mole she was chasing in Homecoming is still the same mole as in Spirit Walk, and if so - why no more mentions of selling information and technology to the Orion Syndicate, as it doesn't really seem to fit with what the mole was doing in this book.

Other than that, I think this was a pretty entertaining conclusion to the Spirit Walk story and I'm looking forward to more.