Product Description

The cataclysmic events of Star Trek: Destiny have devastated known space. Worlds have fallen. Lives have been destroyed. In the uneasy weeks that follow, the survivors continue to be tested to the limits of their endurance. In the Federation, efforts to replenish diminished resources and deliver aid to millions of evacuees are thwarted at every turn, while on the borders of the battered Klingon Empire, the devious Kinshaya sense weakness -- and opportunity. In Romulan space, the already-fractured empire is on the brink of civil war. Only one man begins to understand what is happening, as incidents which threaten to undermine the quadrant's efforts to heal itself become increasingly widespread. Sonek Pran -- teacher, diplomat, and sometime advisor to the Federation President -- sees a pattern in these apparently random events. And as each new piece of evidence falls into place, a disturbing picture begins to take shape which encompasses half the galaxy -- presenting the Federation and its allies with a challenge unlike any they have faced before!

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #35599 in Books
• Published on: 2009-03-02
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Mass Market Paperback
• 400 pages

About the Author
Keith R.A. Decandido is a top genre author whose tie-in novels for Pocket include several Star Trek titles across all series as well as Buffy the Vampire Slayer novelizations. He is also known for his Star Trek: The Next Generation comicbook miniseries Perchance to Dream, and is the editor of several science-fiction and fantasy anthologies.

Customer Reviews

Lecturer by day, para-diplomat by night
An interesting, and unusual take on the Trek franchise, but not as gripping as the trilogy whose effects this begins to tidy up. It's a good choice of idea to follow it up though as it deals with the future of the galaxy from multiple points of view, and sets the stage for the continuation novels of the next few years.

The main character, if there is one, is Sonek Pran, a rather dubious mix of Vulcan, Human, Betazoid and Bajoran (wouldn't have thought there were Bajorans around long enough ago). By day, he's a history lecturer on Mars, but by night an advisor and para-diplomat for the Federation President who runs around the galaxy sorting out problems. A possible opening for future novels I feel, although the character developed quite a bit in this one.

Also of note is the continued use of the USS Aventine, under Captain Dax, and introducing some more of her crew. Another opening one expects for a new line of novels!

All round, an important read, but not until after the Destiny trilogy, and definitely before any of the future continuations (and the next Titan book is on order from Amazon already!).

post 'Destiny' this is more like it
Having criticised the 'Destiny' trilogy for feeding too much off tired and threadbare characters like Picard, Worf & la Forge this shows the kind of enterprise (sorry!) that the Trekosphere storyline needed. I worried that post-Destiny we'ld all wake up in Picard's bedroom to the sound of Beverley saying 'it's your turn to feed the baby - the bottle's in the replicator', closely followed by the Riker/Troi baby telepathically telling its parents it was time for a feed. Taking off with a fresh non-starship captain character (Sonek Pran) on the Aventine was the perfect idea. The Bowers/Pran interplay on Dax's ship worked well, as does the seeping influence of previous Dax's on the Aventine's captain Ezri. The reconstruction of the Trekosphere will take time and a lot of heartache between former allies - and a number of episodes which I am happy to follow through. Just please - Trek authors - don't time-warp back to a moment before the Caeliar did their thing with the Borg and have a wee Borg shoot off back in time towards safety and start the whole thing again. The Borg line was wrapped up neatly - keep moving on.

Save your time and money
Save your time and money. This book takes 350 pages to go nowhere, and takes its own sweet time in getting there. And when we do finally reach page 350 for Chapter 20, the big reveal is not worth the wait or time invested.

Following on 1 week from the events of the overblown Destiny trilogy, we have professor Sonek Pran touring the galaxy writing everyone's wrongs. I have no problem with the author attempting to create a non-starfleet passive hero, but I do have a problem with the character he created.

Pran is the most sanctimonious, self-righteous, holier-than-though and preachy character I have ever read. Imagine Guinan x20, and you you'd still fall short. Each time I read the character, I imagined him walking around with a big smug self-satisfied condescending grin on his face.

Even Pran might have been tolerable if the story or writing had been good. But Singular Destiny fails in both of these areas too.

The writing is blunt, without a style, and is as plain as the interior of Archer's Enterprise. We are never given a description of any of the locations we are taken too. The President's offices feel just like the Romulin leader's offices, which feel just like the mining colony, which feel just like every single other location in the book. Not once does the author set a scene. The story just happens, it doesn't seem to take place in a believable place.

Speaking of the story; there isn't one. This book is obviously just a filler or stepping stone from the galaxy changing occurrences of the Destiny trilogy, to whatever comes next. Whichever book comes next and deals with the (so-called) ending of this book, will have an interesting political theme, more in-keeping with the political dealings of Deep Space 9.

Characters and story threads race along so quickly, you wonder why they were even included. In one hilariously bad example, Dax's security chief beams down to the mining colony and solves the murders in 2 paragraphs. This could have been have been happening behind the scenes for half the book, and those same 2 paragraphs could have described a complicated investigation instead. But what we actually get is a nasty little deus ex machina just so the plot can be moved along, and help out the Starfleet Corps of Engineers with a completely different problem.

Speaking of the Corps of Engineers, they start off solving a problem which could have had some merit (How do you get to and from a planet that you cannot beam to or shuttle to, and how do you scan something that cannot be scanned), but suddenly these characters are just dropped and Dax emails them her scans from the crime scene and problem solved. Another wasted opportunity.

This is just another Star Trek book from the great Trek publishing machine of turgid conformitality. Quite frankly anyone book that has character's praying to "The Great Bird of the Galaxy" deserves to be ignored (If you don't get the reference, then this book is definitely not for you).

If any following books actually take into account the end of this one, then that could be a good thing. But as it stands, this whole book could have just been a paragraph at the beginning of the next one (Which of course it will be, as the people that hadn't read this one will still need to know the background.)

A final note: Each chapter is interleaved with a news bulletin or a ship's log etc. This again is a missed opportunity. Apparently the news service writes in the same style as ship's councillor's logs. Instead of exploring different styles for these 2-3 page inserts based on the character writing them, they are all just the same bland 'style' as the rest of the book.