Spoilers DS9: The Long Mirage by David R. George III Review Thread

Bloated. DRGIII spends a long time describing the colors and shape of the buttons on a companel, just way too much sensory detail. Kirsten beyer and David mack's novels live by their great dialogue.

 

Aha. Well that's different than just "unusually high word count".

 

I'm reminded of that part in Amadeus:

Emperor Joseph II: My dear young man, don't take it too hard. Your work is ingenious. It's quality work. And there are simply too many notes, that's all. Just cut a few and it will be perfect.

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: Which few did you have in mind, Majesty?

 

But then we'd have to reboot the whole Novelverse, the whole thing is way to interconnected to just reboot one series.

 

I finished reading The Long Mirage. I like the Kira and Odo story arcs in the book. Also the Vic Fontaine storyline. I like the part of the book with Odo wanting to help the Dominion refugees and wonder if that storyline will be continued in the next book.

 

Just finished, and it was not bad at all. I enjoyed the book, but I miss Sisko. I hope DRG3's next effort gives us some Sisko. I also want to express interest in seeing more of the original cast. This book had Nog and Quark and Kira, but the one scene with O'Brien and the few scenes with Odo just weren't enough. Candlewood is growing on me though

Anyways, i voted Above Average

 

I voted Average myself. The beginning parts of the book had me hoping for a unifying plot twist. Ultimately, however, I thought that plot ending was pretty plain.

Also echoed other comments regarding missing an update on Sisko.

 

Just finished it today. Didn't love it. I'm basically fed up of the plots being so dragged out. The three storylines focused on in this book were teased out over the three previous books until finally getting to the point here, and it wasn't worth the wait. Their apparent aimlessness and inconclusiveness in those books made them annoying at the time when more focus could have been placed on the plots that actually mattered in those books. If those set-up scenes had been included in this novel, or the Quark-Morn-Nog-Vic storylines and Kira-Altek storylines had been their own separated-out novels, it might have been more immediate and more satisfying. As it is, it's just more half-finished storylines in a sea of half-finished storylines.

I think I am just tired of DRG3's style of writing. I know I'm always nostalgically hailing the 'phase 1' of the DS9 relaunch novels under Marco's regime, but I have to do it again here. Then, each novel had its own story that had a beginning, a middle and an end, but put a dozen or so of them together and they also added up to a larger overarching storyline. The DS9 stories at the moment are so disjointed, with no seeming overarching plan. George is doing something different from Mack is doing something different from McCormack is doing something different from Lang is doing something different from Block/Erdmann. There are now nine novels and two short stories all supposedly taking place within the same rough time period, and I'm still not clear on exactly how they all fit in with each other.

I'm at the point where I would stop reading DRG3's books if they weren't the main spine of the DS9 stories, and I want to know what's going to happen even if I strongly suspect I won't enjoy it when it comes. The cynic in me wonders if it's deliberate - write half-hearted crap but tease me just enough to keep me coming back for more half-hearted crap. I don't seriously believe DRG3 or Pocket would do that, or any reputable author. That's just how over the whole thing I am to even think that. It's not even actively bad - it doesn't rise to that level of interesting.

Some things I did like: Kira's characterisation. For as much as she has developed, the moment where she thought to herself "I can't force them to do the right thing. But I can do the right thing myself" was like, yes. That is Kira right there. That was the happiest I was in the book. I also did like that he attempted to spend some time with Candlewood, and that he was confirmed as gay as I have written him myself. I didn't like that the characterisation for Candlewood was so utterly bland and indistinctive. Same with Altek - for all the time spent with this guy, I still don't care about a thing he does or says.

Okay, back to read over the thread and see what the rest of you said.

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Reviving this thread as I have recently been re-reading Revelation and Dust (the first book of 'The Fall' pentalogy and simultaneously of the Ascendants trilogy) to see if I can make sense of the Kira portions. In doing so, I discovered something that made sense of part of this book. This may be one of those things that was obvious to everyone else already, but I only just put it together.

In Kira's storyline in the vision-ancient-past-alternate-timeline-whatever portions of R&D, Kira (or rather Keev) is helping to rescue slaves and get them to safety via the tunnels through the mountains, with the help of Altek, a former bad guy who defected to help the good guys. At one point the tunnels collapse, and Keev and Altek have to rebuild them.

Now, I already got that that portion of the book was a metaphor for the apparent destruction of the wormhole in Raise the Dawn and its rebuilding and reemergence at the end of Revelation. That was all set-up for the discovery of the falsework beneath Endalla as the mechanism by which the wormhole was supposedly built.

But what I realised on this readthrough was the slavery angle. Keev's cell leader Veralla provides the building materials to rebuild the tunnels, and gives Keev an Orb to carry - so Veralla represents the Prophets in this scenario. Veralla also says that, once the tunnel is open again, the escape of the slaves can continue. But who are slaves then? It's not just Bajorans escaping from Cardassians.

What I realised today is that they represent the Dominion refugees introduced in this book - the ones who contact Odo and ask for asylum in the Federation. So effectively, after its collapse, Veralla (the Prophets) needed Keev (Kira) to rebuild the tunnel (the wormhole) so that the slaves (the Dominion refugees) could escape to safety in Shavalla (the Federation).

In this scenario then, the character of Altek Dans represents Odo - formerly a highly respected member of Aleiran society (a Founder of the Dominion) who defects to the Bajora (the Federation) and helps the slaves escape alongside Keev (Kira). Thus it makes sense that Keev and Altek would fall in love - as they are Kira and Odo.

(What does not yet make sense to me is how this mapping of characters/situations works alongside the actual existence of Altek as a real person, or how Ro and Altek falling in love works if Altek is supposed to represent Odo.)

So now I see more of what the Kira storyline from Revelation was setting up in future novels. Unfortunately it took DRG3 four novels (and more than four years) for any of that to make sense to me, and it will be another two DRG3 novels no doubt (with several other non-DRG3 DS9 novels/novellas in between) before that plot comes to any kind of fruition. I remain simultaneously intrigued that the author planned all of this so far in advance and frustrated that he is taking so bloody long to get it onto a page for us to read it.

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Which ultimately makes it a long ‘hey look, Kira and Ro, they are similar’ now that Ro has moved on to Altek.