On being a patriot, it's worth rereading or listening to A Stitch in Time
@Lynx - it's clear by the end of the novel he isn the "patriot" you present him as; indeed he's very critical of that patriotism, a man embracing hebatian spiritualism, a man who had come to respect the Bajorans, a man ready to embrace the political and social antithesis of the cardassian state he had spent his life either serving or seeking to return to, and more - which is the point in time all of Una's novels advance from (well except Hollow Men!).
But honestly Lynx, why spoil yourself? It's so stupid to read plot spoilers rather than follow the stories
I've read
A Stitch in Time which I regard as the best Star Trek book I've read, together with Greg Cox's Voyager novel
The Black Shore.
I'm well aware of Garak's thoughts about the Cardassian society which existed before The Fire (when Cardassia was destroyed by The Dominion as revenge for changin side in the conflict) and all tat, including his own service in the Obsidian Order, how critical he was to all that and the remorse he felt over many things in his past.
But I still regard him as a patriot.
He could have stayed on Deep Space Nine or he could have settled down in the Federation after the war but he went back to Cardassia, helped Damar and the others fight for their independence. He also wanted to help building a new and better Cardassia which we also saw in the book
The Crimson Shadow.
But I disagree with your statement that Garak's development in the books advance from that point, I would rather state that its' bouncing away in a rather bizarre direction, at least when it comes to the novel
Second Self.
If the situation had become so bad for Garak that he had become
persona non grata both in the Federation and on Cardassia, I would have seen it more logical that he had settled down on some other planet. In fact, a return to the station deep Space Nine where he actually did have some real good friends would also have been a better solution.
As for reading plot spoilers, it's something I've done very seldom. The only times I've done that is when some appearance of Kes in some book written after the end of Voyager is mentioned in some discussion because if a book is built on or continues what happened in a certain disgusting episode in season 6 of Voyager, then I'm not interested.
In garak's case, it was all about reading
A Stitch In Time and becoming curious about what Garak was doing after the end of the Dominion War and if there were some books about it. So I found
The Crimson Shadow which I thought was great and later on when someone mentioned Rugal Pa'dar in some discussion here on Trek BBS and that there wasa book about him, I decided to buy that one too. I had no idea that Garak was so much involved at the end of the story as he was so that came as a great surprise and a bonus as well.
Recently, when I wanted to find more books where garak could be involved, I stared to search Memory Beta because I thought it would be the best source tho find something interesting. So I found
The Enigma Tales. I just took a brief look at the synposis for the book and that why I saw that Bashir was mentioned being in some ward.
Now that made me a bit........suspicious because I was definitely not interested in reading about Bashir's possible decease or whatever it was so I started to dig for facts about it and that's when I stumbled over
Second Self when I saw that Garak was listed as "deceased".
And I'm glad that I did find out because I don't like to waste money on books and other things which annoys me. I remember some short story in some book with short novels where Kes was killed off. I became so annnoyed that I almost destroyed it.
But since I hate to destroy books, something I regard as an utterly disgraceful and disrespecitg act, I just went to a second hand store which had a book section an just placed it among other books there. Maybe someone bought it, I don't know and frankly I don't care.
