Star Trek: Voyager #21 Dark Matters (Shadow of Heaven) by Christie Golden

[Damian]

Just completed this book, and the Dark Matters trilogy. This novel, as expected, puts things back in their place. Overall I found it to be a satisfying resolution, and even brings back an old friend (though from an alternate universe) in the form of an entity. Through this entity we see some species Voyager has encountered in the past like the Kazon, the Vidiians, and even a species seen in one of Golden's previous Voyager novels.

Paris and Chakotay are trapped on an alien planet that is strictly divided into two sects, one that is more nature oriented and eschews virtually all technology, and another that is the exact opposite, eschewing anything from nature. On Voyager the crew continues, with the help of Dr R'Mor, to solve the dark matter crisis while on Romulus Jekri, the disgraced head of the Tal Shiar is looking for ways to save the Romulan Empire from itself basically. Meanwhile on Voyager Harry Kim falls in love with an alien from the planet Paris and Chakotay are stranded on.

As the story concluded I was getting a little irritated that everything seemed to have a happy ending. It was almost turning into a Disney like everyone lived happily ever after ending. But it didn't. There was one very unhappy ending for one storyline that balanced out the resolution.

Overall I give the trilogy high marks. I found the story engaging and as you would expect from a trilogy it had an epic feel to it. It doesn't reach the heights of something like David Mack's Destiny trilogy, and it didn't have the far reaching impacts Destiny had on the Star Trek universe. But as a self contained trilogy I thought it was a good story. It kept my interest and I read the three books over a couple weeks. I never got bored and she did a good job writing the original characters that she included in her story. We also got more backstory on Dr R'Mor who was featured in "Eye of the Needle" from the 1st season.

 

[Cap'n Crunch]

I read this trilogy several months ago, but don't remember many of the details. Can you remind me what the unhappy ending was? I'm assuming it was something to do with R'Mor.
I didn't care for the Paris/Chakotay subplot. IIRC, it had no effect on the main plot or vice versa, and that left me somewhat disappointed. In fact every time I was reading about those two, I just wanted to hurry up and get back to the main story. It seemed to me that the author only created that storyline to give those two something to do.
Overall, I did enjoy the trilogy, but found the Paris/Chakotay story unnecessary. I also think it might have worked better as a duology.

 

[Damian]

I read this trilogy several months ago, but don't remember many of the details. Can you remind me what the unhappy ending was? I'm assuming it was something to do with R'Mor.
I didn't care for the Paris/Chakotay subplot. IIRC, it had no effect on the main plot or vice versa, and that left me somewhat disappointed. In fact every time I was reading about those two, I just wanted to hurry up and get back to the main story. It seemed to me that the author only created that storyline to give those two something to do.
Overall, I did enjoy the trilogy, but found the Paris/Chakotay story unnecessary. I also think it might have worked better as a duology.

The way Harry Kim's romance with Khala ended. It was a heartbreaking ending for Kim, esp. since he wasn't even able to say good bye in person. She left him a message which helped. The crew finding out that Dr R'Mor still died was sort of sad too, but expected. But everything else seemed to be happily ever after before that, including with many of the characters. But the Kim-Khala storyline had a clearly unhappy ending, which helped balance things out a bit.

Golden had a pretty good handle of the Voyager characters though. Kim's history of falling in love with the wrong girl for instance. Chakotay finding common cause in a sense with the Cuilann at first, but coming to realize he also values technology as well. Him and Paris (and Kim) demonstrating that nature and technology can co-exist. The trilogy did have some parallel storylines. But I found it engaging enough that it didn't bother me too much.