This Gray Spirit (Star Trek Deep Space Nine: Mission Gamma, Book 2)

UNSAILED SEAS

The political intrigue aboard Deep Space 9 ™ escalates when Gul Macet's warship arrives at the station with an unexpected passenger. Cardassian Ambassador Natima Lang has returned to the station on a mission of hope, but it's one that will bring back old wounds and old ghosts. As tensions rise on all sides, Colonel Kira Nerys discovers that the line between friend and foe is narrower than she ever imagined.

Elsewhere, the crew of the damaged Starship Defiant forges an uneasy alliance with an unusual alien species -- one whose unique biological makeup is the key to the balance of power in that region of the Gamma Quadrant. As the crew becomes ensnared in a web of deceit, Lieutenant Ezri Dax and Ensign Thirishar ch'Thane struggle to stave off a genocidal civil war.

---

All Customer Reviews
Average Customer Review:
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful:

Good, not great., 2008-07-28
Not as good as book one of the series, still this is a very worthwhile addition to the DS9 storyline and the Star Trek genre in general. Good characterizations, good pacing, fair to middling plot. Unspectacular, but definitely worth reading.


1 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

Little suspense or action andorian plot non starter, 2004-09-21
I am amazed that the second of this series is so inferior to the first book. There is very little action or suspense. If you read this book skip all of the sections dealing with the 3 andorians left behind on the station. You won't miss a thing and you'll save a lot of boring irrational whinning. Since the 1st installment was so good I will assume that this was an anomally and try # 3 anyway. The entire Andiorian reproductive system (4 people have to get together during a 5 year window of fertility to produce just one offspring) is unbelievable.


1 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

Angst here, angst there...I'm really feeling bad about that., 2004-08-24
This Gray Spirit is the first book written by Heather Jarman, which I think is unusual for a Star Trek book. It has the difficult job of continuing the Defiant's exploration of the Gamma Quadrant and the political machinations that are resulting from Bajor's application to join the Federation. As such, there's a lot of story to juggle. While not as big as Twilight, it's still almost 400 packed pages. For a first effort, it's very good, but there are some real problems with it that I hope she rectifies in her subsequent books.

I said in my review of Twilight that the book was full of Vaughn's angst. Unfortunately, the trend continues in This Gray Spirit, though this time it's Dax's turn. Dax is a Trill, a species with a humanoid host containing a slug that's been alive for a long time, and Dax has been alive for three hundred years. Ezri was joined against her will as the only Trill on board when her ship was attacked by the Dominion. Thus, she's had to assimilate a lot of abilities and memories, and she's still working toward that. She's forced into an extremely diplomatic situation on the planet and she has to try and use her various Dax personalities to come up with a way out of the current problem. While it's interesting to see Dax's dilemma, I do have to say that the angst factor was turned up to a high level and got a bit tiring to read about. It helps that Dax is an interesting character, though.

Unfortunately, Dax angst isn't the only angst to deal with. Ensign ch'Thane's Andorian reproductive problems also take center stage in this book. Ch'Thane isn't the problem, however. It's his bondmates back on the station who really started to grate on my nerves. One of his three bondmates, Thriss, is extremely fragile and very hurt that he went off to the Gamma Quadrant rather than go home to Andor with them. In fact, occasionally she turns violent, and there is one vivid scene with the security chief, Lieutenant Ro, trying to break up a fight between Thriss and another of her bondmates. Scenes like this really bring home the dilemma, but there are just too many of them. They start to become repetitious and boring. We get the idea that Thriss is despondent over what's going on. Let's get on with it! These scenes do introduce us to the new station counselor, Phillipa Matthias. She is an intriguing character who Ro immediately begins to like (and knowing Ro's feelings about counselors, that's a good thing). I also really liked her, though it will be nice to get to know her a little better than we get in this book.

In addition to the angst, there is the problem of characters. The regulars are fine. No, the characters I'm talking about are the Yrythny, the people who Vaughn and his crew are dealing with. We see the caste system that they have set up, we get an interesting world where these amphibious aliens go back in the water to spawn, with a class of other Yrythny who have no home waters to go to and are thus "lesser" people. The problems on this world are fascinating and I loved how the crew of the Defiant interacted with them. However, there are no real characters for the crew to interact with. The closest we get to a character is Keran, the Delegate who befriends ch'Thane and is trying to get more rights for her fellow Wanderers. Other than Keran, we get a bunch of faceless aliens who I couldn't really distinguish between. When the conspiracy is revealed and the story hits its climax, I didn't really care. I didn't have anything invested in anybody other than whether or not Dax and ch'Thane succeeded in what they were trying to do. If you can't get us to care about any of the characters you introduce, then you've lost half the battle of making an enjoyable book.

That being said, I loved bits and pieces of the book. The climax is full of tension and since it involved the entire Defiant crew in different places, the fact that I didn't care about any of the Yrythny didn't bother me. Plus the events on the station were really intriguing too. Unfortunately, I've been spoiled about what's happening there, so instead of trying to figure out what was going on, I was trying to figure out how what I knew fit in with what was going on, but it was still satisfying. So far I'm finding the political problems on Bajor to be much more interesting than the exploration of the Gamma Quadrant, and I'm not sure that's a good thing. I hope that improves.

Jarman is a pretty good writer, and the fact that I ultimately enjoyed This Gray Spirit despite not really caring about the Andorians or the aliens that she created didn't really take away from that. She did create an intriguing society, and if she ever decides to populate that society with characters I actually want to read about, I'm looking forward to reading that book. The fact that she does such a great job with the regulars also saves this one. Give it a try, even if it is just to get to the next book in the series. It's definitely worth a read. At least once.

David Roy


0 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

The series turns lighter, 2004-08-04
This book turns to the lighter side of character development. To begin with, there is a lot of wit and humour and amusingly dry observations. The author manages that fine blend of presenting a story that is quite serious for those involved but amusing for us. The Defiant side of the story is entirely in this vein, letting us get to know the new major and many minor characters. It concludes with a neatly done action finale. The pacing of the book is very good in the first and last thirds, but the middle third could have advanced the story in a lot less words. On the station side, the last third of the book is much more serious and hard-hitting. When Cardassian-Bajoran negotiations finally start, they go against what the reader might expect, and establish a mystery for later books. The style of the negotiations is not a pleasant one for the characters, and to a certain extent that extends to reading about them. However there is only one part of the book I did not like, the Andorian subplot. The Andorians on the station are disdainfully manipulative and irritatingly neurotic. It is basically impossible to like or sympathize with them. Also, they contribute nothing to the book except to show off the station's new counselor. Shar and his quest, a major feature of the Defiant's story, seems strong enough to me to stand on its own. With everything else happening on the station, and involving more familiar and far more likeable characters, dropping the Andorian story would have improved the book. All in all, this is a good and entertaining story that needed some tightening up and a few less displays of Andorian temper.


3 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

read it for the sake of keeping up with the series, 2004-07-07
I didn't like this installment nearly as much as I liked part one. This book continues the stories on DS9 as well as what's going on with the crew of the defiant exploring the gamma quadrant. I wasn't particularly fond of this one partly because of the writer's style and partly because I think there was too much politics involved. All of what takes place with the defiant crew has to do with the crew trying to act as an intermediary between two alien races. I found it for the most part boring. I felt as if the author could have made the aliens more interesting and the story line less dry. There is some action, but it just doesn't pack too much of a punch.

The DS9 drama I think is the best part of the book. Some interesting things take place on different fronts. Shar's bondmates struggle to deal with problems which largely has to do with him not being there. A delegation of Cardassian and Bajorans push to normalize relations, but things get more complicated before they get better.

Price is accurate as of the date/time indicated. Prices and product availability are subject to change. Any price displayed on the Amazon website at the time of purchase will govern the sale of this product.