0 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
Terrific Book!, 2006-11-06
This is a great book. It not only gives a feel for life after the end of the show DS9, but very creatively incorporates the time frames and characters from the eras of Dax's previous hosts. E.g. Bomes makes an appearance.
Highly recommended if you loved the Dax character, or Star Trek in general.
0 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
Interesting collection., 2006-01-21
This book is a collection of short stories, each a snippet of the life of one of the hosts of the Dax symbiont, from the first host (Lela) to Jadzia, with an opening and closing frame of Ezri Dax. Each story is told by a different author, and all are quite good. As a whole, the collection is interesting if not compelling.
1 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
The best STAR TREK character most non-fans have never heard of, 2005-07-11
I think CINESCAPE has it right when they're quoted on this book's cover saying, "One of the best STAR TREK novels isn't a novel at all." Truth is. what makes this so compelling is that the character is so long-lived that we get a sense of Federation history as we learn about one character. Just because of the nature of the Trill we can almost view an anthology as a single work. It helps, too, that the stories are of pretty much consistently high quality.
That said, I tend to find myself gravitating more towards Dax' earlier hosts. In particular, I very much enjoyed the volume's Lela entry. Her story is something I wish we would have seen more of in ENTERPRISE, the STAR TREK series with which it is most contemporaneous. This tale of political intrigue arising from alien contact eventually made its way into ENTERPRISE, but if more writers like Rusch and Sherwin had been allowed to bat earlier for ENTERPRISE, maybe it'd still be on the air today. ENTERPRISE should always have been about the struggle to get into space, and forge alliances, and this story makes clear how such stories could have been made dramatically compelling. Of course, much of the drama arises from the excellent character study we get from the authors, and ENTERPRISE was never very long on character study.
Likewise the Tobin story "Dead Man's Hand" puts the former host least likely to be an action hero in a distinctly threatening situation and finds a way to make that both realistically interesting and singularly important to the development of STAR TREK history within a few short pages. It's arguably an apocryphal story in light of later developments on ENTERPRISE--but, then again, maybe this story is so good that we can see ENTERPRISE as the apocrypha, at least when it comes to transporter technology.
The other two standout stories, for my money, are the ones that explain curious statements made by Dax in the series proper. We finally discover why Jadzia remembered how good Leonard McCoy's hands were in the Original Series/Deep Space Nine crossover episode, "More Tribbles, More Troubles". And the ubiquitous STAR TREK "historians", Judith and Garfield Reeves-Stevens, give us a detailed look at how Ezri came to "accidentally" receive the Dax symbiont between Seasons 6 and 7 of the television series.
To be sure, everything here is worth a read. Still, it is possible to argue that these stories are the more relevant ones simply because they tell us things that have the biggest impact on the larger TREK timeline. The other stories, generally, are more private, more reflective on that particular host's thought processes.
And maybe it's this balance between "large" and "small" stories that contributes to making this such an enjoyable read overall. We really do get a sense that Dax has led a remarkably varied existence, and has been responsible for things as grandly political as forging interstellar alliances, or as mundanely personal as a sister's love.
The flexibility of the character is so apparent in this volume that one can't help but wonder if one day it might be interesting to build a whole series around a single Trill character, with the lead character--and the time period--changing each season. STAR TREK is notorious for it's obsession with time travel, but maybe the most satisfying time trip of all would be to examine a single, if very long, life.
1 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
Dax is my favorite character from DS9, 2005-01-06
The stories were really good. Some had cliches and the worst was probably with Sisko and Kurzon. Otherwise a nice tie in with the show and greater understanding of Dax the symbiote and how the experiences would develop a whol being.
5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
Loving the slug inside you, 2004-02-04
One of the more interesting characters in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine is a Trill named Dax. Trills are humanoids who are hosts to slug-like being called a symbiont. In a process called "the joining," Trills have the symbiont implanted and they become not just the person they were, but also a sum of memories that can go back hundreds of years. There were two "Dax" characters in Deep Space Nine, with Jadzia Dax being killed in season 6 and Ezri serving as an emergency host. It's a great honour to be a host, but not everybody is anxious to be one.I've always been fascinated by the Dax character, even when the actresses weren't quite up to the part. The show would occasionally have references to previous hosts through the centuries, and I often wondered what some of their stories might be, especially during the time of the original series and movies. Marco Palmieri shared this feeling, and he decided to create a short story anthology addressing this issue. He gathered some of the big names in Trek fiction and created The Lives of Dax. Each of the previous Dax hosts gets one story, showcasing their personality and a little bit of their history. The stories are pretty good, though none of them are particularly earth-shattering. It's a nice, cozy tome that will bring a bit of nostalgia to any DS9 fan.
Some of the more interesting stories take place early in Dax's life, before Trill became acquainted with the outside universe. The first one (not counting the beginning of the framing story) is about Lela Dax, a new member of the Trill council and one of the advocates for opening Trill up for trade with other galactic races. A ship has approached Trill and sent a message that the Trill are having trouble translating. It appears that the ship is in trouble, and they are ignoring all warnings from Trill that they must leave orbit. Lela decides that she has to help, despite what the council says. She discovers, and demonstrates to the rest of the council, that knowledge is not only power, but that the lack of it can be deadly as well. "First Steps" is by Kristine Kathryn Rusch, and starts the anthology off with a bang.
Once this story is off the ground, though, the book suffers from one of my main criticisms of the Trek books (though I think many fans disagree with me, which is why it will never change). Each story brings in some known element of Trek lore (usually a character or a race), ostensibly to give some sort of identification to the reader (like we don't know already that it's a Trek book?). These elements are usually contrived and really drag the book down in my estimation, unless they're used well. Unfortunately, that's not usually the case here. Tobin Dax's story ("Dead Man's Hand" by Jeffrey Lang) brings in the Romulans. Emony Dax's story ("Old Souls" by Michael Jan Friedman) has Dr. McCoy from the original series (though it is actually established in the television series that Dax had an encounter with him, so at least it's not coming out of left field), Audrid's story ("Sins of the Mother" by S.D. Perry) has Captain Christopher Pike, of the old Enterprise. Finally, Torias's story ("Infinity" by Susan Wright) has Captain Styles and Cadet Saavik, from Star Trek III.
While I applaud the fact that these aren't just name references but actual characters used, they still feel shoehorned into the stories for name recognition. There's no reason for Saavik to be in "Infinity", as she's never shown any inclination for experimental warp drives. The only one of the above stories where it actually makes sense to include the character is Friedman's, and that suffers from its own blandness.
That's not to say the anthology isn't worth reading. With the above caveat, it actually is quite an entertaining read. The stories are interesting (especially the Curzon story, "The Music Between the Notes," by Steven Barnes) and the framing sequence is really good. Ezri spent the entire final season of the television show very unsure of herself and her role as a joined Trill (she never wanted to be joined, and had no preparation) and her heart-to-hologram talk with Vic Fontaine (the holographic lounge singer) is very well-done. His holographic sentience gives him a unique perspective on her problems, and it's a very good lead-in to the story of Dax through the years. There was even an intriguing use of Verad, the Trill who stole the Dax symbiont from Jadzia for a few hours.
There really isn't a bad story in the bunch, though a couple of the stories suffer from being relatively uninteresting. It's a shame that Friedman's story is one of those, as it had the most potential. Seeing Dax's meeting with McCoy should have been wonderful, but instead it was "ok." The writing was a bit stiff and it didn't really fit into the conceit of Ezri telling a story to Vic. Instead, it was a lesson for McCoy about dealing with interstellar species (this is in his Academy days). Also, it is told from McCoy's point of view, going directly against the concept of the anthology.
I greatly enjoyed The Lives of Dax, and I think it would be a wonderful addition to a Trek book collector's shelf. If you've ever wondered about Dax and her past lives, you owe it to yourself to pick this one up. If you're thinking of starting some of the Trek books, it's a good place to get a sampling of some of the big names in Trek today and to see if they're writing is your cup of tea.
My previous host's memories tell me that you'll like it.
David Roy