The Long Mirage (Star Trek: Deep Space Nine)* by David R. George III (Facebook, Twitter)

Her Grace’s rating:  3 out of 5 stars

Genre: sci-fi

I read it as a: paperback

Source: my own collection

Length: 386 pp

Published by: Pocket Books (pub date)

***Spoilers for this book and previous ones below***

In The Long Mirage, Quark has hired a private investigator to track down Morn, who has been missing for 2 years, since just after the original station Deep Space 9 blew up. Quark would have everyone believe that he misses having his best customer around, and Morn is certainly the 24th century equivalent to Cheers‘s Norm, wordplay on names and everything, but the truth is that Quark just missed his friend and is concerned about him. When the investigator he hired takes off with his latinum, Quark scrambles to track down the investigator as well as Morn. He’s joined by Captain Ro Laren, who is doing some soul searching, deciding whether it is time for her to move on or stay at DS9. 

At the same time, Nog is trying to figure out what is wrong with Vic Fontaine’s holo program, which was saved from the wreckage of DS9 but has been unusable for the most part since. Nog is worried about Vic because the last time he was able to enter the program, he witnessed Vic being kidnapped. Knowing that Vic is self aware and that the program continues running even without anyone else in it, Nog worries that Vic will come to a bad end in the 1960s Las Vegas program. He also has to work against time because he fears not only will the program erode beyond repair, but also there are some who want to fix it by reinitializing the entire program, a move that would reset it back to original specs and wipe out all of Vic’s memories, effectively killing him. Nog’s friend and fellow officer, John Candlewood, helps him sort out the mystery of Vic Fontaine. 

Then there’s Kira Nerys who comes back from the wormhole after being lost and presumed dead for the last two years. She’s been living a whole other life in Bajor’s distant past, but now she’s back with information that could rock Bajor to its core.

I don’t usually care much for the books written by David R George III, and this one was essentially the same. But it was the next Trek book in the stack so I tried to approach it with more of an eye for overarching themes than plot points. That helped, though DRG3 is just not my favorite Trek authors. I don’t know why, it’s just something about his writing I don’t like. In any case, this novel was full of themes of friendship and love, in all their variations. Ro and Quark reflect on their relationship over the past decade and come to a decision a long time in the making. Nog and Candlewood also reflect friendship in the best way – Candlewood simply doesn’t think that Vic is sentient and sees no problem with resetting the program, but he knows Vic is important to Nog, so he does anything he can to help his friend. Quark hands over piles of latinum, something he never thought he would do, to find Morn and make sure his friend is safe. No theme of love would be complete without a triangle of some kind, and we get that as well with the Altek-Ro-Kira saga. No one end up super happy with that one, which is at least believable and realistic.

There is also lots of self reflection and self evaluation throughout. Characters seem unusually able and willing to view their own actions and come to a realization, whether it paints them in a good or bad light, with somewhat unbelievable frequency and ease. I like that some of them do this, but basically every point-of-view character does a lot of navel gazing and figures out things about their own actions which have been less than ideal. I think it was a little too much, though I applaud anyone taking the time to evaluate themselves and make changes to their behavior as needed. I think the debate on Vic’s sentience was rather unnecessary, as well. The sentience of “inanimate” objects, for lack of a better term, has been gone over and over and over with Data, Moriarty, and the Doctor. We get it; they’re sentient. Having that element didn’t add anything and kind of dragged it out more than necessary.

I enjoyed the debate / crisis of faith on Bajor, which resulted from the discovery years before of a new set of holy texts and a hidden temple. These things caused some Bajorans to have a crisis of faith, others to shrug it off, and others still to believe the newly discovered beliefs rather than traditional beliefs. In this, the book mirrored a lot of actual history, recalling elements of the Reformation as well as conflicts between major religious groups. It highlights a lot of politics and religion today, and I thought some of the best sections of the book were included in these discussions.

Overall, I enjoyed this DRG3 novel more than previous ones. Whether I would have anyway or if it’s because of my revised approach to reading it, I don’t know, but I’d say it was a decent addition to the DS9 novels. 

Favorite lines (potential spoilers!):

• “Debates are loud, and sometimes shrill, with a great deal of talking and very little listening. People demonize each other for differing beliefs. It is both turbulent and disquieting. … I am sad because of what all of this turmoil reveals – namely that there are many believers whose faith is so weak that they fear the falsework because they perceive it as a threat to the foundations of their lives. There is no room in their worldview for growth. They cannot abide change, whether for better or worse.” (135-138)
• “In my experience,” Altek said, “people are never so threatened as when facts disagree with their deepest held beliefs – religious or otherwise.” (211)
• “Wanting to cling to my convictions in the face of evidence to the contrary is the product of ego, or arrogance, or possibly just fear.” (215)

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