Star Trek Deep Space Nine: Avatar #1 Book

The Federation prepares to launch a counterstrike against the Dominion. Colonel Kira Nerys seeks to prevent a galactic holocaust. A newly discovered prophecy plunges Bajor into chaos.

KLIATT

The first volume of the two-part Avatar series contains two different story lines that are converging but haven't met by the end of this installment. One story line involves Jake Sisko and events on Bajor and Deep Space Nine. In the other narrative thread, Captain Picard and the Enterprise come across a derelict Cardassian freighter on which they discover one of the nine original Bajoran Orbs of the Prophets, which the Cardassians had stolen from Bajor. While Jake is helping with the excavation of the ancient Bajoran city of B'hala, he is given several pages from an ancient B'hallan book of prophecy that seem to refer to him. The prophecy tells of the son of the "Herald" going to the Celestial Temple and bringing back the Herald in time for the birth of the "Avatar." Jake assumes that he is the son and that the soon-to-be-born child of his father and Kassidy is the Avatar. Meanwhile, Captain Picard is about to arrive on Deep Space Nine with the last Bajoran Orb. Book Two is clearly a continuation of Book One, but there is no resolution of the major plot in this installment. Ro Lauren, the new security chief of DS9, solves the mystery of the death of one of the B'halla excavators by discovering the ancient book of prophecy that the excavator had hidden on the space station. Although the book is condemned by the Vedek Council, Colonel Nerys Kira uploads a translation to the Bajoran internet. While all this is going on, a Jem'Hadar soldier nearly blows up the station. At the end of this installment, Jake seems to have found the Prophets in the Wormhole but we are not told what is going to take place. Stay tuned. (Star Trek: Deep Space Nine: Avatar series) KLIATT Codes:JSA—Recommended for junior and senior high school students, advanced students, and adults. 2001, Pocket Books, 236p., $6.99 each. Ages 13 to adult. Reviewer: Hugh M. Flick,_Jr.; Silliman College, Yale Univ., New Haven, CT , September 2001 (Vol. 35 No. 5)