Star Trek Deep Space Nine: The Soul Key Book

"Soul Key" does an admirable job tying up the mirror universe plotline, but it does so at a tremendous price to the narrative. The first half of the book is devoted to filling in gaps and explaining the series of plot points and twists that have been spun out for the last few DS9 relaunch novels through a variety of flashback scenes. This frustrating series of minor revelations does not make the book a particularly enjoyable read, instead frustrating the reader by filling in mundanely and without narrative nuance how the "evil" Ghemor wove her devious plot to take control of DS9's favorite Jem'Hadar. The characterization is not bad, and is indeed quite artful at times, but the reader cannot shake the feeling of frustration that comes with suffering through the same story retold yet again (with more detail and explanation, granted) over the first half of the book.

While Woods's tale ends comparatively strongly, it cannot disguise the narrative morass the relaunch has been caught up in arguably since "Warpath" and certainly since the dark "Fearful Symmetry." This mirror universe plotline should have been wrapped up in two, well-written 400 page efforts that got to the point in a more timely fashion. Instead, the series morphed into a bizarre "whodunit" stretching across numerous works released over a period of multiple years in books that, at times, hardly seemed to be long enough to justify the asking price.

While this serial format can (and has) worked in other series (notably Vanguard), the "crazy Jem'Hadar/crazy mirror universe Kira/crazy Ghemor/Kira" boondoggle simply can't command the average audience's rapt attention over so long a span of releases. It certainly didn't command mine, despite my being an avid follower of Vanguard, the New Jedi Order and subsequent Star Wars entries, and the "A Time to..." series. I just didn't care enough.

Now, DS9 relaunch had, up to this point, been handled beautifully. Even the fragmentary "Worlds Of..." series worked well. But it was a bad idea to follow them with Warpath and its successors, which feel like chopped-up and scattered parts of a whole. The narrative unity that came together so beautifully in "Unity" is now scattered to the wind. While Woods's final pages tie things up in an admirable fashion, DS9 must begin anew to reestablish the clear, driven, purposeful storylines that characterized it from Avatar to Unity.