Mere Mortals is the second of the three book Destiny series that combines Next Generation, Titan and some elements of Deep Space Nine into a cross over series.
Plot:
Captain Hernandez and the 3 other surviving crewmembers of the Earth starship Columbiahave become the forced guest of a reclusive race called the Caeliar. Hernandez is dealing with the situation well, while two are still defiant and the other seems to be loosing her mind. An accident has caused the city that they are on to be propelled back to the 1500’s making their situation even more desperate.
In the 24thCentury, the Caeliar have a new group of forced guests as Deanna Troi, Vale, Tuvok and others are now being held on the Caeliar’s new home world with Deanna’s health condition getting worst by the moment. Captain Riker and his crew on the Titan are desperate to find a way to rescue the away team and find out what the Caeliar have to do with the subspace tunnels that the Borg might be using to reach Federation space.
Back on Earth, Federation President Bacco is using all the resources at her command to put a coalition together to fight the impending Borg invasion. Not only does she have to worry about the Borg but there is also the threat of non-aligned worlds like the Tholians using the Borg invasion as an opportunity to help themselves to new territory.
Meanwhile Captain Picard and the crew of the Enterprise has joined forces with Captain Dax and the crew of the Aventine to explore the subspace tunnels that have been discovered in the Azure Nebula and find out where the Borg armada is massing. Their hope is that they will be able to cut off the Borg’s invasion route before they come through the tunnel.
My Impressions:
Whenever you talk about a trilogy whether it is a series of movies or books, it seems that there is a middle child syndrome in which the middle book seems to be filler and not up to the same level as either the first or the last. So how does Mere Mortals stand up?
First of all, David Mack does a great job in creating action not involving the main villain in this book. While you know that the Borg are coming and even hear them a couple of times, David Mack brings in other antagonists to keep the crews of the Enterprise and Aventine busy and creating a fast moving book without boring you with too much of the Borg.
There is some great action through out this section of the book that will keep you glued to the book. On the other hand the section dealing with the crew of the Columbia and especially Captain Hernandez is much slower and in fact can become painfully too slow at times.
While David Mack does an excellent job of character development in the Columbia sections of the book including a doing a great job of showing how different personalities will deal with the circumstances in different ways. He also does an excellent job of showing how the human spirit can be affected by circumstances that they cannot control and how they react to them. The problem arises that the pacing in this section of the book is so slow that it clashes with other sections of the book.
Also through the book several key characters (and a villain) from Voyager play a critical role. However, this make sense (such as Seven advising Starfleet) but then it seems that the ship and its crew are just thrown in once again so that all of the television series can have a stake in the book.
Final Thoughts:
The Destiny series is excellent and while Mere Mortals may suffer from some of that middle child syndrome; it still is a great book that is hard to put down as you want to find out what is going to happen next.
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