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A review by sidetracked
Glass Empires by Mike Sussman
4.0
This series of books seems to be built like a collection of short stories, each of them set in a certain era and with the known characters from the Star Trek universe.
The first story of this book, Age of the Empress, picks up where the episode "In a mirror, darkly" ended, with newly self-appointed Empress Sato assuming control and reigning over the Terran Empire.
The story is centered on the struggle of the Empire to crush the resistance movement. Lots of space battles (though I didn't enjoy them a great deal due to the fact their description was extremely poor), lots of plotting, scheming and betraying. Pretty much anything you were not accustomed to while watching Star Trek.
All in all, a rather good first story to kick this mirror universe into gear.
The second story covers the Original Series timeline and it starts in a rather funny way, with Spock attempting to kill James Kirk. With the help of an extremely powerful device, The Tantalus device, he rises to power and forges a plan to change the Terran Empire forever. Once he assumes the title of emperor he kicks his plan into gear. The story itself seemed to me extremely familiar with Asimov's Foundation. Spock bases his changes on the fact that Vulcan scientists have calculated that, given its current path, the Terran Empire can only survive for 215 years and then crumble into chaos, taking the entire local space with it. This seemed extremely similar with psychohistory. The way he chose to do it was to accelerate the collapse, while constructing multiple secret repositories all over the local space that were to act as the foundation of the future Terran Republic.
The third story takes us in the late 24th century and has Jean-Luc Picard as the main character. The very interesting twist is that he captains the "starship" Stargazer, which is in reality just a runabout with a crew of one, and his main activity is that of recovering long-forgotten artifacts for his master, Gul Madred - basically he's a tomb raider. Through an ex-lover of his he gets introduced to a genius scientist working for the resistance, Noonien Soong who convinces Picard to help him find the Borg. That's right! They go on a journey to find the Borg and attempt to enlist their help against the Alliance. Finding the Borg does not end well, as expected, and Picard barely manages to escape their ship. What follows are the mirrored events of the battle from Wolf 359 from Star Trek TNG, this time around the main protagonists, the Klingons, Cardassians, Ferengi and Bajorans meeting the Borg in combat near the icy prison of Rura Penthe. Picard manages to acquire a piece of extremely advanced alien technology that provokes the Collective into destroying their own ship. What this seems to do is spark curiosity in the Collective and preparations for a full scale invasion begin immediately.
On the one hand I enjoyed these tales of a different universe, in all their brutality and treachery, but I couldn't help but notice that these stories have no relation with the Star Trek universe that I enjoyed, other than some characters. The extreme and mostly needless violence portrayed in these stories would certainly shock Gene Roddenberry, if he were alive today.
Nonetheless, I enjoyed the book and I'm looking forward to reading the others in the series.
The first story of this book, Age of the Empress, picks up where the episode "In a mirror, darkly" ended, with newly self-appointed Empress Sato assuming control and reigning over the Terran Empire.
The story is centered on the struggle of the Empire to crush the resistance movement. Lots of space battles (though I didn't enjoy them a great deal due to the fact their description was extremely poor), lots of plotting, scheming and betraying. Pretty much anything you were not accustomed to while watching Star Trek.
All in all, a rather good first story to kick this mirror universe into gear.
The second story covers the Original Series timeline and it starts in a rather funny way, with Spock attempting to kill James Kirk. With the help of an extremely powerful device, The Tantalus device, he rises to power and forges a plan to change the Terran Empire forever. Once he assumes the title of emperor he kicks his plan into gear. The story itself seemed to me extremely familiar with Asimov's Foundation. Spock bases his changes on the fact that Vulcan scientists have calculated that, given its current path, the Terran Empire can only survive for 215 years and then crumble into chaos, taking the entire local space with it. This seemed extremely similar with psychohistory. The way he chose to do it was to accelerate the collapse, while constructing multiple secret repositories all over the local space that were to act as the foundation of the future Terran Republic.
The third story takes us in the late 24th century and has Jean-Luc Picard as the main character. The very interesting twist is that he captains the "starship" Stargazer, which is in reality just a runabout with a crew of one, and his main activity is that of recovering long-forgotten artifacts for his master, Gul Madred - basically he's a tomb raider. Through an ex-lover of his he gets introduced to a genius scientist working for the resistance, Noonien Soong who convinces Picard to help him find the Borg. That's right! They go on a journey to find the Borg and attempt to enlist their help against the Alliance. Finding the Borg does not end well, as expected, and Picard barely manages to escape their ship. What follows are the mirrored events of the battle from Wolf 359 from Star Trek TNG, this time around the main protagonists, the Klingons, Cardassians, Ferengi and Bajorans meeting the Borg in combat near the icy prison of Rura Penthe. Picard manages to acquire a piece of extremely advanced alien technology that provokes the Collective into destroying their own ship. What this seems to do is spark curiosity in the Collective and preparations for a full scale invasion begin immediately.
On the one hand I enjoyed these tales of a different universe, in all their brutality and treachery, but I couldn't help but notice that these stories have no relation with the Star Trek universe that I enjoyed, other than some characters. The extreme and mostly needless violence portrayed in these stories would certainly shock Gene Roddenberry, if he were alive today.
Nonetheless, I enjoyed the book and I'm looking forward to reading the others in the series.