Review by Tom Sharp
I’ve been putting off this review since last week, when I finished Rising Son. I’ve been busy with real life, work, auto trouble and other such things that have very little to do with a science fiction franchise and the books it produces. The truth is simply that for the first time, I didn’t care for a Deep Space Nine Relaunch novel, and I didn’t want to write a negative review for the series that I’ve enjoyed so much since S.D. Perry’s first story, Avatar. I read a couple of positive reviews before I got my hands on the delivery from Barnes & Noble, and I had some high hopes when I started reading on a bus ride into work. But when I finished just a couple of days later, I felt unimpressed, and more than a little let down.
A few months ago, when Pocket editor Marco Palmieri announced Rising Son, he simply said it would be “the Jake story” about what was going on since the end of DS9 Avatar, Book Two. So, is it a Jake story? Yes, probably more than anyone would have guessed. Does it succeed in shedding some light on what was going on in his life for months he’s been missing from the station? Well, yeah, of course it does, in a mixture of leaps & bounds and small steps.
So, the basic thing is this – Jake took a shuttle into the wormhole because of a prophecy. He didn’t tell anyone, so no one knew what he was up to. The Prophets kick his scrawny butt into the far reaches of the Gamma Quadrant. On the verge of death, he’s found by the captain of the Even Odds. The ship can’t take him back to the wormhole any time soon, so Jake joins up with the mixed bag of aliens, including a Wadi first officer, a Cardassian medic, and two Ferengi accountants. Jake’s side of the story is told through journal entries, while the story switches perspectives from a few, but not all, of the crew.
Except for the prologue and a few bits near the end (both concerning characters on the cover of the book besides Jake), the whole story revolves around Captain Sisko’s son. This is a good thing, since Jake didn’t really get a lot of development on the series, but he did have a fan base. It’s not so good, because he really isn’t that interesting of a character. Sure, he has a couple of adventures, and looses a bit of innocence, but he still doesn’t really do much. And in the end, as with the television series, Jake seems to get pushed aside so someone else can take the spotlight. The end of Rising Son is given away in DS9 Mission: Gamma – Lesser Evil, but how it got to that ending is explained in Ms. Perry’s novel.
For the first time with the relaunch, I found the story and characters to be predictable. As soon as Jake saw the Cardassian on the bridge of the Even Odds, I knew he must have been a survivor from the Tal Shiar/Obsidian Order attack seen in DS9 ‘The Die is Cast’. And of course that bit of equipment the scanners picked up during the Drang mission would cause some sort of problem with their objective – in this case, it was a transport inhibitor. When the Even Odds was trying to find salvage at a colony that had been destroyed by the Jem’Hadar six years earlier, my mind just screamed “NEW BAJOR!” – but Jake didn’t get it until he saw one of the others wearing Bajoran earrings. And I didn’t think Dez, the ship’s captain, was nearly smart enough to lead his crew, and never got a sense of why they followed him.
I’ll keep my copy of Rising Son, of course, tucked away on the shelf with Mission: Gamma and the mass market reprint of The Lives of Dax. But if I get in the mood to read a good S.D. Perry story, I’ll pick up Section 31 – Cloak or Avatar, or even The Lives of Dax for her short stories before I reach for Rising Son. And I really hope that Unity is better than this was.
Other Star Trek Novels by S.D. Perry
Avatar Page Links
Avatar S.C.E. - Cold Fusion Section 31 - Abyss Gateways - Demons of Air and Darkness
Gateways - What Lay Beyond Divided We Fall
The Crew of Deep Space Nine
The Defiant Deep Space Nine USS Enterprise-E IKS Gorkon The Pathfinder Project
Klingon Empire Romulan Star Empire The Dominion Cardassian Union Ferengi Alliance
Section 31
Ferengi Rules of Acquisition Prophecies of Bajor
DS9 Avatar Awards Page
