Another anthology - this time the common factor is the Dominion War... and what practically every crew ever shown in TV or TrekLit was up to in that time.

Michael Jan Friedman's What Dreams May Come focuses on Gilaad Ben Zoma, Picard's former first officer on the Stargazer... rather unmemorable, maybe because it's been so very long since I've read the Stargazer books.

Night of the Vulture by Greg Cox follows up on the entity which thrived on dissent and conflict, first shown in TOS' Day of the Dove. Nice idea, but ultimately also not exactly memorable.

Keith R. A. DeCandido's The Ceremony of Innocence is Drowned is set on Betazed right at the moment of the Dominion invasion. Usually I'm not really a fan of Lwaxana, but this story rang true, all the emotions, the terror, the incredulity that the Dominion would take such a daring step (and the Federation's being caught ill-prepared)... It also fits in with "The Battle of Betazed", a novel about the occupation and liberation of Betazed. Well done.

Blood Sacrifice by Josepha Sherman & Susan Shwartz shows Spock on Romulus during In the Pale Moonlight...a Romulus that still contemplates an alliance with the Dominion until the Emperor suddenly dies. A fine glimpse back into the worldbuilding the 2 authors did with their "Vulcan's (noun)"-series.

Mirror Eyes by Heather Jarman & Jeffrey Lang is about the outbreak of a disease on Bajor... and only a nurse, presumed Vulcan but actually a Romulan sleeper, can provide the cure. Not exactly exciting.

Twilight's Wrath by David Mack highlights Shinzon, turning a suicide mission into success. Actually very good - Mack-like bloody and violent, but also an intriguing tale of oppression, hatred and revenge.

Eleven Hours Out by Dave Galanter focuses on Picard and Troi during the Breen attack on Earth... immemorable.

Safe Harbors by Howard Weinstein takes place at the same time when Scotty and McCoy are stuck on a semi-hostile planet, reluctant to help with repairs, with a damaged ship when contact to Earth breaks up. Better... but a bit contrived. Or is it really believable that these 2 are on the same ship just at that moment?

Field Expediency by Dayton Ward & Kevin Dilmore has SCE's Duffy and Stevens on a planet to retrieve some Dominion gadget from a downed ship when the Jem'Hadar attack. Good read, but still not too different from the early SCE... in short, doesn't tell us anything new about the characters.

Haven' read Robert Greenberger's A Song Well Sung - if not absolutely necessary, I won't voluntarily read about Klingons.

Zak Kebron tells his son the "heroics" of the Excalibur during the Dominion War in Peter David's Stone Cold Truths... nice tale, definitely one of the highlights, and a nice ring back to a time when I still liked TNF (i.e. up to Dark Alles).

Michael A Martin & Andy Mangels' Requital focuses on one of the soldiers in AR-558 who can't just forgive and forget, and is recruited by an equally disillusioned Cardassian to assassinate the Founder after the war's end. Interesting and quite disturbing - especially the apparent lack of psychological aid.

Overall, a couple of highlights, the rest mediocre, unfortunately. Still, it was nice to read stories of authors that I haven't seen in modern TrekLit for a decade or so. So much has changed in the production line since the early 2000s when this anthology was published...

This story focuses on a mission of the daVinci back in the Dominion War. Gomez, Lense and Faulwell weren't yet on board, Stevens and P8 Blue were just transferred onto the ship.

And quite honestly, as much as the first part of "War Stories" appealed to me because it granted insight into the characters (aside from showing them as brilliant geniuses), this part falls short in the characterization part. What we get are wisecracks, ideas pulled out of their a**es, in short, business as usual. It's still an interesting story, but not what I was hoping for when book 1 finally showed some inkling of light at the end of the dark tunnel of technobabble, ingenuity (make no mistake, ingenuity isn't bad, as long as there's some kind of personality to back it up) and smartass remarks.

Now, this is more like it.

Overseer Biron of the Androssi gets ahold of the personal logs of the daVinci-crew during their assignments in the Dominion War and peruses them in order to get an idea of how they could consistently defeat him. He starts with Dr Lense, Bart Faulwell and Sonya Gomez.

So, this finally offers some insight into the crew. It starts of with Dr Lense who, after having been questioned for being an augment after having beaten Bashir at medschool, returns to her ship, only to find herself the only doctor alive during battle. Bart Faulwell is asked to lead a team, trying to decrypt Dominion messages, and falls in love there. And Sonya Gomez has to improvise her way out of a mission gone wrong, all the while being the calm beacon of strength for her crew.

Granted, all the stories deal with past events, before the crew of the daVinci was even formed, but they serve to further portray the characters which before have remained quite bland due to the concentration on technobabble and ingenious ideas. I'm eagerly awaiting Book 2.

Star Trek meets The West Wing should probably be enough to sum up this novel that is set after "Star Trek: Nemesis" and "Star Trek: Titan: Taking Wing" and tells of United Federation President Nan Bacco's first year in office.

There are numerous problems, the Reman situation after Nemesis, the aftermath of the events on Tezwa and the resignation of her predecessor (see "A Time to..."), B-4's legal status, a disastrous state dinner just to name a few, and we learn of them like in glimpses, filtered through various middle-men until the matter gets deemed important enough to reach the president's ear.

And this is perhaps this novel's biggest problem: It tries to emulate The West Wing a bit too much, we are led from meeting to meeting, people even meet on the hallways at random... but the characters themselves remain rather bland. Well, The West Wing had 7 seasons, this novel just 390 pages, and you can't cover everything within those. I love West Wing, it's one of my favourite programmes, especially the earlier seasons, so, of course, I was struck by the similarities. Once again, a morally sound president comes to power and has to sometimes do things of a shade of grey (or cover them up)... and of course, she has multiple wisecracking conversations with her highly-intelligent staff and an obsession with trivia and baseball. Somehow, I think all those quirks and meetings work better in a visual medium but I know I'm in the minority here, since within the TrekLit-fandom this is one of the most highly regarded novels.

But until the last quarter or so when a few moral issues were raised (such as a reporter uncovering what really happened on Tezwa and that Admiral Ross practically forced then-President Zife to resign, and let him be taken and executed by Section 31, or a Tzenkethi-child needing a surgery only a Starfleet doctor can perform who had been imprisonned by the Tzenkethi for 4 years), there was little to no emotional anchor for me. Granted, I was reasonably entertained, at some points amused (i.e. the translation of "ad astra per aspera"), but that was it. Unfortunately.

I was mostly unfamiliar with Andorians except beyond knowing they were blue, hairy, and had antennae. The Chimes at Midnight by Geoff Trowbridge gave a most thorough background into this alien race. The reader follows two separate characters: Thelin (an Andorian) and David Marcus (James T. Kirk's estranged son). Thelin is Kirk's closest friend and First Officer of the Enterprise. David is a scientist who creates the Genesis Project in the hopes of making uninhabitable worlds fertile and livable for those looking to colonize new areas of space. When the secret of this innovation is leaked to the Klingons war is threatened. (Note: There's a rather explicit scene of torture in this book so if you're squeamish be aware.) Most troubling of all in this universe, Spock never lived beyond childhood. :'-(  7/10

War, war, war. A Gutted World by Keith R.A. DeCandido is chock full of violence and destruction as war rages across the galaxy. The Cardassians still occupy Terok Nor (DS9 reference for the uninitiated) and the Klingons and Romulans are at each other's throats. The Federation is pulled into the fray and devastating losses are piling up on all sides. Kira Nerys with the aid of Garak and Odo are trying to convince the Federation that all is not as it seems. I don't want to give too much away because it's pretty spoiler-y for Deep Space Nine even though it's an alternate reality timeline. 7/10

Brave New World written by Chris Roberson was absolutely brilliant. In this iteration, Data is not the only Soong-type android in existence. In fact, he's one of the earliest of many. When the Federation decides to limit their rights to full citizenship Data and many of his fellows resign their Starfleet commissions and drop off of the grid entirely. The story picks up 10 years later when Data inexplicably returns with a request for assistance from the Enterprise. Many familiar faces are still onboard including Chief Engineer Wesley Crusher and First Officer Geordi La Forge. (They've also perfected brain uploads in this universe which is frankly terrifying.) I so badly want to tell you the big shocker of this book but that would really kill it for you. Just read it! 10/10