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The Lives of Dax (Star Trek: Deep Space Nine)

The Lives of Dax (Star Trek: Deep Space Nine)

List Price: $6.99
Your Price: $6.29
Product Info Reviews

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Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Slightly disappointing but a good read...
Review: This collection was all right if a little disappointing. My favourite was the Ezri story (it was the story of her being joined, and even though it was featured on DS9 it's worth reading) and the Emony one was great as well, although as it is mostly from a young Leonard McCoy's point of view we don't really get to learn a lot about her, but it is a good story. The Jadzia one was really good and features the return of Verad. The Audrid one was interesting as well. The Lela story was good too. The Curzon story was told from the point of view of a young Sisko so it wasn't that good but the story was interesting. I didn't like the Tobin, Torias or Joran stories at all.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Nine Stories, One Satisfied Reader
Review: This is an example of what makes Star Trek fun: being able to take the most miniscule information related in an episode or film and spinning off in a different direction (or in this case, nine different directions) with it. Writers new to the Trek universe as well as experienced hands contribute here, each telling a tale of one of Dax's past hosts. While I never really considered myself a big "Dax" fan, I still found the stories in this anthology to be extremely entertaining. The way the various authors managed to tie into continuity hooks all across the Trek tapestry was the primary motivation for my reading the book. No matter where your particular Trek allegiance might lie, you will find something in this book to enjoy. I was put on the spot and asked about what didn't work in this volume, and I honestly couldn't come up with an answer! In a year that has produced several entertaining Trek books, this one ranks right up there!

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Top-notch storytelling
Review: This was excellent! My congratulations go to Marco and all of the authors on jobs well done. My favorite story was "Sins of the Mother", the Audrid Dax story by S.D. Perry, and I really enjoyed seeing both the changing role of Trill-Federation relations over time, the different effects caused by joining with Dax, based on the increasing number of lifetimes from which to draw strength and experiences.

It's too bad there aren't many more Star Trek pro-anthologies scheduled for the near future (only "Enterprise Logs" and "Split Infinities", to my knowledge), because this book really shows the strengths of the format.

Along with "Vulcan's Heart" and "The 34th Rule", this is one of the top Star Trek books of 1999.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: best trek anthology
Review: This was my passport back to reading Star Trek fiction; it's a standout, not just in Trek fiction, but among s-f anthologies. DS9 remains the black sheep of the franchise for some reason, maybe because the war-time setting propelled the characters into much darker regions than Trek usually explored. The stories here are unusually rich emotionally, fleshing out Dax's character & doing justice to the wonderfully evocative concept of a symbiotic species living successively different lives. Not only that, but Dax's life is nicely interwoven with the other prime players in the Trek universe. The writers all rose to the challenge, and the editor Marco Palmieri deserves applause from all DS9's idiosyncratic fans....

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Interesting, but not necessary DS9 relaunch novel.
Review: To start with, this collection of short stories (since that's what it is) is very unnecessary to read as part of the "Season 8" DS9 Relaunch novels. Skip it and read the rightfully-so highly acclaimed Garak novel, written by the actor himself, "A Stitch in Time" instead. Or else read The Reeves-Stevenses "Millenium Omnibus" EPIC trilogy. Or, if you care about Ezri, then read the Ezri story in this book as it explains how she got the symbiont and how she is dealing with it. Otherwise, as a previous reviewer said, this novel is just a series of disjointed short stories about each of Dax's hosts. Not that there's anything wrong with that! But don't expect all the stories to link up in any way. If this review sounds negative, let me reassure you that this book was definetely worth reading as an insight into the Dax character and an understanding into the human condition (since let's face it (joined) Trills are humans who have the luxury of remembering their past lives, whereas we can do so only with difficult meditation or the help of a clairvoyant).

Most of the stories are very well done, such as:
Ezri (Vic makes a philosophical appearance, ya!),
Lela (a subtle bashing of conservatism),
Tobin (probably the best defined character, with some fun Romulans and a Vulcan adventure),
Joran (a great insight into the mind of a psycho, though not so much his intentions more than the methods), and
Jadzia (very interesting, good usage of the Symbiosis Commission, a past DS9 episode, and Sisko and a few other DS9 members).

These stories were good, but something about them bothered me:
Audrid (awesome to see Christopher Pike in action, but perhaps the letter format of the story bothered me, or perhaps it was just that the story was written for a specific character- a fictional character, which to some degree took away from its mystic),
Torias (I'm glad it was the story of his pilot accident, but trying to cross Warp 10! that's almost heresy. Why did it take so long until Voyager, far away from anywhere, finally manages that task and not the Federation? Ah well. I did enjoy how close you felt Torias and Kahn were together, and given the limited writing space it was well done, but I wish I could have really understood how much they loved each other, which would have made the DS9 episode "Rejoined" that much better!), and
Curzon (there was just something that bugged me about this episode, I think it had to do with Sisko's portrayal...)

The Emony story was terrible. Sure, there were a couple of morals to be learned, but why did Dax get involved with a very young McCoy? Crazy!

I really feel this book deserves a 3.5, especially when weighted against so many of the better DS9 books. Most of the stories were fun stand alone reads, but they didn't join up in any way, which I find had it been the case, would have made for a much more interesting read. And no I am not overlooking that the book was written by various authors. I s'pose I wish the editor hadn't decided to have different authors write it (as he tells us in the Intro). So, I just couldn't justify rounding up to 4, so I'm giving the book 3 stars.

I recommend to fans of Dax and fans of Trills, but not as part of the DS9 Relaunch since it adds little. Read "A Stitch in Time" instead, or "Millenium Omnibus" for a real good read!

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Great!
Review: What a great book! I read each "life" over about a week, and I found the stories quite thrilling and intersting. They also seemed very possible to what could have happened in Dax's past lives.

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Not as good as most people, but still a worthwhile read.
Review: While I don't agree that "The Lives of Dax" is a 5-star outing as many of the reviewers, it is a quality compilation of short stories that offer a worthwhile read. As with any anthology, there are bound to be better stories than others, and that is certainly the case with The Lives of Dax. I'm still new to the Star Trek books and audio books (having only read 6 or 7 of them), but I'm confident that I know enough about the authors and the potential quality these stories should offer. So given my reading experiences, I'm going to gauge them according to the worse and best books I've read in the series.

Some of the stories are quite good, such as:
Ezri, Lela, Curzon, Jadzia

While some are just okay:
Torias, Audrid, Joran, Tobin

And some of them are quite bad.. mainly:
Emony

If the editor would have ensured that each host deliberately influenced the next within each story (showing some continuity), I think that would have ultimately made the book better. Since all the stories are disconnected (aside from being hosts of the same symbiont) we don't really get the feeling there is a `bigger picture' or an overall purpose of the symbiont itself. I think that would have taken this book to even greater heights, but sadly, they simply did the bare minimum in my opinion and made a low-cost book of several disconnected short stories. The only real continuing arc is the evolution of Trill society, being a bunch of xenophobes and becoming active members of the Federation. I just think the arcs should have also dealt with the characters too - that was the point of the book, right? For this reason, and the fact that 5 out of 9 stories are worth reading, I only give it 3 stars out of 5.

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Not as good as most people, but still a worthwhile read.
Review: While I don't agree that "The Lives of Dax" is a 5-star outing as many of the reviewers, it is a quality compilation of short stories that offer a worthwhile read. As with any anthology, there are bound to be better stories than others, and that is certainly the case with The Lives of Dax. I'm still new to the Star Trek books and audio books (having only read 6 or 7 of them), but I'm confident that I know enough about the authors and the potential quality these stories should offer. So given my reading experiences, I'm going to gauge them according to the worse and best books I've read in the series.

Some of the stories are quite good, such as:
Ezri, Lela, Curzon, Jadzia

While some are just okay:
Torias, Audrid, Joran, Tobin

And some of them are quite bad.. mainly:
Emony

If the editor would have ensured that each host deliberately influenced the next within each story (showing some continuity), I think that would have ultimately made the book better. Since all the stories are disconnected (aside from being hosts of the same symbiont) we don't really get the feeling there is a 'bigger picture' or an overall purpose of the symbiont itself. I think that would have taken this book to even greater heights, but sadly, they simply did the bare minimum in my opinion and made a low-cost book of several disconnected short stories. The only real continuing arc is the evolution of Trill society, being a bunch of xenophobes and becoming active members of the Federation. I just think the arcs should have also dealt with the characters too - that was the point of the book, right? For this reason, and the fact that 5 out of 9 stories are worth reading, I only give it 3 stars out of 5.


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