When the Cardassian Union sends a ship to offer the hand of friendship to Bajor, greed and envy - on both sides - sets in motion a series of events which will lead to the subjugation of the Bajoran people under the man who would rise to become Gul Dukat...

Star Trek: Terok Nor - Day of the Vipers is the first in a new Deep Space Nine trilogy of books detailing the fall and rise of Bajor under the Cardassian occupation. This book is written by British author, the only Brit who wrote for a Star Trek television series, James Swallow. No stranger to genre novels, having penned stories for Trek, 2000AD, Doctor Who as well as creating story lines for various video games, here Swallow chronicles events between 2318 and 2328 in the Trek universe.

The first thing that has to be said about the book is what a stonking good read it is. It is no secret to fans of the TV series that Bajor had been under the Cardassian yoke prior to the start of the show's first season. What they didn’t know was how this came about. It would have been relatively easy, and exceedingly boring, to produce a book full of Starships battling it out in an all out invasion of Bajor. What Swallow has offered up is a far more subtle political thriller, confounding expectations and engaging the reader, on almost every page, in this tale of a fall from grace through greed.

At first the two worlds appear to offer much to each other. Cardassia is technologically advanced, but poor in the resources to properly feed its population, whilst Bajor is a rich verdant planet, and though they are not so advanced, their planet supplies everything its populous could need in abundance. Where the two both meet and diverge is in their religious leanings: Bajor, with their worship of the Prophets have created a planet wide religion, however on Cardassia many have turned their back on The Way. Through both religion and commerce the Bajorans and Cardassians find common ground.

Although Mace, a Bajoran police inspector, is bound to be the most popular character in the book, he is after all the everyman through whose eyes much of the story unfolds, Swallow has created a plethora of original characters to populate his landscape. There are established characters from the show, but these, apart from Dukat, tend to have relatively minor roles. This deftly sidesteps the small universe problem so often found in Trek novels and adds the zest of uncertainty. We know a war is coming and any of these characters could be sacrificed.

It’s difficult to know how the rest of the series will pan out; Swallow has defiantly started the trilogy on a high.

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Charles Packer