For eighteen years the Cardassians have occupied Bajor under the pretence of an agreed annexation. In the sky above Bajor the space station Terok Nor is a visible reminder to the population of their complete subjugation. But not all Barjorans are willing to give away their freedoms so easily and the resistance fights back. With the population divided by an antiquated caste system, force of arms is not enough to gain the planet's freedom...

Night of the Wolves is the second novel in the Terok Nor series, which charts the invasion and eventual withdrawal, from Bajor, of the Cardassians. The novel is written by S. D. Perry and first time writer Britta Dennison, and covers events between 2345 and 2357.

I’ll start by being very up front about the novel and say I didn’t like it. It suffers from many of the problems of a second book of three. The first has all the action of the annexation and, I presume, the third will have access to the eventual victory of the Bajorans over the Cardassians. So what does that leave for the middle book, well it seems very little. For such a long book, at nearly four hundred and fifty pages, very little happens. Even the book's cover is slightly misleading as it depicts Kira Nerys who doesn’t turn up, in the narrative, until well over half way through - except for a small scene of her as a child. A truer depiction would have had Opaka Sulan on the cover.

Any fan of the TV show will work out quite quickly who, from the series, is going to turn up in the book. Though the two authors have added a large number of new characters, for the purpose of having someone to kill off, strangely enough these are often the better written characters.

The pacing of the book didn’t help either, with long passages where little appears to be happening apart for dialogue coupled with short and too infrequent action sequences. Characterisation and character development is a little uneven with many of the lesser newer players, like the Cardassian journalist Natima Lang, feeling more real than say Damar, Dukat or Kira’s mother - whose motivations for staying with Dukat would have appalled Kira; and indeed do, if you've seen the Season Six episode Wrongs Darker than Death or Night.

The book would have benefited by being split into two so that problems with the pacing could have been addressed. Fans of Bajor though will have a lot to savour here as it charts the rise of the resistance against the planet's backdrop. Personally the book was more of a wade through than a page turner.

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Charles Packer