Book Review: “What You Leave Behind” (DS9)

Feeling nostalgic, I snagged this book and got through it in about two hours.

General Information

What You Leave Behind by Diane L. Carey
What You Leave Behind

Author: Diane L. Carey
Original Publication Date: June 1999
ISBN: 0-671-03476-6
Length: 212 Pages
Cover Price: $6.50
US

Premise

(From Simon & Schuster) Seven years ago, Benjamin Sisko took command of an alien space station newly christened Deep Space Nine™. There he met Kira Nerys, Odo, Miles O’Brien, Quark, Worf, Julian Bashir, and many others who would touch his life deeply. He also found a new and troubling destiny as the long-awaited Emissary to the mysterious wormhole entities known as the Prophets.

Now, after years of triumph and tragedy, and a cataclysmic war that rocked the entire Alpha Quadrant, Captain Sisko and his valiant crew face their final challenge. No one is safe, nothing is certain, and not even the Prophets can predict the ultimate fate of Deep Space Nine!

High Point

There’s a scene, in chapter two, where Kira, suffering from a severe concussion, has a eloquent conversation with a Cardassian sewer rat. It’s the only “new” scene in the book and, aside from being very funny, articulates exactly why the Federation thrives and other empires fall.

Low Point

The length. This book is far too short. Some new or expanded scenes would have been nice. At the very least, I would recommend that they add more from season seven, perhaps two or three more episodes to round out the completeness of the book.

The Scores

As far as the episode is concerned, it’s only partially original, but still feels fresh and fun years later. 3 out of 6.

The imagery is good, but Carey could have spent more time fleshing out details. 3 out of 6.

The story is the same work that we’ve come to love from DS9. Some people still gripe about the ending, but you cannot deny the finality of this piece. 5 out of 6.

Characterization is shallow. It seems like Carey didn’t get to know the characters or just didn’t take the time when writing this book. 2 out of 6.

The emotional response is mixed. For me, it was fun to relive those last moments of DS9, but the author doesn’t bring anything new to the table. 3 out of 6.

The editing is adequate. Needs to be longer, though. 3 out of 6.

Overall I was disappointed. Most novelizations from the Star Trek franchise add details, scenes, and dialogue that couldn’t be contained in the time limit. Not the case here. 3 out of 6.

Total: 22 out of 42

TheAngrymob

10 replies on “Book Review: “What You Leave Behind” (DS9)”

  1. Good idea – book reviews?
    No interest in novelisations, but might anyone else be interested in doing book discussions? There are an absolute ton of good, recent sci-fi authors, might be fun to discuss.

    • Re: Good idea – book reviews?

      No interest in novelisations, but might anyone else be interested in doing book discussions? There are an absolute ton of good, recent sci-fi authors, might be fun to discuss.

      When you say novelisations… do you mean the books that cover an episode, or do you include all Trek books? I like some of them (particularly the New Frontier series), but more recently I’ve been getting into some fan fiction. You’d be surprised at what’s out there. Mostly crap, but there are a few gems as well.

      Aside from that, I’d get into a LotR discussion.

      PS: If anybody is interested, I found (via the Star Trek: The Lost Books page) a couple of unpublished Trek novels I’ve uploaded to my site. They are: A Flag Full of Stars: The Original Version by Brad Ferguson (391.5KB) and Music of the Spheres by Margaret Wander Bonanno (1.1MB). They are both in PDF format

    • Re: Good idea – book reviews?

      No interest in novelisations, but might anyone else be interested in doing book discussions?

      Like I said, I just picked this one up for nostalgic fun, but I am working on an original DS9 novel, “Millenium,” which is a much better piece of fiction so far.

      As an observation, Book Reviews on Bureau42.com tend to be the least commented on topics. In fact, some of them never get a single comment. As such, I read what I want to read and then review it if it pertains to the site. I have a limited amount of time to read books, so I stick to stuff I know (or at least think I know) I’ll like.

      If there’s serious interest, we can start reviewing different, more obscure material in hopes of finding something you all may be interested in. I will not, however, review FanFic. ::GAG::

      This is just my take. Dave or Fiziko may have a different spin.

      • Re: Good idea – book reviews?

        If there’s serious interest, we can start reviewing different, more obscure material in hopes of finding something you all may be interested in. I will not, however, review FanFic. ::GAG::

        Like I said, I could get into book discussions, but I might be in the minority here. A cool feature would be if the book discussions could have some kind of voting system (that way you could get a better read on what type of books site visitors are into).

        This is just my take. Dave or Fiziko may have a different spin.

        How about reader submitted reviews? I’m not a good reviewer myself, but I’m sure somebody else visiting this site mst be good at it. ;)

        • Re: Good idea – book reviews?

          Like I said, I could get into book discussions, but I might be in the minority here. A cool feature would be if the book discussions could have some kind of voting system (that way you could get a better read on what type of books site visitors are into).

          How about reader submitted reviews? I’m not a good reviewer myself, but I’m sure somebody else visiting this site must be good at it. ;)

          If you go to this page you’ll see a list of everything I plan to review and how it’s coming. You can always e-mail me if there’s something there you want me to put on the fast track. E-mail me if you have other suggestions, too. At last count, I had about 800 books, and the vast majority of them have not been reviewed and are not on that list. I might have it anyway.

          As for the user submissions, they are always welcome. I’ve got a bunch of templates that we might be able to convince Dave to put in the Downloadables area for readers to use, and they can then be filled into the story idea area for posting. In the meantime, you can get a zip file with all of my templates from this link. It’s probably a pretty safe bet to say that any moderately intelligible review will find its way onto the site.

          • Re: Good idea – book reviews?

            [email me] if there’s something there you want me to put on the fast track.

            Actually, a couple there I’d like to see reviewed: Cryptonomicon, since almost everyone’s read it, Cosmonaut Keep since it’s a new MacLeod series. I’d also suggest “Trapped” by Gardner. And as for me, please make sure it’s mentioned on the RSS feed – I come here via Slashdot, and so when I see something interesting I come over.

            As for book preferences, let me proactively tick everyone off by saying no Fanfic, published or not. Let’s keep away from books based on Movies, books based on TV shows, and the like. I used to read dailyscifi.com (which then became scifi.ign.com, then became a defunct snapshot in time – go take a look, it’s funny now!), partially for their book reviews.

            But let me be useful for a minute. Best 5 books you’ve read in the past year? Mine:

            • Trapped, James Alan Gardner
            • Cassini Division, Ken MacLeod
            • Long Run, Daniel Keys Moran (okay, I read it every several months)
            • A Deepness In The Sky, Vernor Vinge (yeah, it’s 2+ years old, I know – but my book collection gets unpacked tomorrow, so I can’t think of all of them offhand)
            • Down & Out in the Magic Kingdom, Cory Doctorow (so many ideas it made my head spin)

            Best old-sci-fi book I’ve read lately: Deep Space, Eric Frank Russell (great author, btw)

            Worst book I’ve read lately – Consider Phlebas, Iain Banks (some people love it, but I hated it. I even read it twice, since people kept telling me how much I should like it)
            .

            Come on, let’s make this a _thread_.

            • Re: Good idea – book reviews?

              Best 5 books you’ve read in the past year?

              Come on, let’s make this a _thread_.

              Now, this is something I can sink my teeth into.
              The best 5 books that I read last year (in no particular order):

              • Project Orion by George Dyson , and yes, his dad’s Freeman, and this chronicles the attempts to build the Orion class spaceship (Read: Nuclear Bomb propelled) from the 1940’s through to the 1970’s
              • Nineteenth Annual Year’s Best Science Fiction by Gardner Dozios (actually, that’s an idea for reviews – more bang for your buck with short story collections)
              • The Anubis Gates by Tim Powers – who can say no to ‘scientific’ time travel to the 19th Century coupled with Egyptian Magic? Not me!
              • American Gods by Neil Gaiman – and yes, I still can’t believe that I didn’t realize who his cellmate was until nearly the end of the book.
              • Watchmen by Alan Moore, which was more than I was expecting and got a friend of mine to respect Graphic Novels

              As to old-school stuff, I got my hands on a copy of the reprint of The Demolished Man by Alfred Bester, winner of the first ever Hugo award for best novel and was blown away – It reminded me a lot of Philip K. Dick, until I realized that this is what influenced him!

              And yet again, I’ve realized that I read way too much, as I had to keep myself from going for a top ten. Maybe I’ll just have to throw down some reviews…

              • Re: Good idea – book reviews?

                And yet again, I’ve realized that I read way too much, as I had to keep myself from going for a top ten. Maybe I’ll just have to throw down some reviews…

                Feel free. The pay’s lousy, but… um… I’m sure we’ve got some kind of perqs… um…

              • Re: Good idea – book reviews?

                Let me throw two series from David Weber in the mix. The
                first is the Honor Harrigton series (first book is “On Basilik
                Station”) and the second is the Bahzell Bahnakson series (first
                book is “Oath of Swords”). The first two books of both series
                are available for free from the Baen Free
                Library
                .

                The HH series is one of the most realistic sci-fi series I’ve
                read in a while. The BB series is a fun fantasy series.

                • Re: Good idea – book reviews?

                  Let me throw two series from David Weber in the mix. The
                  first is the Honor Harrigton series (first book is “On Basilik
                  Station”) and the second is the Bahzell Bahnakson series (first
                  book is “Oath of Swords”). The first two books of both series
                  are available for free from the Baen Free
                  Library
                  .

                  The HH series is one of the most realistic sci-fi series I’ve
                  read in a while. The BB series is a fun fantasy series.

                  I’ve downloaded the entire HH series from a friend who got the “War of Honor” book/CD-ROM combo, but haven’t begun to read it yet. I’ve heard about it being good, but haven’t read any reviews of it either. Want to volunteer one? ;)

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