Spoiler level in this review: somewhat heavy.

In today’s episode, when a Bajoran leader turns to the black market for solutions, her refurbished replicators come with an unwanted extra. But when a certain well-known Maquis makes an offer Sisko can’t refuse, the station’s snark levels threaten to reach critical mass. Is this town big enough for two strong-willed Bajoran women? Why is Dax spacing out all the time? And don’t you hate it when Kai Winn is right? All this and more in Wrath of the Prophets, the book that pours kerosene on the “O’Brien is the worst husband ever” fire.

Wrath of the Prophets
Authors: Peter David, Michael Jan Friedman, Robert Greenberger
Pages: 274
Published: May 1997
Timeline: Between seasons 3 and 4
Prerequisites: “The Storyteller” (1×14; recurring character)

If you have a good memory for forgettable season-one episodes, you might (or still might not) recall Varis Sul (right, played by Gina Phillips), then a teenage leader-in-training who struck up a friendship with Jake and Nog that helped her shed her cares for a little while and enjoy being a kid. No doubt she wishes she could return to those more innocent times, because her tenure as a tetrarch isn’t going so hot. Desperate to feed her starving subjects, she makes a sketchy deal to procure some after-market replicators. The seller jacks up the price at the last second, but Sul didn’t paddle that far up Shit Creek to go home empty-handed, so she stuns the guy, makes off with her goods, and tries to wash the stink of sub-legitimate business off her conscience.

It may have an asterisk, but a victory is a victory. Until it’s not, that is; pretty soon, cattle start to get sick and keel over, followed shortly by people. A virus is found in the raw matter the replicators create food from, and the machines can be traced to at least the Orions, but outside of that, leads are scarce. Into the middle of the confusion drops none other than Ro Laren, offering whatever help she can. The Bajorans are her people, after all, so she has at least a little interest in seeing to it that they don’t get wiped out. Associating with a treasonous deserter isn’t really the best look, but hers is a skill set too attractive to turn down, and so for the mission to go down to Bajor for answers, Sisko pairs her with Kira, which is like trying to make the like poles of two magnets touch.

While Ro and Kira tromp around Bajor trying to get information from old friends and enemies alike, Sisko and Quark run off in the Defiant to talk to some of the latter’s old Orion contacts, leaving Dax and Bashir at the station to find a cure for the virus, though the former may not be much help, as mentally out to lunch as she appears to be. Chief O’Brien is also looking for a cure, albeit for some power fluxes plaguing the station, amid which he very unsuccessfully tries to convince us he cares about Molly and Keiko quarantined down on Bajor after treating them like raw sewage (more on this later).

So, is the third time the charm for the talented trio? In some ways, yes; in others, not so much. The big draw at the time would most likely have been seeing the prospect of Ro Laren in DS9 finally made good on. The original plan for the show was for Ensign Ro to get promoted to lieutenant and assigned to the Bajoran liaison job, but Michelle Forbes didn’t want to be tied down to a long series role or to fans’ expectations, and so with Deep Space Nine already too far into production to go monkeying with elements of the premise, a similar but new character had to be conjured to fill the spot—and thus was born Kira Nerys.

The Ro/Kira stuff is clearly Peter David’s handiwork. Putting him in charge of writing for two strong-willed, saucy ladies results in pretty much the exact output you would expect after hearing a “Peter David writes a Ro/Kira adventure” pitch. For much of the early story, it feels like all they do is try to out-zing each other, which is about as exhausting as it sounds. But after Varis Sul joins them, they both mellow out considerably, and David’s focus comes into better alignment.

Michael Jan Friedman’s pet OC species and turns of phrase mark him as the obvious author of the Sisko/Quark segments. An underutilized pairing, the two characters produce some solid comedy in his hands, and it’s clear he’s having the most fun of the three on this one. Unsurprisingly, I liked the arc the most. That means Bob Greenberger must have written the station parts, and although his writing doesn’t usually leave any impression on me, this time there were parts of it that significantly irritated me, so I guess it’s progress that the needle moved in a direction.

Wrath of the Prophets’ most interesting philosophical idea is the “will of the Prophets” as explained by Kai Winn—i.e., that if it wasn’t in fact the Prophets themselves who bestowed the cure upon the Bajorans, then it was at least their will for the scientists of DS9 to discover said cure. Extrapolated to other aspects of the book, you could then posit, for instance, that the Prophets “influenced the timeline” or whatever so that Dax, probably the only person in the galaxy still living who has the knowledge of the cure, would be in this specific space for this specific moment to solve this specific issue; or that O’Brien doesn’t need to act in the best interests of Molly and Keiko and resign his commission to move them somewhere safer, because it’s the Prophets’ will that he be the lone steward of DS9’s mechanical problems. This would probably sound more insane nowadays if the series itself hadn’t gone on to more or less prove Kai Winn right, by way of the Prophets borrowing Sarah for a while to make sure he got born and went on to become the Emissary. Saved by hindsight, I suppose.

Depending on how you feel about PAD’s style and tone, it’s either a curse or a blessing that this concept didn’t get the luxury of being explored across a whole book. Myself, I’m slightly more inclined toward the latter. Peter David’s interpretation of the Prophets makes them pretty much a 1:1 stand-in for the Christian God; people raise their fists, yell existential quandaries at them, etc., and there’s even a pretty scorching critique of “thoughts and prayers” before that was a thing.1p. 38: “Looking out on the Bajoran countryside, the Kai prayed to the Prophets for guidance. ¶ Unfortunately, if the Prophets heard her supplications, it appeared they were disinclined to provide any sort of response. Unless, of course, one considered death to be a response. ¶ For even as the Kai prayed, Bajorans died—more and more of them all the time.” I’m guessing a whole book of it would probably veer too hard into edgelord Philosophy 101 cringe for my taste—even if, if I recall correctly, he tends to end such critiques on an even-handed sort of détente, as he does here—so I’ll take what we got and be glad it didn’t wear out its welcome.

And that’s that for what I would semi-affectionately call the “party books.” Greenberger promised in the introduction to Wrath to round things out with a Voyager collaboration, but that one never came to fruition. Neither Peter David nor John Ordover was all that interested, which, y’know, fair, IMO. The Disinherited was without question the high point of this experiment; if you’re only going to read one of these collaborative works, it should be that one. This one falls somewhere between the other two in terms of quality: better than Doomsday World, but not even close to The Disinherited.

MVP & LVP

• The MVP of this one is Dax, which you might not guess at first, because she spends most of this book staring into the middle distance and making people repeat themselves two or three times before she snaps back to reality. It turns out she’s trying to remember where she knows this disease from. When she finally figures it out, the answer stretches all the way back to her very first life, and the plague arc wraps up pretty tidily once she pulls the solution from the depths of memory. It’s possible she’s literally the only person still living who knows how to make the antidote, so without her, the whole situation looks pretty grim.
• Our LVP is O’Brien, who never successfully recovers from an early bit of rare form in the opening pages. Keiko is back, but she’s already leaving again the next day to study a bit of flora on a remote island that’s stumping other scientists. She’s as excited about the prospect as Miles is annoyed. He wastes no time cranking the awfulness to eleven: first, he tries to flat-out tell her no, she can’t go; then whines about how much he needs Keiko and Molly around; then when that doesn’t work, switches gears and says “Go. Study your bloody weed. Abandon me every time they snap their fingers” as if he doesn’t instantly run off every time a circuit blows somewhere on the station (which Keiko correctly points out). He then ends the whole thing by sulking off to Quark’s. [slow clap] Great job, hubby of the year. As a result, when the book shows him trying to muster up some emotion for them later, it feels unearned. Actions speak louder than words, and the narration can say he loves Keiko until he’s blue in the face, but we saw how he treated her.

Stray Bits

• Peter David in the Star Trek Monthly magazine: “We were looking at [the novel] as a straight-up political adventure, but some people may see it as an AIDS parable.” I confess that idea never occurred to me while I was reading, but now I kind of want to put a pin in the idea of a future rereading from this perspective.
• An Orion named Kestralnamen enjoys a delicacy called “wing slugs.” Escarbuffalo? (p. 123)

Final Assessment

Average. Of the three Trek novels written collaboratively by David, Friedman, and Greenberger, this one ranks squarely in the middle. They say they had a hard time making deadline on this one, and it kind of shows, but it’s still a professional operation. Friedman’s contributions, centering around Sisko and Quark, comprise the most entertaining parts of the book. Because each author only got to work on a third of the book, some ideas PAD got in about religion manifested in a healthy degree when they would easily have worn out their welcome if explored at greater length. It’s got some good, it’s got some bad, but other than O’Brien racing to the bottom of the galactic husband rankings, it’s not going to unduly upset you or waste your time.

NEXT TIME: Chakotay and Kes wash up on The Black Shore