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BOOK
Star Trek: Voyager
Spirit Walk, Book Two
Enemy of My Enemy

Author: Christie Golden
Pocket Books
RRP £6.99, US $6.99, Cdn $10.50
ISBN 0 7434 9257 9
Available 03 January 2005


Captain Chakotay and his sister Sekaya are held captive beneath the surface of Loran II by a Changeling, an outcast Founder masquerading as
Voyager's first officer, Andrew Ellis. The shape-shifter is working with the infamous Cardassian exobiologist Crell Moset, who plans to use Chakotay's Sky Spirit-enhanced DNA to create a new super-species...

As with the previous book, Old Wounds, the back cover blurb gives away rather too much about Christie Golden's plot, but I have omitted anything that I considered too revelatory from my own synopsis above.

The cover is also a bit misleading, as it suggests that Tom Paris plays a leading role in the proceedings. Though Paris comes into his own towards the end of the narrative, if this novel belongs to any single character, it belongs to the Trill doctor, Jarem Kaz, who continues to wrestle for dominance with the personality of his symbiont's previous host, Gradak, a deceased member of the Maquis.

In addition to the presence of the regular Trill character, there is further crossover appeal for fans of Voyager's sister series, Deep Space Nine, with the intervention of two other alien species associated with DS9, a Cardassian and a Founder. The Cardassian in question is Crell Moset, the Dr Mengele-type scientist who previously appeared in the television episode Nothing Human (as a hologram) and the TNG novel The Battle of Betazed.

While the Kaz arc develops very nicely indeed, other plot strands from Old Wounds fall by the wayside to various extents. Sekaya, who was a major character in the previous book, gets very little to do in this one. B'Elanna Torres, who has been left behind on the Klingon world of Boreth with her daughter Miral, plays an even more minor role. And the conflict that existed between the old and new members of the Voyager crew, which I praised highly in my previous review, is completely absent this time around.

Enemy of My Enemy is higher in incident than Old Wounds, but there are some lapses of logic in the telling of the story. For example, why does Kaz sneak into Harry Kim's quarters to wake him, rather than ring the door buzzer? Also, several aspects of the conclusion are rounded off a little too neatly to be entirely convincing (but if I were to give them away I might spoil the plot for you).

That said, the resolution isn't so tidy that Golden leaves no plot strands dangling for future instalments. She clearly has plans for B'Elanna and Miral...

This is a satisfactory conclusion to the two-book tale, though it's not entirely what I was expecting.

Richard McGinlay

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