Book Review: ‘Revelation and Dust’ by David R. George III

January 26, 2021 at 1:00 am | Posted in Books, Star Trek | 1 Comment
Tags: david r. george iii, revelation and dust, the fall

So far, I’ve focused my reviews on Star Wars novels. However, I’ve decided to do a slight deviation for a while to focus on reading some Star Trek novels I’ve been interested in. I’ll be returning to my reread of the Star Wars canon eventually, but a break is nice every once in a while.

Revelation and Dust is the first book in the five book crossover event Star Trek: The Fall. It was written by David R. George III and was released in August of 2013.

While being a crossover event, it must be understood to the reader that not every book in “The Fall” features crossover characters. For example, Revelation and Dust focuses on the characters from Deep Space Nine, and includes characters like political leaders and military leaders who show up in all the books. However, if it was not originally stated that this was a crossover, one might assume going into this book that it’s specifically a Deep Space Nine book.

I’ll be honest. Deep Space Nine is my least favorite Star Trek series (of the original five series; pre Star Trek Discovery). I don’t particularly hate it, but the characters, the plots, and the events never captivated me like the Voyager or Next Generation series. There are things about it that interest me, which is why I decided to start this series. And David R. George certainly shows the series has potential…

Unfortunately, I found this particular book to be lackluster. I’ll go ahead and say that the “A-plot” of the story was interesting, but the “B-plot” of the story was very boring, to the point that I really wanted to skip it.

Starting with the good, I loved the whole part of the book focusing on Deep Space Nine itself and it’s reopening. I loved learning about the new parks and features added to the new station that the old station didn’t have. I also really was into the characters in this portion of the book. All the political leaders join together for it’s opening, and it’s climax (which serves as the series inciting incident) really jolts the story off.

The “B-plot” of the story, however, really brought the book down for me. Since I’m not hugely invested in Star Trek books and lore, I had a hard time understanding what was happening with Kira’s story and the whole events with the “Prophets” and her merging with “Keev” was just purely confusing. I had to google it to understand what was happening, which is always a bad thing when you’re reading a book. Most tie-in authors write their books in such a way that any book is someone’s first and explains everything it needs to. This can be repetitive for some die-hard fans, but it makes it easier for new fans to read. An example of this being good is literally anything that John Jackson Miller writes, he makes it so that the audience knows what is happening and why. This is an example of where it’s done poorly. David R. George provided just enough with the Deep Space Nine characters to catch the reader up, but didn’t in the “B-plot”. The good thing is I know that events from the alternate reality and the “B-plot” will be important later, and I’m glad that they’re laying the ground work, I just think the execution was done badly.

Speaking of execution, I thought that the climax of the book should have actually been the beginning of the book. It would have worked much better as the inciting incident for this story, and would have set the reader on the edge of their seat. Instead, the reader is just reading along with not much happening until almost 2/3rds through the book.

If I can give the book a little more credit, I thought that it did some great job with relationships. Relationships in Star Trek books can be pretty hit or miss, but David R. George did a good job showing both healthy relationships with the Siskos and unhealthy relationships with certain other characters (redacted for spoilers).

Overall, I kind of enjoyed this book, but only part of it. I’m definitely hooked to find out what happens in the rest of the series, but this book really fell flat for me. Here’s to hoping that book two is much better. I give this book 2.5 out of 5.

My next review will be The Crimson Shadow, which is the next book in this series. 

Reviewed by Jonathan Koan for Roqoo Depot.