27. Dark Mirror by Diane Duane

Okay, I just crossed a threshold to a higher levil of nerdiness. I just read a Star Trek novel, Next Generation at that. The author was recommended as one of the better of the series. I have nothing to compare it with, but Dark Mirror was entertaining and fun to read, but probably would appeal mainly to those who were familiar with the TV show. I watched the first few seasons of Next Generation and quite enjoyed it when it stayed on strategic and exploratory subjects. It started to get more and more soap-operaesque as the seasons went on and I dropped it.

The Dark Mirror crew deals with a parrallel, evil universe, the same one that the original Star Trek crew encountered (with Evil Mr. Spock, one of the most bad-ass concepts in the history of character development). This time, the evil universe has figured out how to pull things from our universe and they pull the good Enterprise into their universe in an attempt to take it over, send it back and infiltrate then conquer our universe.

Duane does a great job with the original characters and a pretty good job of developing the future history of the evil universe, where humans have conquered, destroyed or enslaved everything in the galaxy. Her portrayal of the evil counterparts is mixed. They were interesting, but not quite evil enough. The whole book is kind of G-rated, which is not inappropriate for the source material, but makes it difficult to portray real evil.

I think I may turn off this road now, but if I come upon some other Diane Duane star trek's for cheap, I may pick them up.