Bookend: The Never Ending Sacrifice, or: Return to Trek

I know... I know... I was doing so well, too. I'd just like to let you know that I didn't have any choice in the matter. You see, I was bombarded* with Trek books, so I just had to read them. To ignore them would just have been rude!
Actually, I did give it a month or so before reading them as I already had a few books lined up to read. Then, I started to read Pyramids, one of the early Discworld novels by Terry Pratchett. I'd read this book loads of times before, but I was in the mood for another go, which leads me on to the first reacquaintance with Trek novels. Typically, I'd started to read Pyramids on the day that The Soul Key dropped through my letterbox and onto the doormat.
I'm not going to dwell on The Soul Key because I have bigger fish to fry, suffice it to say that it continues on from where Fearful Symmetry left off and resolves the Mirror Universe plot line quite nicely. I don't particularly enjoy the Mirror Universe as I'd rather catch up with this universe, not its dark, faux-sexy, hammy** counterbalance.

And now, the feature presentation:



The Never Ending Sacrifice, named after the multi-generation spanning Cardassian novel once mentioned by Garak as the "finest Cardassian novel ever written."

Oh my gods! I love this book so much! When I first heard of it, I thought it may be a literal version of the Garak-mentioned Cardassian novel and immediately thought it'd be boring. Especially as the original is a repetitive epic that spans seven generations of service to the Cardassian state. I'm glad to say that my first thoughts were incorrect.
The novel follows the life of Rugal - biologically a Cardassian boy but brought up on Bajor by a Bajoran couple - after his enforced return to Cardassia. The Cardassians had occupied Bajor and enslaved much of the population, the Bajorans in turn resisted and bombed many Cardassian facilties, including one where Rugal and his parents were stationed. His father survived but his mother did not and neither, Kotan Pa'Dar thought, did his son, Rugal, so he left Bajor and returned to Cardassia. Rugal was found and adopted by Proka Etra and Migdal and therefore regarded himself as Bajoran.
Some years later, Kotan Pa'Dar discovered that his son was alive and returned to claim him, much to Rugal's horror:


This clip is from the Star Trek Deep Space Nine episode "Cardassians" where Rugal first featured.

As you know, I'm not one for writing reviews, what with being so lazy, so here's Trekmovie.com's review for your perusal. All I'll say is that this novel is so good that it made me well up not once, but twice. This is no mean feat, as SP says I'm as emotionless as a robot. Which, to be fair, is kind of true...

Anyway, that's that for now. I don't have any more Trek books lined up to read. In fact, the next one I want to read isn't out in the UK until next year, so you won't be suffering more Trek-related bookends for a couple of months, at least.



* OK, so maybe bombarded was a little bit of an exageration. I'd ordered a couple of books back in Spetemeber.
** Honestly, have you seen some of the 'acting' in the Mirror Universe episodes of Deep Space Nine? One would expect William Shatner himself to turn up and start chewing on the scenery.