Star Trek: Mirror Universe: Glass Empires [Paperback]

Many Trekkers are familiar with the Mirror Universe, which was first glimpsed on the classic Star Trek episode, "Mirror, Mirror", in which Kirk, McCoy, Uhura, and Scotty were beamed into a parallel universe, which was like an evil twin of their own. Humans in this universe were barbaric, evil, serving the Terran Empire, instead of the Federation. This universe's Spock also sported a goatee, giving him a very different look from the regular Spock. Kirk and his team managed to escape back to their own universe, though Kirk urged Spock to work for change in the Mirror Universe. Spock claimed he would "consider it." - Now we finally see what Spock 'considered doing'.

Over 25 years later, Trekkers saw a return to the Mirror Universe on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, when a malfunctioning runabout entered the wormhole and sent Major Kira and Dr. Bashir into the Mirror Universe. Kira met her alter ego, who can charitably be described as a homicidal, bisexual, emotionally unstable, nymphomaniac. She also learned that the Terran Empire had fallen to the rise of the Klingon/Cardassian Alliance, which had enslaved all humans, turning them into laborers. The Mirror Universe became a story-telling staple on DS9, right through the 7th season. In this book, we see what became of the Mirror Universe's Jean-Luc Picard.

But at the beginning of the book, back in the glory days of the Empire, set after the events seen on Star Trek: Enterprise's 2-part episode "In a Mirror, Darkly." This 2-parter had a unique position of being both a prequel, and a sequel - a prequel to TOS's "Mirror, Mirror", and a sequel to TOS's "The Tholian Web", in which the U.S.S. Defiant, same kind of ship as Kirk's Enterprise, disappeared into unknown regions. In the ENT 2-parter, it was learned that the Defiant ended up over 100 years in the past, in the Mirror Universe. Jonathan Archer led the I.S.S. Enterprise of this time period to the Tholian base that had captured the Defiant, and stole the ship, 100 years more advanced than anything that anyone had, planning to overthrow the Emperor. Things didn't exactly work out that way. This book details the subsequent events over the next year, which set the stage for TOS's "Mirror, Mirror" quite nicely.

You may ask why I'm not going into much detail on the stories themselves - I don't want to spoil anything for you!

This book is clearly intended for heavy duty Trekkers, such as me, but what a read! I read half of it in just 3 hours!

My only complaint is that the events of this book are incompatible with the Mirror Universe trilogy written by William Shatner, and J&G Reeves-Stevens. But then, there were numerous elements to the Shatner story I didn't care for. But I won't know until the second installment in this series, if these books are incompatible with the "Dark Passions" 2-parter book, which details events leading up to the first DS9 Mirror Universe episode.

Suffice to say, I've enjoyed this book immensely, and I don't want to wait another month until the second one comes out!

I've been looking forward to reading this two-part book series since it was first announced. The first volume includes stories that cover Star Trek: Enterprise, Star Trek, and Star Trek: The Next Generation. For the most part, I wasn't let down. The authors of this book really seemed to not only offer wonderful stories that covers Trek's interesting 'Mirror Universe' but they also offer something new and fresh, things that were not present in the episodes, creating a sort of definitive history of the Mirror Universe.

For me, the first two stories, Enterprise's 'Age of the Empress' and Star Trek's 'Sorrows of the Empire', were great. These stories compliment one another, continuing where respective episodes of the shows ended. The Enterprise story was so well written that I could easily get into the story and visualize the characters and see this playing out in the television series. The only part that let me down about the story was the last page that ends with a minor cliffhanger. Is this going to be followed up in another book in the future? If not, what was the point of it? It ends the story on a note that I hope gets addressed in the second volume of stories. If not, it's puzzling and awkward and weakens the story.

'Sorrows of the Empire' picks up where 'Mirror, Mirror' left off and follows the rise and fall of Emperor Spock from the Star Trek series through the era of Star Trek: The Undiscovered Country. This is by far a must read. It was worthy of being its own stand-alone novel, epic, moving, well written. It plays to the fan's fancy; you get a rather Original Series story; and examination of morals and an individual's sense of duty and obligation that goes beyond his or herself, cameos from the main original series crew (with the exception of Chekov, Rand and Chapel) through characters who played a major role in the movies (Dr. Carol Marcus, David Marcus, Colonel West, Admiral Cartwright, Sarek, Amanda, Saavik, Valeris, the list goes on). It was gripping from the first page to the shocking (even if expected) ending. This would be one of those stories I'd recommend any true Trek fan to read and dare not to get into and appreciate and like.

Then, this is where this first volume takes a dissapointing turn for me. We go from two great stories that have some continuity between them and feature the casts and characters of both shows ... to a rather predictable, ill-thought out, dull, fan-fic-ish 'amateur' feeling 'Next Generation'. You can gather from the title, 'Worst of Both Worlds' what it deals with; the Borg of the Mirror Universe. Sounds interesting but it was a let down. After reading the first two stories, I expected more from this. It feels as if this story takes a great detour from the previous stories, not adding much at all to the 'history' the first two stories seemed to build up and instead offering a story that was bland and packed with average writing and every predictable line and outcome you can imagine. By the end, I found myself rolling my eyes and hardly able to get through the story. Unlike the other stories, this one features just Mirror Picard and offers a few cameos of recurring TNG characters. No Worf, Riker, La Forge, Troi, Crusher, Guinan or anything. Even with the inclusion of Vash and Gul Madred, this story couldn't be saved and seems like a waste of pages and space. I'm sure a better story, featuring a few more regular characters, could have been throught out.

Besides the dissapointing 'The Next Generation' story, this was a great start to the Mirror Universe books. I'd like to think (though I know it's not the case probably) that TNG's story lacked a pressence of other stories out of respect of Mirror Worf, Troi and Crusher and others having larger roles in the older Mirror Universe series 'Dark Passions.' In all, the first two stories play out like great television shows if not movies. They're great, worth the read, easy to get through, will leave you wanting more. TNG's story doesn't add anything to the mix; the Picard character, even if being of another universe, seemed dull and poorly written, and the Borg of this story are simply jokes. I'd still recommend you picking up this book to get exposed to the rather sorted and epic history of the Mirror Universe.

Okay, it's a rare occasion I enjoy a Star Trek book and even more rare when I get to the point where I can't put it down.

This book: Star Trek Mirror Universe - Glass Empire is such a book. The premise is simple: It tells three different stories that take place in the mirror universe of each Star Trek series.

The most interesting aspect of the entire book, all three stories told by different writers, is that they joyfully mine Star Trek history, each with a little overlapping among the generations. More than once I had to consult Star TreK to figure out where I remembered specific characters from.

Let me break it down and discuss each part:

Star Trek Enterprise: This story picks up directly after the Enterprise episode "In A Mirror Darkly" where the U.S.S. Defiant has been commandeered by Hoshi Sato, declaring herself empress of the Terran Empire. I have to admit, this story did not go in the direction I thought it would and that's unusual in the world of Star Trek where, thanks to so many hours of Trek, plots are rehashed over and over. The beautiful thing about the mirror universe stories are that anything can happen to anyone at any time. This story was a great story but for me, it was the weakest of the three which is far from a bad thing. The conclusion was extremely satisfying with the resolution of how the rebellion against the Terran Empire was quelled. Nowhere near a bad story and it holds up very well against most other Trek books I have read.

Star Trek (The Original Series): This story surprised me the most. I was ready to skip it as I already knew from episodes of Deep Space Nine that Spock taking over the Empire is what caused it to fall, however, something told me to read through and I did. This installment is clearly the strongest and most thought out of the three. It follows Spock's rise to emperor and picking up from the end of the original "Mirror, Mirror" episode of the classic series up until the time of the movies, all the way to paralleling Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country. Saavik and Valeris show up in the book as well as lots of other fascinating (pun intended) Trek historical characters. All I will say about this one is that the fall of the Empire isn't because Spock made a mistake. Far from it.

Star Trek: The Next Generation: After I finished the Spock story, I truly expected this installment to suck. Picard is an archaeologist working for the Gul who tortured him in the season six TNG two parter. I feared that they were going to do "Indiana Jones" in space but I was beyond pleasantly surprised. Within the first few pages, we see some supporting characters show up who were welcome indeed (Dr. Soong, for example) and once the storyline became clear, I was hooked. I won't spoil it for you but let's just say archaeology is not the focus of this story. This story had me riveted so much where they set up such a huge premise and with only about 20 pages left, I had no idea how they were going to resolve it quickly. I truly thought it would be continued in the sequel book (Obsidian Alliance) however, the clever bastard who wrote the book resolved the whole thing, and much to the reader's satisfaction.

Overall, this book has been a great read for helping me pass the time on the subway. I have even gotten on the train going two stops in the opposite direction so I can get a seat on the train (at the point of origination) and read more.

I just picked up the sequel today and within 4 hours of buying it, I am 84 pages into it. Well worth the prowling Barnes and Noble looking for it.

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