Valhalla

Star Trek: Deep Space Nine #10

by Nathan Archer

Tensions caused by speculation that Cardassia is about to reoccupy Bajor are complicated by the arrival of a strange alien ship. When it's discovered that the crew is dead and the ship is carrying valuable Gamma Quadrant technology, it becomes a sought after prize, which Commander Sisko must fight to keep out of Cardassian hands. Meanwhile, Sisko also finds himself at odds with Major Kira, who believes the ship is Bajoran property.

When the alien ship suddenly seizes control of Deep Space Nine, and the Cardassians move in to try to capture it, Sisko must face off against a shipload of angry Cardassians – and the alien being controlling Deep Space Nine!

Genres: Star Trek, Science Fiction, Star Trek Deep Space Nine, Fiction, Media Tie In, Ebooks, Speculative Fiction

277 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published April 1, 1995

About the author

Pen Name for Lawrence Watt-Evans.

Reviews

[Louie the Mustache Matos · Rating 3 out of 5]

I have to confess that "Valhalla," the Star Trek: DS9 novel, #10 in the Pocket Book Series is one of the more difficult reviews, I have had to write. I'm not dumb, and in fact I was a middle school science teacher for some of my teaching career; however, set that aside as a caveat. I don't really understand the alien at the heart of this story.

Here, a sentient ship is the alien I'm confused by. Although there are numerous novels, stories, and series with sentient ships, in this one, the alien is just becoming, and as every parent knows with any newborn, tantrums happen. The child is beginning to learn limitations, abilities, and words which can overwhelm. Sisko should have figured this out as one of the only two parents amongst his crew. I don't blame him too much, when he has to protect Bajor from a possible war with the Cardassians looming.

I have said it before, but I repeat it now: Deep Space Nine is still my favorite Star Trek property. An interesting albeit dissatisfying read.

[Daniel Kukwa · Rating 1 out of 5]

No matter how stupidly optimistic I am...hoping against hope that another early numbered DS9 novel MIGHT be something I recognize as DS9...I always end up disappointed, and this is no exception. I don't honestly know what happened to this range...how can barely 4 out of 20-ish novels be nothing like the series is based on? Were all of these authors not watching the same glorious show I was? This is not DS9, and it joins a sad roll call of previous books with that claim.

[Patrick Hayes · Rating 2 out of 5]

I haven't read this book since it first came out in 1995, so it was new to me. This was an interesting book because it was written early on in the series' run and some of the characters are wildly out of character. So much so as to make this book disappointingly ridiculous at times.

A ship comes through the wormhole and is intercepted by DS9. Once tethered, it's revealed to be a radioactive powerhouse, but that doesn't stop Sisko sending O'Brien, Dax, and Bashir aboard to check it out. The crew are dead and the ship is revealed to be technologically advanced to that of know technology. To investigate it and learn how it works would give any faction a huge jump over others. This gets the attention of the Cardassians. Things become further complicated when the ship reveals it has recently because sentient.

This is a solid premise that's undone by familiar characters acting strangely, especially that of Major Kira. She is unbelievably short tempered, opinionated, shrill, paranoid, and seemingly yelling every line. I was shocked. Garak is also off and Quark is constantly locked in inner monologues. Odo comes off as Cardassian cold. Any time the story goes to the ship the book is good. If it goes elsewhere, it's poor.

This is worth checking out only for those who wonder how the characters could have been different.

[Frank Davis · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a great concept and was executed really well. My only disappointment was the way things were resolved, although it was a hardly surprising outcome.

This is definitely not as humour focused but at times this reminded me of the very short journey of self discovery that Douglas Adams' whale undertook.

[Steven · Rating 2 out of 5]

Valhalla is an adequate DS9 story that unfortunately illustrates all the issues of Star Trek writers trying to tell their stories in a shared universe. The writers are already hemmed in to certain restrictions anyway, because obviously they can't derail story events from things that are set in canon (seen in the show). So, as best they can, they squeeze other adventures in between the sequence of events shown on TV to add more depth to the Star Trek universe and trust the editors to keep the continuity running correctly so that everything fits together. As a result, Valhalla is a really decent 1st or 2nd season story.

And with one line, Archer's editor ruins it. It's not even essential to the plot, and causes more confusion than anything else. During the first chapter, Major Kira mentions that the Defiant is off at …. well, she doesn't say, it doesn't really seem to matter, the fresh starship that hallmarked the 3rd season of Deep Space Nine is off somewhere, although none of the senior staff are present on it. That's odd. Well, maybe it's patrolling for the Dominion forces that have been threatening the station? Um, nope, probably not, since the Dominion isn't even mentioned at all. This also can't be very far into Season 3, since Keiko's school is still open and they still think Odo is the only member of his species …

Realistically, if you strike out that off-hand mention of the Defiant from your memory, you can easily picture this novel in its correct timeline, especially since the tensions between the Cardassians and Bajorians are still going through political growing pains. Archer made a solid attempt at padding out some of the political factions that were featured in an earlier DS9 novel Betrayal, so technically this one should come before that, but publishing orders being what they are and one crackpot edition threw this in another direction.

With that aside, this turned into a pretty interesting story, stepping a bit beyond the "monster of the week" flavored tales. A new race emerges from the Gamma Quadrant, Sisko and his crew attempt to make first contact with them, and instead find themselves caught between an insane artificial intelligence program aboard the ship and the Cardassian political factions trying to vie for ownership of the ship. Archer characterizes the crew fairly well, and I hope that he throws darts at his editor's picture whenever the mood strikes him.

[Reesha · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is written pretty out of character, especially with Kira, but I quite enjoyed it nonetheless. If it had taken place in the first season (where everyone's a little OOC compared to the rest of the series), as I initially thought it was, that would have been more forgivable, but it seems like it was meant to be 3rd season...? A bit odd.

Aside from that, the cool new aliens were really fun, and I would have liked to learn more about them and spend more... let's say, "lively" time with them.

The reveal of the identity of the Big Bad was great, just so fun, and I absolutely gasped with reader's delight at a point in the book where the writing went from "this entity is a bit evil, eh?" to "this entity has drawn a really unfortunate equivalence and has therefore made quite the oopsie".

One of the roughest parts of the novel for me was Sisko's incredibly inappropriate "whatever" behaviour at a variety of points throughout the narrative. I don't know if the author was trying to lean into his initial uncertainty about the DS9 post at the beginning of the series and expand that into basic responsibilities, but it threw me out of the story every time he was telling his senior staff not to bother talking to him about something that was pretty important, actually.

There's also an absolutely cringe-worthy moment when Sisko is having a professional conversation with Kira and spends the first half of the conversation thinking about how attractive she is or isn't. That's her boss, dude. Gross.

All in all, I enjoyed the story, but you have to be willing to go into a weird alternate universe where the DS9 characters you know and love have gone a little awry. All this stuff is non-canon, anyway, so if the story is fun, I can forgive it some rough characterization.

3.5 stars.

[Christian Hamilton · Rating 2 out of 5]

I’ve got some seriously conflicting thoughts about this book.

From the very first (excruciating) paragraph, I knew that this book was going to be a chore to read. It’s the first DS9 book I’ve read that I’ve considered giving up on halfway though. The writing, at times, was disjointed and elementary. At other times, it was quite clever, especially involving the growing sentience of an artificial intelligence, similar to that seen in the seminal 2001: A Space Odyssey film.

My main concern is that the overarching plot was deeply boring. There was no real conflict to draw the reader in. The A (or was it B) plot involving machinations into Cardassian governance was boring and tacitly resolved by the end of the novel.

More importantly, the characters were written completely out of context. Sisko advocated for violating the Prime Directive and influencing Cardassian politics (long before his difficult “In the Pale Moonlight” spurt). Odo and Bashir both advocated for killing a unique life form, something completely alien (pun intended) to Odo and detrimental to Bashir’s medical practice.

Overall, the bad outweighed the good in this book. I really wouldn’t recommend it.

[Joe Sullivan · Rating 2 out of 5]

Being the tenth in the DS9 series, I was hoping the characters would finally start behaving more like the characters we know (as they were in season 1 at least). I wasn't all that let down in that respect. Other reviews complain about the arguing between Sisko and Kira being too much, but if you watch season 1, they were like that in the beginning, and it reduced over the course of the series as they grew to respect each other. Otherwise, a minor behavioral quibble here and there but mostly the characters are much better than previous books.

Unfortunately that's not the issue with this book. Here, far too many parts feel like they're incredibly overwritten, stretching out "scenes" that should only have taken maybe a page or two into nine or ten. It felt like the author needed to pad the book to make it a certain length, but rather than add some more side stories or incidents with the main story, they went back and added unnecessary stretching out of the incidents already written.

The basic premise of the story had potential. The end result failed to reach that potential.

[Tomislav · Rating 1 out of 5]

2 December 2007 - This starts as a routine pre-Worf Star Trek: Deep Space Nine book. Gul Dukat and the Cardassians are their normal untrustworthy selves, constantly angling for a way to take over the wormhole. Major Kira is shrill, constantly demanding military intervention from the Federation for the Cardassian provocations. Odo is puddling around spying on Quark and the other regulars. Into this setting comes a derelict alien ship with a newly self-aware computer, a computer that does a sort of exaggerated impression of Hal from Arthur C. Clarke's 2001: A Space Odyssey. Far from being an homage to that classic character, this computer is just dumb, understanding everything it hears or reads literally, like a 13-year-old might. Star Trek: Deep Space Nine is one of my guilty pleasures, but unfortunately this book is just a mess.

[Craig · Rating 4 out of 5]

I think my rating of this book is mostly affected by how hard it was to find and finally getting it. I was really worried it was going to suck, ha ha! Turns out not only did the book surprise me in its quality but its story as well. The book took many unexpected turns and I was pleasantly surprised! Happy I could finally read it!

[Myke Edwards · Rating 2 out of 5]

This was a disappointing gift for a disappointing 15th birthday. The book didn't fit the theme and feeling of Deep Space Nine (in my opinion, at least), and took that characters way out of their usual, hard-drawn lines.

[Alexander Milwaukee-Thien IV · Rating 2 out of 5]

Ay yo, it wasn't like bad bad, just kind of soft. Also Kira comes off dumb as hell. Same with Sisko. Infact most everyone came off mad stupid, making big dumb mistakes like ignoring holographic visions and the like which didn't make sense to me.

[Steven Shinder · Rating 3 out of 5]

The characters felt wnough like themselves, but it wasn’t quite what I was looking for. Also a bit weird that the Author’s note about this taking place before the Betrayal novel is at the end of the book rather than the start.

[Jonathan Lee B. · Rating 4 out of 5]

Valhalla is finding a great shirt at a thrift store.

[Christina Farr-Thompson · Rating 3 out of 5]

very slow at first but then picks up. decent but not my favorite

[David Sarkies · Rating 2 out of 5]

Another of the many Deep Space Nine books
14 April 2012

I probably should stop writing commentaries on the Deep Space Nine books, particularly since I cannot definitely say that I have actually read them. I may have, I may not and I suspect that the reason these books stick in my head is because I would look at them multiple times while browsing in a bookshop. However the other catch is that I never actually read any of the Next Generation books (well, okay, I did read one of them), and further to that none of the names of the Next Generation books spring to mind in the same way the Deep Space Nine books do.

I finally saw an episode of DS9 involving Odo investigating a murder. Well, he probably did that in others, but after all of the comments about Odo investigating murders on the station in the early books, it is something that has stuck in my mind with the reason that it was getting a bit long in the tooth. I guess it was rather amusing to see this overused plot finally make its way onto the screen.

However, it is interesting as I watch through a number of the DS9 episodes (in order of course) to see how they structure each of the episodes. As I have mentioned previously, in many cases this is more like speculative science-fiction rather than action adventure. In many of the other science-fiction shows that I have seen (particularly Doctor Who) the action adventure sits in the foreground, however with a lot of the Star Trek episodes they seem to take a more speculative approach. For instance, there is one episode where Dax, a Trill, is brought to trial on suspicion of murder. However, the Trills are a symbiotic race: there is the host, and a slug that lives within the host. The host has a normal lifespan however the slug lives much longer and will have multiple hosts. The question raised is whether the host can be guilty of a crime committed by a former host. The question was never answered as it turned out that Dax was innocent.

While there are elements of speculation in the show (and while there is nothing wrong with speculative fiction, sometimes it is not necessary to consider such ideas as it is not something that we, in our world, will ever encounter: there is no such thing as a symbiotic sentient life form on Earth) sometimes science-fiction is used as a vehicle to explore issues that are faced in reality. Another episode explores the link between religion and science. This is something that does confronts us, even though the main antagonists tend to be religious fundamentalists. However, it shows the difficulties that can arise when both sides refuse to back down. Personally I would not step in to support either side, particularly when one side scoffs at the childishness of an overgrown imagination, while others stick to such tight and inflexible dogma that anybody that does not agree must be preaching blasphemy.

Another thing that I have grown to like is the fact that the writers are able to develop the races that surround the station, particularly the Cardassians and the Bajorans. In the earlier series, there would be some races that would make regular appearances, however due to the nature of the series, that is travelling about the universe, or at least the known galaxy, it is not always as feasible to continue to bring the same races back to develop them as much. However, with Deep Space 9 and Babylon 5, we do have regularly reoccurring races, which gives a lot more scope to develop them much more deeply.

[Sarah · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book is a good example of how to take a nifty sci-fi idea that's been around for a long while—the sentient computer—and bog it down with a pointless B plot. I'm not sure the whole Cardassian politics thing was added at the request of the editors to give the book a more..."DS9 flavor," so to speak or if the author added it because he didn't completely trust his ability to pull of the strong sci-fi idea or lost steam or direction while writing it or if something about the Cardassian culture hinted at in the early seasons of the show intrigued the author enough to want to invent some aspects of it to flesh it out for fans.

If the origin of the B plot is indeed the author's fascination with the Cardassian culture hinted at, he took a mighty big risk inventing aspects of the culture and new characters because when his book hit shelves, the show still had three or four more years to go and could thus go in a direction that would render his work nonsensical or amazingly omniscient. In some way, I have to admire the author for taking that chance, but because direction the show took and the way its staff developed Cardassian culture, what's in this book on hindsight is just...well, for me it becomes some random person's interpretation of what had been established and ultimately isn't worth much because it's incongruous with what we did see in the show.

As for the direction the A plot went...given how it kind of meanders and gets obscured at times by the B plot, I suspect perhaps the author lost some measure of confidence in the story he wanted to tell or was told by editors that he needed to change the story or stretch it out (the book is a bit longer than others published around the same time but not by much), and thus the story of the little ship that become self-aware loses its power to speak about the human condition. Oh, and can I just say that all the references to the episode of TNG with the self-aware ship in search of a crew I found annoying and cumbersome from the very beginning? I'd rant about these ham-fisted tie-ins, but....eh.

Needless to say, I might have been more in the book had we not had to mess around in Cardassian politics and been able to focus on the little ship that became self-aware. If this book had come out with the logo for TNG on it or for TOS, we probably wouldn't have had the subplot because for some reason "discovery" plots were just fine and dandy for those book brands but somehow not OK for DS9 books because, hey, DS9 didn't go travel, the show wasn't about exploring strange new worlds and seeking out new life and new civilizations because, dammit, it was coming to us on our space station, or so we were told. And thankfully the folks running the show later on turned that notion on its head.

[Dianah · Rating 3 out of 5]

A strange, derelict spacecraft comes through the wormhole. It isn't long before everybody wants a piece of it - Quark, various Cardassian factions, O'Brien, Bashir...even Odo has feelings about what to do with the ship. Even the...oops - almost added a spoiler! At any rate, the plot is pretty straight forward with some Cardassian political intrigue thrown in for good measure.

The book opens with my number one sci-fi series pet peeve. This is book 10 in series based on a television show. Nobody except the author's family is going to read this book without knowing the show and the characters. There's no need for long explanations about who or what a character is. And if you feel you have to, make sure you get the description right. For example, if you feel the need to explain Jadzia Dax is a joined Trill don't say all Trills have worms.

The characterization of Kira is a bit one-dimensional and I didn't care for the description of Bashir. The appearance of Garak was great and long anticipated based on Cardassian political sub plot, but he didn't even get a line of dialogue. Very disappointing!

[lucien alexander “sasha” · Rating 2 out of 5]

Kira is kinda OOC the whole book unless I just don't remember how wildly irrational she was at the beginning of the series. I think it's the 'crazy women' trope that keeps showing up in dude-penned ST novels I've been reading. Also Garak is mentioned twice as having witnessed/overheard some conversation w/ the implication being that he was passing info to Dukat, but at the time this book came out (1995), "Cardassians" (in which Garak and Dukat are shown to be old enemies) had aired at least a year previously. Random really gory scene that I wasn't into, also; slightly headfucky even though you know who's going to prevail.

[Andrew Beet]

unfortunately i got bored of this after chapter 13 wish i had read Betrayal (deep space nine 6) as of rereading it again glad I read it the character of enak was interesting as with any artificial intelligence they want to know everything about life and death and that's what enak wanted to know when it took over the station's computers. I liked it when the cardassians tried to take the ship from the station overall good novel author got the characters spot on

[Angela · Rating 4 out of 5]

Finally a DS9 book where Odo doesn't investigate murders. This is a decent story involving an alien ship and Cardassian politics. It's very fast moving and the characterisation for the most part is spot on. (Kira seems maybe a little too obsessed with Cardassians) It could have been a 2 parter tv show. A very good read.

[Oz · Rating 4 out of 5]

Calls back to the show in fun ways, introduces a new species we could never see on screen (especially with 90s effects), and charmingly portrays beloved characters. Pretty much what I’m asking for in a Star Trek novel!

[Denise · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not one of my favourites among the DS9 novels so far, but a quick and entertaining read.

[rivka · Rating 2 out of 5]

2.5 stars

[John Walkenford · Rating 3 out of 5]

An okay book but it didn't wow me. And I really didn't like Sisko being "grumpy old man" throughout this book. Everything seemed to annoy him and he had no patience for anybody.