Posts Tagged ‘Warpath’

WARPATH review on Tor Dot Com

Today on Tor Dot Com, Alvaro Zinos-Amaro reviews Warpath, my Star Trek: Deep Space Nine post-finale novel published in April 2006.

This review is part of a series, just as the novel was. Alvaro is reviewing the entire run of post-finale Star Trek: DS9 novels, which was started by editor Marco Palmieri in 2001.

Warpath falls somewhere in the middle of the series, and as such, though I am proud of it on its own merits, it would be a hard place to try to jump into the ongoing post-finale DS9 narrative.

Regardless, it is still immensely satisfying to read comments such as these:

Warpath is an intricately-assembled emotional rollercoaster which, despite plenty of quiet character scenes, never lets up on tension. Part military thriller, rip-roaring medieval battle, detective mystery, post-modern Western, and high-tech medical drama, it plays on the strengths of all these sub-genres and fuses them together into a dazzling story that is amply greater than the sum of its parts. The main reason for this success, outside of fastidious and intelligent worldbuilding, is Mack’s prose. He is able to switch effortlessly between scenes of muscular action, measured dialogue, and evocative description.

And there’s plenty more where that came from. Read the full Tor.com review of Warpath here.

As it happens, all U.S. eBook versions of Warpath (as well as my Vanguard series debut Harbinger) are on sale until the end of May 2020 for just $0.99 each. So get ’em while the getting’s good, my friends.

 

 

My Star Trek eBooks on Sale in May

Good news, everyone! All eBook versions of two of my many Star Trek novels are on sale to U.S. readers for just $0.99 now through the end of May 2020.

The first title on sale is my Deep Space Nine action-thriller Warpath. From the back cover:

They were created to be killing machines. Highly intelligent, resourceful, and deceptively complex, the Jem’Hadar are a species engineered for war and programmed at the genetic level for one purpose: to fight until death as soldiers of the sprawling stellar empire known as the Dominion. No Jem’Hadar has ever lived thirty years, and not even their masters, the shape-shifting Founders, know what such a creature is capable of becoming were it to be freed of its servitude.

One Founder, however, has dared to wonder.

Appointed by Odo himself to learn peaceful coexistence aboard Deep Space 9™, Taran’atar, an Honored Elder among the Jem’Hadar, had for months been a staunch, if conflicted, ally to the crew of the station, ever struggling to understand the mission on which he was sent … until something went horrifically wrong.

Consumed by self-doubt and an ever-growing rage, Taran’atar has lashed out against those he was sworn to aid. While Captain Kira Nerys and Lieutenant Ro Laren both lie near death aboard DS9, their assailant has taken a hostage and fled into Cardassian space, pursued by Commander Elias Vaughn on the U.S.S. Defiant. But as the hunt unfolds, Taran’atar’s true objective becomes increasingly less certain, as the rogue Jem’Hadar leads the Defiant to a discovery even more shocking than his crime.

The second title on sale is Harbinger, the first volume in the eight-book (plus two eBook novellas) Star Trek Vanguard saga, which I created with editor Marco Palmieri and alternated writing duties with the team of Dayton Ward and Kevin Dilmore. From the back cover:

Returning from its historic first voyage to the edge of the galaxy, the damaged U.S.S. Enterprise journeys through the Taurus Reach, a vast and little-known region of space in which a new starbase has been unexpectedly established. Puzzled by the Federation’s interest in an area so far from its borders and so near the xenophobic Tholian Assembly, Captain James T. Kirk orders the Enterprise to put in for repairs at the new space station: Starbase 47, also known as Vanguard.

As Kirk ponders the mystery of the enormous base, he begins to suspect that there is much more to Vanguard than meets the eye. It’s a suspicion shared by the Tholians, the Orions, and the Klingon Empire, each of whom believes that there are less than benign motives behind the Federation’s sudden and unexplained desire to explore and colonize the Taurus Reach.

But when a calamity deep within the Reach threatens to compromise Starfleet’s continued presence in the region, Kirk, Spock, and several key specialists from the Enterprise must assist Vanguard’s crew in investigating the cause of the disaster and containing the damage. In the process, they learn the true purpose behind the creation of Vanguard, and what the outcome of its mission may mean for life throughout that part of the galaxy.

This is a great deal on two of my seminal early works. Grab ’em while the grabbing’s good!

#SFWApro

The Remainders of the Day

Over the last two days, I have received two letters from my publisher (via my agents) informing me that two of my backlist Star Trek titles are scheduled to be remaindered. Although they will not technically go out of print (thanks to eBooks and the overpriced Limbo that is print-on-demand), they are about to become much more difficult to acquire in mass-market paperback format.

warpathThe earlier of the two titles scheduled for the pulp machine is my 2007 Deep Space Nine novel Warpath. This book helped set the stage for some of my subsequent work in the Mirror Universe setting, and it was a story I wrote during a tumultuous time in my life. Although this novel is steeped in serialized continuity (and therefore not a good jumping-on point for new readers), there is still much in it of which I’m proud.

riselikelionsThe second tome slated for a one-way trip to Pulptown is my tale of the Mirror Universe revolution, Rise Like Lions. This is the novel that earned the UnrealitySF “Best Story of the Year” award in 2011 and spent two months on the Locus Bestsellers list in early 2012. It represents the culmination of multiple story arcs I had set into motion in the Mirror Universe, and it will serve as the setup for my upcoming Section 31 novel, Disavowed, coming in November 2014.

One of the perks of being an author is that when one’s books are scheduled to be remaindered, one is often given the opportunity to purchase the remaining copies of the work at a significant discount. And in this case I am sorely tempted.

The catch is that remaindered titles are sold only in cartons of 48 copies each. This makes it a slightly costly proposition even with the major savings Simon & Schuster has offered me. Another concern is that I really have nowhere to store that many surplus copies of books that, historically, have seen little demand through my online store. I hate to let them fade away into that good night without a struggle, but I’m not sure I can justify the cost of stockpiling them, either.

Decisions, decisions.