Dark Mirror (1993)

Dark Mirror picks up where the Original Series episode #33 (Mirror,Mirror) left of,with the Next Generation crew of the Enterprise-D.

The Crew of the enterprise has a meeting set with the Lailaru a nomadic race, with an immense understanding of the galaxy. However when the crew arrives at the designated meeting area they find the Lailaru ready to depart in a near panic. Shortly after the Lailaru leave, "Hwii" a researcher that is studying hyperstrings,is panic stricken with the feeling that they are not in the "right place".The crew then finds an apparent duplicate of another crewmen tampering with the ship's computer, and realizes that they are in an alternate universe. After purusal of the ship's historical files, the crew finds a similar incident had occured about a century earlier to the crew of Kirk's Enterprise. As the crew tries to find a way back home they find that their arrival in the alternate universe is not a mistake, but a cunning plan by the alternate universe's starfleet to take over another universe, using Captain Picard's ship.

Alternates of Troi, Riker, Geordi, Picard and several others make apperances and the fate of Mirror Spock and Kirk is also found out. Dark Mirror is an excellent book especially if you are a fan of both the original series and The Next Generation. It is an excellent answer to the what if? question many fans may have had after watching the Original Series episode Mirror, Mirror.

Major Characters: Captain Picard, Deanna Troi,Geordi LaForge, Willam Riker, Data ( )

Another novel I ganked out of that lot from last March. I already owned it in paperback, but it never hurts to read a book twice-- especially when it's by Diane Duane. This might just be my favorite prose rendition of Star Trek's "mirror universe". Duane's worldbuilding skills make the realm actually seem like a real, (dis)functioning place, not just a vehicle for lesbian kissing, goatees, gratuitous violence, and comedy: most of the mirror counterparts of the tNG crew are twisted, genuinely frightening individuals, all the more so for how similar they are to our heroes in some ways, especially the counterparts of Picard and Troi. Plus Duane throws in opera, (seemingly) plausible science, and a dolphin scientist straight out of Deep Wizardry. What's not to like? The over-technobabbly conclusion, but that's about it. It's a shame that the TV show strayed so far from the original mirror universe premise, because I much prefer the approach taken here and in "Mirror, Mirror".

Not awful, but derivative and somewhat mechanical in style. Diane Duane has written some terrific Star Trek novels (Spock's World, The Romulan Way) but this isn't one of them. ( )

A fine Star Trek novel which revisits the brutally savage alternate universe of the TV show's "Mirror, Mirror". Here, the mirror universe discovers a way to come into our universe, and entrap the Enterprise into their own, where the alternate Enterprise, led by an evil Picard, plots to capture the ship and people it with their own counterparts, then send it back. The character exploration brought about by this story is developed to the fullest by the excellent Diane Duane, and beats William Shatner's later, convoluted "mirror universe" stories all hollow. ( )