Kevin Dilmore

All good things must come to an end and so...I finished Purgatory's Key which is the final installment of the Legacies trilogy which you may recall me mentioning a few times (this post and this one just in case). Firstly, if you haven't read either Captain to Captain or Best Defense and you want to avoid spoilers then I'll say this: I very much enjoyed this trilogy and I think you should read it. If you want a bit of most likely spoiler-y info then stick around because I'm about to spill show more some beans. Okay, I hope all of those still reading are ready to be spoiled... To catch you up a bit, there was a device called the Transfer Key which was found by the original crew of the Enterprise when captained by Robert April. This device was concealed on board the starship and the secret of its existence and power was passed down from captain to captain (and to their First Officers). One of these keepers of the secret wanted to use the Key to travel to another universe and find her lost comrades. (Three cheers for Una!) The Romulans wanted the Key because they saw it as the ultimate tool to tip the balance of power in this universe to their favor. Meanwhile, the Klingons were meeting with the Federation (with the help of Ambassador Sarek) to discuss terms to ensure peace between the two entities at the behest of the Organians (pesky people). Those on the other side of the veil in the other universe must contend with conditions that are much different to the ones that govern our universe in their bid to return home. As you might have guessed from the title, the Key is a powerful tool that for those on the wrong side of it means a kind of hellish instrument. The conclusion to the trilogy was everything you'd want from a sci-fi adventure set in the Star Trek universe. If you're looking for a way to celebrate the 50th anniversary of this amazing show then you can't go wrong with picking up the Legacies series. 9/10 show less

Mind spinning.

Here I thought this was a simple story of rescue. With an alternate universe. And Romulan spies. And Klingon diplomats and warriors.

*That* would have been simple. But noooooo.... Star Trek can't be simple....

This rollercoaster turned into a mind bending back-and-forth from our Universe, to the other one, which turned out to be very complicated and less (or is that more?) than it seemed...

I enjoyed Dr. McCoy and his daughter, along with the collaboration of Joanna and Sarek - show more it was a nice way to play with McCoy's history, and fill it out. Now, on to the 50th anniversary Klingon trilogy.... show less

In this series, the Ward/Dilmore books are always more of a chore to get through than the Mack books are. I don't know if it's just that Mack is a more talented writer, or it's the fact that he works alone, or if it's completely due to the way Ward and Dilmore split up the characters. In any case, there are entire chapters of this book which can be skimmed, if not skipped--anything involving Jetanien and Nimbus III is worthless and shouldn't be bothered with; most of the stuff involving the show more U.S.S. Defiant is likewise irrelevant to the story (it's just a bone to people who know "The Tholian Web" and that ship's convoluted history with the mirror universe), and much of Diego Reyes' time spent on the Omari-Ekon is likewise skippable.

In fact, I wonder if the editorial cha-cha at Pocket is part of the problem. This book has tons of fat that needed to be trimmed. The introduction itself is needlessly wordy, spending a page or two to describe in excruciating detail the layout and environs of a cabin house, details which are irrelevant to plot and far, far exceed the dictates of atmosphere. It just becomes irritating, to the point where one mentally screams, "GET ON WITH IT!"

And so it is probably for the best that this is the penultimate book in the series; the storylines have been fairly played-out since about book 3 or 4.

This isn't to say there aren't a few interesting or exciting things that happen, but on the whole this book isn't worth the time it takes to read it. I'll probably pick up and read the last one, just for closure, but this is a very disappointing entry from a pair who have managed little but disappointing entries. show less

Substance: Short stories, each of which explores one of the "seven deadly sins". Settings include most of the Star Trek universe, but only one story (the last) utilizes the Classic Cast. All are interesting and reasonably well-written and on-point to the chosen sin, but none are outstanding. The last one (Sloth) is quite funny.

Pride: The First Peer, Dayton Ward & Kevin Dilmore; Greed: Reservoir Ferengi, David A. McIntee; Enby: The Slow Knife, James Swallow; Wrath: The Unhappy Ones, Keith R. show more A. DeCandido; Lust: Freedom Angel, Britta Burdett Dennison; Gluttony: Revenant, Marc D. Giller; Sloth: Work is Hard, Greg Cox. show less