Paula M. Block

I pretty much bounced off Block & Erdmann's previous DS9 novella, which had little of substance to say about Quark and also not terribly funny jokes. This, of course, makes it of a piece with the Quark/Ferengi television episodes it sought to emulate, which were hit-and-miss at best.* For me, the Ferengi episodes were at their worst when they totally took place within the Ferengi sphere (e.g., "Ferengi Love Songs," "Profit and Lace") and at their best when they involved some element of cultural clash, the intrusion of something from outside Ferengi society (e.g., "The Magnificent Ferengi," "Body Parts," "Little Green Men"). Quark can be a great character, but he is rarely so in the purely Ferengi episodes; the better Quark episodes are ones like "House of Quark" and "Profit and Loss" and "Business as Usual" where Quark is put into unusual situations that test who he is.

At first, Rules of Accusation is a lot like one of the worse Ferengi episodes. Quark has a new wacky scheme to get business; Rom will dedicate the new station bar as the Ferengi embassy to Bajor, and the big attraction will be the first showing of the original handwritten manuscript of the Ferengi Rules of Acquisition in decades. There's lots of stuff about Quark planning his scheme, and "funny" Ferengi names and customs and such; basically every Ferengi you ever saw on the show pops up.

This is all set up, but it goes on a bit too long before things finally go wrong, which is when the book kicks into gear; you will not be surprised to learn that the manuscript disappears. But, technically the bar is Ferengi soil so Starfleet's worst security chief, Jefferson Blackmer, has no authority to investigate... so Quark is forced to call upon Odo. Then things get fun, with a series of interviews and investigations and twists. It's fun to have Odo and Quark interacting, and I think I genuinely laughed a couple times.

This is good, enjoyable stuff... but then the novel fizzles out. Neither Odo nor Quark actually solve their own problems. Worst of all, the book doesn't really tell us anything about Quark: the best Quark episodes showed us something about his values. As happened too often in the early seasons of the show, this is just another wacky Quark scheme that goes horribly wrong and leaves everything exactly as it was before. What's disappointing is that I really enjoyed the second half of the book up until that ending; I feel like it wouldn't have required much rewriting to give this overly frothy novella the exact right amount of oomph.

Continuity Notes:

• The "Historian's Note" places this novel after The Missing and before Sacraments of Fire. The Missing takes place in late November 2385, but Sacraments of Fire actually takes place September through December 2385. Presumably this really means before part II of Sacraments, which is when the action jumps to December. The details kind of, but don't totally, line up. On the one hand, Odo is chilling on the station—he came aboard in The Missing and decided to stick around, so that fits. Additionally, Nog is away on assignment; he left in The Fall: The Poisoned Chalice, and doesn't come back until part II of Sacraments. (This is a bit of shame, because it makes Nog basically the only Ferengi character not to appear in the book; no reunion with his father.)
  
• On the other hand, Sisko is on the station (though he leaves with the Robinson partway through the story), but part II of Sacraments indicates he's been gone from DS9 for three months. Also, we're told Odo is waiting for Sisko to be free to take him to see the Changeling, but in fact Sisko doesn't say he'll be taking Odo until part II of Sacraments; at the time this is set, Odo knows the Federation found a Changeling-like life-form but doesn't know where it is or have an indication of how he'll get there.
  

Other Notes:

• When the characters need to check something on Ferenginar, it's decided Odo will do it because it's quicker for him to shapeshift into a spacegoing life-form than to take a shuttle... though then we're told Odo's form can "move at a rapid clip, just shy of warp speed"! So just a few decades to Ferenginar and back? One might infer the writers of this book don't know much about the Star Trek universe.
• Morn is in this... quite a lot actually. He technically doesn't speak, because the book uses indirect speech to describe what he says, but this goes on quite a bit, to the extent of whole conversations. I didn't like it; might follow the letter of law, but it breaks the spirit. When it comes to Morn, less is more. All of the Morn scenes could have been substantially trimmed.

* All Ferengi episodes are Quark episodes, but not all Quark episodes are Ferengi episodes, if you take my meaning.… (more)

This book finally brings an end to a depressing five-year gap without a Deep Space Nine book. Sure, we've had Deep rel="nofollow" target="_top">Space 9 books, but not Deep Space Nine books, if you see what I mean. The last one was a moving epic about one young man with a backdrop of an entire civilization's rise and fall, so what's this one about?

Well, it's about Quark trying to find some good porn.

Uh, okay.

Look, I know these novellas are trying to emulate a tv episode more than your average prose release from Simon & Schuster, and there are several Quark episodes this is clearly intended to remind you of, like "Who Mourns for Morn?" or "Rules of Acquisition." But the best Quark episodes were 1) actually funny, 2) had a somewhat serious core somewhere, and 3) were actually about Quark! That last one is where this all falls down for me. Quark tries to track down the rest of a Vulcan's Love Slave sequel, and goes to Wrigley's Pleasure Planet and battles with the Orion Syndicate, but basically none of his choices move the narrative at all. He gets himself out of no dangers, he does nothing clever or interesting. This is the dumb Quark of the worst DS9 episodes. At the end, we learn three other characters manipulated him and everything he did was pointless and then the book stops. He learns nothing, and we learn nothing. I was genuinely surprised when I got to the end: "That's it?" Like, that was all this book was for?

On screen, Armin Shimerman might have made you believe in this stuff (he could do that with weak scripts on screen), but on the page this all lies pretty flat. Quark can be shallow, but this is ridiculously shallow even for him; it's like the tv show never happened. Quark gets a dumb "comedy" sidekick, and I kept expecting some kind of reveal about him, but no, he's just a dumb "comedy" sidekick, and his role would have been much more interestingly taken by just about any other character.

Even at its short length, it's a joke that goes on too long.

Continuity Notes:

• We're told in this book that since the dedication of the new Deep Space 9, business at Quark's has been totally dead. So what about that massive crowd there to watch the new president's inauguration in Fire with Fire, huh?
• Thank goodness the book specifically mentioned Photons Be Free, because I never would have remembered that Broht was a screen character otherwise. (Here we learn he publishes basically every significant holoprogram seen on screen.)

Other Notes:

• Thankfully, for us font-watchers, the book maintains the DS9 relaunch logo, and doesn't Rotis Serifize it as the TNG relaunch logo was. If this book had a spine, it would look good on my shelf!
• One of the big problems about the Destiny time jump and then the lack of DS9 novels is that all of the characters seem to have been in stasis the entire time. It's been almost a decade since Quark and Ro first dated back in Mission: Gamma, and apparently their relationship has not progressed since.
• The writers keep confusing "vedek" with "vedic." Unlike all the errors in Absent Enemies, this one remains uncorrected eight years later.

… (more)

A fantastic companion to rewatching Star Trek: The Original Series, from the high quality stills from the show and behind-the-scenes production photos, to brief episode guides and "insider" info which add depth to viewing experience. All 80 episodes have their individual entries, interspersed with actor and production crew profiles, fandom history and merchandising.

I guess anybody who's watched and enjoyed a few episodes would find something of interest, and it's a beautiful coffee table book, though it's interest in minutae probably makes it more of a fan volume.… (more)