The Captain's Table: The Mist

Easily my favorite of the first three novels in the Captain's Table series (sorry, haven't read the final three yet).
Dean Wesley Smith goes on my watch list for Star Trek fiction. The characterizations are seamless without being handled with clumsy exposition - and the command of language is just at the reading level I enjoy most. Never clunky and always clear with just the right level of sophistication.
The dialog is very good - so good, in fact, that I half believe the briefly alluded claim that the author himself may have spent some years working in a tavern.
The Mist is a great concept in a series that so often has to introduce a major threat at a regular pace - without the vehicle of the story seeming hokey and stale - an especially show more challenging thing in the DS9 setting since it is, for all intents and purposes, stationary in space.
I'm not going to go into spoiler territory - but I will say that the story carries a bit of a piracy vibe, but on a large and original scale. Originality, in the STU, isn't an easy thing to pull off - and I think it was accomplished here. I'll admit, however, that I'm not as well versed in the entire run of the series as I should be to make such a claim. It was original to me.
****1/2 show less

Mildly enjoyable, but ironically the interruptions that pepper Sisko's telling of the story eventually started to bother me as much as they bothered the characters listening to it in the book. Between them, those interruptions and the absurdly long denouement - as Kathryn Janeway gives a rambling stream-of-consciousness description of how she walked into a pub - mean the actual story just isn't that substantial.

Mildly enjoyable, but ironically the interruptions that pepper Sisko's telling of the story eventually started to bother me as much as they bothered the characters listening to it in the book. Between them, those interruptions and the absurdly long denouement - as Kathryn Janeway gives a rambling stream-of-consciousness description of how she walked into a pub - mean the actual story just isn't that substantial.

This is the third book in the series and the third one I have read. The concept behind the series is that a unique bar spanning space and time exists where the only two requirements are that patrons are or have been a Captain and that they tell some type of tale of one of their exploits. The location seems to be a combination of the Room of Requirements and a holodeck. In this setting each Captain gets conned into spinning their yarn. The tales are mostly told in the first person with appropriate interruptions that would be expected when telling a story in a public setting. An excellent miniseries for the Star Trek fan.

PLOT OR PREMISE:
This is the third in the series dealing with the bar called "The Captain's Table", a bar only for Captains across time and space. Sisko is in need of some rest, so he visits Bajor and finds the bar. And finds that the interesting aspect of the bar is that everyone gets to tell a tale. His tale is of a group known as The Mist. Centuries before, the Mist shifted themselves and their worlds out of normal space into a phased sub-space. Having left normal space behind, they have been excluded from the trials and tribulations of the Federation, the Klingon Empire, the Romulans and the Cardassians. However, they lure Sisko into their space to help them fight an apparent revolt by subversives who are going to phase-shift DS9 and show more use it in Mist space to attack other worlds.
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WHAT I LIKED:
The story is interesting enough, particularly some of the new-to-the-Star-Trek-universe characters, and good involvement of the Klingons.
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WHAT I DIDN'T LIKE:
The story jumps back to "normal" time too often to show the bar, when the story Sisko is telling is far more interesting. The characters and Klingon involvement are good, but are either not well-integrated in the main plot or just not developed enough. Plus, Kira comes off as some cartoonish clone of her real character.
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BOTTOM-LINE:
Worth a read but not a "must read"
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DISCLOSURE:
I received no compensation, not even a free copy, in exchange for this review. I am not personal friends with the authors, but I do follow her on social media. show less

Captain Sisko from Deep Space Nine visits the Captains Table and tells the tale of his visit to Mist space. It's the tale of a part of space inside space. I enjoyed the tale.

Sisko stumbles into The Captain's Table. There he tells the story of his encounter with the Mist. Sotugh interjects with his feeling about what happened. There is an alien whose species places great value on stories.