Pliable Truths

Star Trek: The Next Generation

De: Dayton Ward

Narrado por: Robert Petkoff

A thrilling new Star Trek: The Next Generation and Deep Space Nine adventure from New York Times bestselling author Dayton Ward!

2369: Shortly after Starfleet thwarts a Cardassian attack on a Federation star system, the Cardassian government orders an end to its fifty-year occupation of the planet Bajor. As a result, a newly installed Bajoran government requests immediate assistance from the Federation to mediate how the withdrawal will proceed and what recompense, if any, Bajorans are owed from their brutal oppressors. Captain Jean-Luc Picard is ordered by Starfleet Command to oversee these tense negotiations on Terok Nor, the massive Cardassian space station still orbiting Bajor, even as he still deals with his own recent trauma as a prisoner held and tortured by a Cardassian interrogator.

As these critical peace talks get underway, Ensign Ro Laren receives a call for help from a friend thought long dead, exposing an insidious secret from inside Cardassian space. Now, Picard and the crew of the Starship Enterprise must act to prevent an interstellar incident from reigniting deadly hostilities between the Federation and the Cardassians, and shattering any hope of justice for the Bajoran people…

TM & © 2023 CBS Studios Inc. Star Trek and related marks and logos are trademarks of CBS Studios Inc. All Rights Reserved.

©2024 Dayton Ward (P)2024 Simon & Schuster Audio

Average story

I felt most of the plot was just expanding on the information between tng and ds9. Didn’t like how it brought Kai Opaka into the story as it was stated she had never been to the station on DS9. The actual story about the camp and activities below were handled quite well.

Deep Space Nine episode #0

I was surprised this is Dayton Ward’s first Star Trek novel actually set during TNG or DS9. He is a mainstay Trek author and he absolutely nails the structure and feel of both series. Pliable Truths genuinely does feel like a lost episode, maybe more than any other Trek novel I’ve encountered. Each section felt appropriate to the characters’ respective series and seeing the connective tissue between TNG and DS9 explored was very satisfying. Now that a lot of this lore will (hopefully) be continuing with Star Trek: Legacy someday, filling in gaps in the storylines of existing series seems like the best place for new novels. Just keep em coming 🖖

The readers impersonations of the characters is spot on!

It felt like the actual characters in the book were talking. The readers impersonations were perfect. Dialect, accent, vocal inflections were all perfect. Highly recommend this book to any Star Trek TNG/DS9 fan!!!

A Wonderful Bridge!

A wonderful bridge between The Next Generation and Deep Space Nine. A very engaging story! Petkoff reads the characters so well, which aids in visualization.

Linking to series together

A must listen for any Next Generation or Deep space nine fan. This book links The Next Generation to the beginning of Deep Space Nine.

Another amazing story, as expected from such an author.

Should have been 4x longer. Very fun adventure setting up the premise of DS9, and whew.. what an ending.

🤣🖖🏼💚

Great link between TNG and DS9

This a well told story of the time between TNG and DS9. The characters are well written and enjoyable

Overall, decent but hampered by some choices

I’m a bit on the fence with this one, which I did end up enjoying, but found had a couple of weaknesses that repeated for me throughout the experience.

The good was the overall narrative set-up and how it played out: Picard facing off with his former torturer, the bridging of the gap between TNG and DS9 prior to Enterprise arriving with Ben Sisko, and a more in-depth picture of what it was like when Cardassia was forced to withdraw from Bajor—and giving me more of an understanding of why they left, which had to do with them flubbing the Minos Korva thing back in "Chain of Command." All of that, I enjoyed, and I liked seeing the Enterprise Crew spread out and doing their thing in multiple places at one time: Data, Geordi, and O’Brien on the station trying to get it running, Picard and Troi handling the diplomacy between Cardassians and Bajorans, Crusher and Keiko on the planet dealing with a medical outbreak, and Riker, Worf, and Ro on the Enterprise, chasing down something that might—or might not—make all the difference in whether or not this peace lasts. Sabotage, attempted assassinations, explosions, bad-faith diplomacy… it all has a "there are so many balls in the air, and we can’t afford to let any of them drop" whole to it.

The less-good comes down to a couple of repeating patterns, and a few characterization issues. The first repeating pattern was the "hey, remember when?"s tossed in throughout the telling of this story. It felt like Crusher, Picard, Geordi and Riker seemed to like nothing more than to reminisce (often while not paying attention to what was happening in front of them) about previous episodes. Multiple times, characters had to say, "sorry, I wasn’t paying attention" and… that felt off for these competent, focused people. The second repeating pattern was Ro. She was… softer, gentler, had some "as you know, Commander Riker…" dialogs that were really stilted, and—I realize this might seem nitpicky and I’ll own that—I can’t forsee an instance where Ro Laren allows herself to get sniffly or cry in front of the entire Bridge. I just… can’t. Also and also nitpicky, for some reason, the author decided not to have her in the pilot’s seat, but rather the Ops station and there was this whole clunky "Picard likes people cross-trained" and it felt like a Chekov’s Gun that never went off. I kept waiting for the payoff for Ro not being where she always was, and… nope.

Lastly, I don’t know why Robert Petkoff has the monopoly on performing these books, but while I don’t mind most of his attempts at the men—he does an admirable Garak, for one—when he performs the women it’s… oof. Kira comes off like a teenager? Ro sounds soft rather than the iron she usually has. I’m starting to reconsider whether or not to keep listening to these books if he’s performing them, which is frustrating, as I want to enjoy them more than I have been, and a lot of that comes down to his performance of the women of Trek.

Dayton Ward + Robert Petkoff = awesome

Excellent gap filler between TNG and DS9, as always very well delivered by R Petkoff

good book

it was a bit allow at times but overall i really enjoyed learning how ds9 was crewed. Cisco is not in it but a lot of the other chara are.