Dayton Ward’s Star Trek: The Next Generation — Pliable Truths is a highly enjoyable prequel to Deep Space Nine, full of winking nods to the long-running Star Trek literary continuity that sadly ended a few years ago.
 
After many years of books that continued the stories of the shows beyond their previous ends on screen — but in ways that couldn’t be reconciled with the new Star Trek canon being created on Paramount+ — Simon & Schuster have spent the last few years dabbling back in episodic Star Trek books set during the run of the series. I say dabbling, because…well, this was the first Star Trek novel in a while — and it was actually published all the way back in May, so here’s mea culpa from me!
 
I am very late getting around to reviewing Pliable Truths. And that’s not because the book is in any way bad – it’s actually really good, and exactly my kind of Star Trek novel that expands on what we already know in interesting ways and adds context to some of the important adventures we saw on screen.
 
It’s been really difficult for me to get excited about Star Trek novels lately, because I think I am responding to the total lack of enthusiasm for this line of novels from Simon & Schuster. The book market is evolving, as is the Star Trek fan community, and so this isn’t a cry for the good old 1990s when the publisher was putting out two Star Trek novels every month — or even the era when I was religiously purchasing every Star Trek novel and consuming them immediately of the 2000s and 2010s.
 
But due to the turmoil of Simon & Schuster’s corporate status, the turmoil of COVID, and presumably a slowdown in sales of Star Trek novels, the publishing line has slowed to a crawl.
 

In 2023, Simon & Schuster published just two Star Trek novels for adults. This year, they’ve doubled that number to four. So far, there are two books on the schedule for the first half of 2025. Over three years, the company will have published one fewer than in the entirety of 2017!

While the trend of the number of books being published has severely diminished, that’s not the worst problem: the Star Trek book line is completely unfocused. Star Trek: Strange New Worlds is the most popular Star Trek show on television and has been out for three years. It has just one Star Trek novel currently in print (and three more on the way – but it took ‘em long enough…). Star Trek: Picard has only gotten a handful of novels, and none that tie into the widely-admired third season, nearly 18 months after it ended.

Meanwhile, there’s no sense that the company is committing to publishing books set during the television run of past Star Trek series. Pliable Truths is the third book to dabble in returning to the in-series run of the 1990s Star Trek shows, after Shadows Have Offended in 2021, and Revenant in 2022.

I don’t think I need to be belabor the point, but it’s hard to get excited about a Star Trek product line that the publisher doesn’t feel particularly excited about. So, with my apologies for being so late reviewing Pliable Truths — let’s actually get to talking about the book.

I really liked Pliable Truths. Set immediately before the events of “Emissary,” the novel covers the Enterprise-D’s mission to support the Bajorans in the immediate aftermath of the Cardassian withdrawal, where we catch up with the ship from Sisko’s perspective in the opening scenes of the Deep Space Nine pilot.

It’s fun to get the Next Generation crew ostensibly inhabiting a Deep Space Nine story, with many crossover moments for characters we know were already on Bajor or Deep Space 9 by the time Sisko arrived.

It’s also very interesting to dive more deeply into the Cardassian withdrawal of Bajor and get to see more on the ground, more about the Bajoran and Cardassian politics of the time, and see the immediate aftermath of the Bajoran Occupation.

This story deepens my appreciation for the difficulty of the situation Sisko was walking into when he assumed command of Deep Space 9, and how close everything had been to completely falling apart on the planet and in the shaky relationship between Bajor and Cardassia Prime.

And because of when this story is set — not just in the lead up to “Emissary”, but also closely following the events of “Chain of Command” — the book helps to fill in the gaps of how Picard overcame his ordeal at the hands of Gul Madred.

Being forced to confront the Cardassians again — and (spoiler alert) Madred in particular — was really interesting, and the way the story resolves felt like a satisfying way of putting Picard’s experiences in “Chain of Command” behind him to continue on with his life as he did during the series.

I always enjoy the way Dayton Ward tells a story, and Pliable Truths is no exception. In addition to the core meat of the story about the Cardassian withdrawal from Bajor, there are plenty of characters, ships, and references that will make longtime legacy Star Trek fans happy — and please both fans of the Alex Kurtzman era of Star Trek and fans of the previous Star Trek literary continuity.

I recently decided to create a dedicated bookshelf for the literary continuity stories, and this book could either be filed there or on the other shelves with the books that fit the on-screen continuity. I really liked that honoring of the book line’s history, and as a die-hard fan of those stories, always hope for more.

Pliable Truths fills an important gap in the Star Trek continuity and gives us fun and interesting crossovers between the Next Generation and Deep Space Nine characters right from the height of the series. If you’re like me and very behind on your Star Trek reading and looking to catch up, this is an easy read and highly recommended.

Star Trek: The Next Generation — Pliable Truths is in stores now.