This book is a collection of short stories about the Icononclasts Gateways, i.e. someon's attempt to write anichients and StarGates into the Star Trek world. returnreturnThe Gateways "series" is actually an interesting idea of a collection of themes which lie into other series. Reading the whole series is not necessary, but reading the portion that is the sequal of the first book from "TOS" word makes me want to circle back and read the rest. This book is the "climax" of the others. Each other book in this series is one story that ends with a "to be continued" like context, adn then finishes in this book. However the stories don't intermingle even in this book so you can just pick and choose what you like. returnreturnI am currently reading the DS9 relaunch, and as such had read "Demons of Air and Darkness" and only had the back story to read DeCandido's DS9 story completely. I felt that his story was too short and fast paste to fit where it did. He should have taken at least one whole book to finish the story. It starts with Kira in the ancient world of Bajor (before it was called bajor, likely equal to about 1200 A.D on Earth) and she included a great line about wanting a new tense of language to refer to items that happened in her personal past but where yet to happen in relation to the time/place which they are currently in. that transition was fast, but likely acceptable, the transition from there back to "modern" times at DS9 was ridiculous. The story failed to explain how it happened, why it happened, or anything else, then it just ended. returnreturnI do recommend the book and story line as a whole, but of the story which I was most interested in I was disappointed.