Star Trek: Deep Space Nine's Elim Garak was always a puzzle. One week he's providing the comic relief, zinging Dr. Bashir with one-liners or taunting Gul Dukat with an insult and a lingering smile, the next week he's killing a Vorta efficiently and without remorse, a glimmer of his former life in the shadowy Obsidian Order. Dynamically played by Andrew J. Robinson, Garak was a character who showed glimpses of a mysterious past with a mere look or retort. The story of DS9 always drove relentlessly forward, never allowing us pause to explore the intricate history of this enigmatic character.

Now, thanks to Pocket Books, we can fill in the gaps and enter all those doors to Garak's past left tantalizingly ajar throughout DS9's seven-year run. "Star Trek: Deep Space Nine - A Stitch in Time," written by Robinson himself, takes us deep into Garak's life and is not only a good Star Trek novel, but a good novel, period.

Told by Garak in the first person as a series of diary entries and letters to Dr. Bashir, Robinson deftly moves from distant past to recent past and into the present. At the beginning of the book, Garak lives amongst the ruins of Cardassia following the Dominion War. His planet has been shattered, and the Cardassian people, defeated and in turmoil, struggle to rebuild their world. The Cardassian alliance with the Dominion, and the subsequent defeat of the Dominion has made the Cardassians pariahs in the Alpha Quadrant, despite the fact that a Cardassian revolt hastened the end of the war.

The first story thread follows Garak in the present as he navigates the dangerous waters of a defeated state trying to regain its once-mighty status. Here he recounts the events that led him to this place in his life. As a youth, he is sent to the Bamarren Institute for State Intelligence, the Cardassian equivalent of a West Point for intelligence operatives, and his long odyssey begins, accounting for the second story thread. As he recounts his life, Garak also thinks back to his days on the Deep Space Nine station after the Cardassian Occupation yet before the Dominion War, making for a third story thread.

Often, novels with multiple threads (in this case three different eras) tend to come across unevenly, with one thread overpowering the others, but Robinson does a nice job of keeping each thread active and engaging, avoiding doldrums so that readers don't skim ahead to the next chapter.

Also compelling is Robinson's unflinching approach to his character. Rather than making Garak the victim of circumstance, or portraying him heroically, Robinson writes Garak as a real character with flaws. Garak lives in a universe where characters quite often don't get what they deserve, a universe where shades of gray obscure the formulaic notion of black and white, good or evil.

What makes "A Stitch in Time" outstanding in the paperback science-fiction landscape is what makes the best Star Trek episodes exciting; with a few cosmetic changes, the story could take place on Earth in any era where a military state grows in power and ultimately meets devastating defeat. The story of Cardassia seen through Garak's eyes could just as easily be Nazi Germany or the Soviet Union, and the Obsidian Order could just as easily be the KGB, the SS or even the CIA in its darker moments.

One of the reasons that Star Trek endures beyond mere pulp entertainment is the hint that these stories equal something larger; that while an extraterrestrial race may not be human, at their core are basic sentient emotions and values, reminding us that even in the most epic of stories, there are always people at their core. These people, human or not, make decisions based on emotional and political motivations, decisions which can affect millions, perhaps billions of beings. With these kinds of high stakes, Star Trek has been able to turn a cliche on its head and force us to re-examine it, and that's what Robinson has accomplished as well.

"Star Trek: Deep Space Nine - A Stitch in Time" is in bookstores now.