I voted above average on this one. I often have mixed feelings about Dayton Ward's work. On the one hand, I think he comes up with some of the most interesting ideas and premises of any of the current authors. On the other hand, there's something about his pacing and writing style that often gets in the way of my enjoyment of his stories. In this case, I was pleased that story was so interesting that I either didn't notice the usual issues I have with his style or perhaps they were not as prominent as they have been in some of his other work. Regardless, I very much enjoyed this one.
A few things I would have liked to have seen, but didn't, however. As at least one other person has noted, the alternate Tasha Yar was underserved. While I sort of like the idea that she's just there (kind of like Wesley Crusher was present in one or two of the timelines in "Parallels" without it being remarked upon), it also seems like if a character like Yar is going to show up, who we really didn't see all that much of on the show, it would be nice for her to play a larger part in the story. Or, at least we could have found out how she survived in that timeline.
Which brings me to a second thing - we really didn't learn too much about the intriguing differences in the timelines. While I don't think we needed to know everything, it would have been nice to get more than we got. For example, why did Beverly Crusher stay at Starfleet Medical instead of returning to the
Enterprise? Might have been interesting to see her and Pulaski talk about some of the events of seasons three and four, or Pulaski filling her in on how she's been watching Wesley grow up in Beverly's absence. Could have been nice to see Picard have a conversation with Riker in which he's able to reassure Riker that he's every bit the captain that Picard himself was. Really, the biggest bit of info about the timeline differences we got was Picard's fate, which would have been easy enough to guess.
Finally, someone pointed out earlier the the TV crew of the
Enterprise E and the litverse crew don't really interact much in this novel. This is something that seems to happen in many of the recent novels. I did like that Chen had a fairly large role, but she is probably the best fleshed out of the current litverse original characters. Perhaps Smrhova could have been part of the away team, and we could have seen her helping Worf to figure out strategy. Certainly adding at least one of the litverse characters to Picard's "inner circle" is something that needs to happen soon.
Sort of looks like I'm complaining a lot, but I really did enjoy the book. It's just that I think it fell a bit short of its potential. Still, a very solid entry, and I liked it more than some of Ward's other books.
I was expecting Picard to leave Riker with a sealed file with directions to the Caeliar planet and instructions to open if and only if the Borg ever arrived in force.
This is a great idea which I wish Dayton Ward had thought of!
