I get the impression from the synopsis that the book is set before Georgiou's appearance in season 2.
And it’s been said from the start that 31, as a series, is meant to feature Georgiou, so it seems that something is going to happen to send her back to the 23rd century - we’ll have to see how Discovery’s third season plays out. But this novel seems set between Georgiou’s departure from Qo’nos (and the deleted scene of 31 recruiting her) and her appearing there to rescue L’Rell and Tyler from Kol’sha, prior to the hunt for Spock. At least that’s my takeaway on what we know so far.
Makes sense. She has to be brought up to speed on things she's missed about Prime'verse cultures, tech, and history. Things that her predecessors as Terran Emperor might have redacted/erased from the Defiant Files before she assumed that throne (and yet would still be "public record" stuff in the Prime'verse). And there should be time for her to have misadventures of her own.
And here is said cover! Audible link is also finally live, and is added to my list of preorder links.
I liked what the Enterprise episode did with their animated Terran Empire logo, had it spinning in the opposite direction, meaning the sun would rise in the west and set in the east. I like to imagine that at some point in the distant past, a critical decision was made by a tribe of cavemen deciding to travel in the direction of sunrise, and that spiralled to the point that both universes developed to the points they did.
That’s been irritating me since the first episode of the Mirror arc on Discovery. It’s not like they know they’re the mirror of the prime universe (Lorca specifically call his universe “the real world”!), and the idea that Earth’s land masses are actually backwards is just nonsense, and I’m someone who totally accepted the idea that mirror-humans are photosensitive because Burnham was literally correct about natural light working differently in their universe.
Although in season 2 Georgiou does refer to her universe as the Mirror Universe and our universe as the Prime Universe.
I really wish they hadn't done that -- made "Mirror Universe" the term for it in-story, which it never was before (it was just "the alternate universe" on DS9).
I believe it follows Georigio after she was recruited by Section 31 at the end of Season 1, but before her first appearance in Season 2.
Except that was not nomenclature used in-story prior to DSC, as I said. The actual characters never called it anything but a parallel or alternate universe. The "Mirror" references came only from the episode titles, and of course the characters within the stories should not be aware of the episode titles. (This is Star Trek, not Green Acres.)
As already mentioned, neither terms were used in-story prior to Georgiou saying them. Indeed, all other times the Mirror Universe was mentioned in-story on Disco, they called it the Terran Universe. It's only Georgiou who called it the Mirror Universe, which makes it all the weirder in that scene that Pike seemed to know what she was talking about. And it's extremely weird that the only person to speak "Prime Universe" on screen is the one character who isn't even from the Prime Universe. Logically, one should consider their own native universe to be their "prime universe," not what is from their perspective an alternate one. Especially since we have no indication anyone else from the Prime Universe even calls it Prime. Hell, the closest we got to previously having the term Prime Universe used in-story was a Voyager novel, which heavily implied that was exclusively a Krenim term. So, for some weird reason, Georgiou considers her own native universe to be a mirror universe, and calls an alternate universe the Prime Universe, despite the fact no one else calls either universe by either name.
Basically this is what happens when today’s crop of Hollywood screenwriters incestuously use only Star Trek as the sole point-of-reference for even more Star Trek, and fail to think the worldbuilding through any further than what they’re already complacently familiar with. Another big example of this would be that dumb list of “MOST DECORATED STARFLEET CAPTAINS” seen in DSC season one, which naturally only showed captains that the REAL-LIFE AUDIENCE would already know, not any additional “offscreen” captains who surely would exist out there in a universe as big as Star Trek’s. (And note that I state all of the above as a huge Discovery-fan, too.)
Which is also a really annoying usage, because "Terran" just means "from or of Earth" and has routinely been used in Trek and other SF to refer to Earth people or things in the Prime universe. So DSC's use of it as if it were exclusive to Mirror humans makes no sense.
Maybe Section 31 invented the terms and she uses them irregardless of whether she thinks this reality is the "main" one? A.) As I recall, don't the mirror universe humans only call themselves "Terrans" and B.) "Terran universe" could be short for "Terran Empire universe."