Really underwhelming, along with Micheal Martin being the author, it's a definite pass.
Martin didn't impress me very much with Seize The Fire, but I'll give this one a try. I am a bit concerned though, since I haven't heard a lot of positive things about his other solo-efforts in the Earth-Romulan War series. But who knows.
To be fair, it's kind of hard to judge Martin's solo efforts in the
Romulan War duology because of extenuating circumstances.
Beneath the Raptor's Wing was written just around the time when Margaret Clark lost her job as
Star Trek editor; the editing turnover led to more errors than usual making it through the process. And
To Brave the Storm suddenly had to try to encompass two books' worth of story in one, because Pocket cut the series back from a trilogy to a duology.
I don't think Martin's awful, but I also don't think he's as strong a writer as others. His characters are a little stiff--dialogue is not his strong suit. But his stories are fun, and his storytelling ambition is admirable.
(Honestly, the thing that bugs me most about Martin is incredibly minor and subjective: I really hated that he put the United Earth Prime Minister's office on the Place de la Concorde, future site of the Federation's capitol building, and that he started calling the United Earth
Daedalus-class ships "U.S.S.
Whatever." I viewed it as conflating United Earth and the Federation. Like I said, really minor, but it bugged me.)
