Well of all the Star Trek books I've ever read this was certainly one. ;-)
Okay I tease. In all seriousness though this is a book that while it is well executed, and deftly paced, ultimately falls a bit short for me in the promise inherent in having two such singular characters as Kirk and Seven meet. I'll attempt to break down the good, the okay, and the "meh", in rough order.
The opening is tight. Moves along quickly and we are given a good plausible reason for why Kirk ends up taking the lead over the person who's job it is supposed to be to negotiate with these people.
Seven's entrance is very striking. If I were Jeri Ryan I would be jealous that I never got an entrance moment half this good in the show.
The flash back (forward?) is also well done. I must confess that I was half expecting the person in the coffin to be Seven.
The interaction between Seven and the crew was well written. If this was Seven earlier in her return to humanity I think she would have been haughtier and more condescending whereas by this point she has learned the value of humanity both her own and as a group.
We start to come into problems with the trope of Officious Official is Officious. I appreciate that Mr. Cox went out of his way to give Santiago a plausible reason for his near monomania regarding wanting to exploit Seven's knowledge of the future. But after a while when one has seen this story repeated so many times in Trek, there reaches a point where a solid gold statue of Elvis made by intelligent hamsters from the future is still just another damned Elvis statue. In other words quality does not necessarily trump the contempt bred by familiarity. Also the aid being a spy was frankly just a bit too obvious.
Then there is the problem of having the Orions be the "bad guys". While I do appreciate the attempts that have been made to try and flesh them out and make them more than caricatures both here and in Mr. Bennet's Enterprise novel, sadly to a great extent all such efforts end up failing for me, simply because I just don't think there's enough there to support the fleshing out. Orion females are generally haughty and violently emotionally unstable, even the ones that the author is careful to keep away from the stereotypical sex kitten trope, and the men are violent brutish thugs. So far there has been exactly one instance of someone managing to use the Orions in a way that engaged my interest and managed to transcend the stereotypes. There may come another one but I doubt if it will be happening any time soon.
As for the idea of Kirk and company revisiting a small selection of past adventures, well that part while novel was frankly a bit disappointingly shallow, the return to Cheron being the notable exception. I thought that Mr. Cox did an excellent job going into greater depth showing what kind of a deeply diseased society could breed such long lived hatred over such a petty difference.
The section prior with the return to Vaalworld was kind of... there. Seven being forced to confront her lingering desire to "belong" was interesting, but hardly original.
Then finally there was Sarpeidon and the reveal as to who the prime mover behind all this was. It felt arbitrary and forced. I did not care about this person and their struggle and quite frankly the reasoning given for sending Seven on this chase through time and space just really did not work for me. I did however find it interesting that the Yesterday duology has been returned to the fold of modern novel continuity. That honestly caught me by surprise. I had thought maybe at best a veiled reference to the novels, that those in the know would get and those not in the know could ignore.
Ultimately this is a novel that falls into what I call the "Serviceable" category. It's not off type, but it is a touch simplistic and while well told doesn't really feel like it's about any thing of depth. Bottom line while I'm not sorry I read it, I certainly would not want to read another one like it any time soon.
