As others say, yes, it's flawed, as it was written before Carey had a chance to get to know the characters as aired. But it's still relatively true to the ideas, tone, atmosphere. And on its own, it's a pretty darn good story. "What makes life worth living?" is a question that we'll never be done answering. And these first two Star Trek series have ideas I'll never get tired of exploring.
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Second read. Have decided to read at least the set of TNG books that my brother gave me. In order, with some care. So, specifically, this is the one in which they also examined the idea of what it means to truly understand what another is feeling, thinking. To that end Picard goes into an isolation chamber, and Geordi reveals that his enhanced vision enables him to see more readily than most how alive Data is.

Riker and Troi's r'ship is being developed, rather poorly I think. Riker doesn't believe in Data as more than a machine but learns otherwise, of course. Riker is unsure of his role as a first officer and seems weird about it. Riker believes in the sanctity of life at all costs. Many other characters are given their scenes and are drawn well enough.

Picard does not come to life for me. He roars, experiences rage, huffs... I just don't normally think of those words when I think of Picard.

F/SF

This felt like an extremely lightweight novel. There just wasn't much in it to me because it spent so much time establishing the characters. It was interesting to see a crew which hadn't gelled yet, and I liked that aspect of it. Still, ultimately it felt like an episode of the show that had been stretched to give insight into more character thoughts - fine, but nothing to write home about.

I saw this sitting on my Kindle and decided to give it a shot. I guess I can blame most of the character differentiation on the age of the book, and the fact that they were dealing with season one characters. Still, it gave me the feeling that the author just didn't "get it" in parts. Oh, and warp 13? Hrm.... ( )

Totally unexpected from a `Star Trek'-series, this story actually triggers the reader to think about the euthanasia and the very definitions of the concepts of life and death.

Entertaining read, but no world-class literature. :-) ( )

No one sounds like themselves and Riker's a dick. Nice. ( )

I don't usually expect much from novels continuing/accompanying a tv series. But still I often can't resist and usually it's nice entertainment for in-between "heavier" reading.

This book was entertaining and thought-provoking at the same time. It raises the question of what defines life as such and whether euthanasia is the right choice or not.

Highly recommended for Star Trek fans. ( )

This is an interesting book to read for the known series of Star Trek: The Next Generation, giving the reader another side of the story, in regards of depths, with individual thoughts of the characters involve, unlike watching it on tv.

It started slow at first, with the akwardsness among the shipmates, due to being new to each others but work perfectly well together. This book mostly revolved around the relationships between Riker, Data and La Forge with each other and the rest of the main crew, like Picard, Troi, the Crushers, etc. Trying to understand each other,

A flash back showed, in the year 1995 when a mysterious entity destroyed a Russian aircraft leaving no trace of it behind. The Enterprise deck's crew has their peeve about the other like Riker with Data, who just literally saw him only as a machine, not alive; and every childlike conversation Data came out with annoyed Riker. Riker and Troi had to face each other as if they have no romantical history between them. La Forge felt more like a computer than human due to the way people expect him to give them answers, through his seeing visor,

They've encountered a strange entity that is giving Troi living nightmares because she could hear their thoughts and it's draining her fast. The entity also brought along ghosts that appear around the hallways and decks, as it attacked the Enterprise. Turned out the entity was after everybody's life essence to trap it within itself, and destroying the rest of the physical bodies and ship in the process. This brought up the question of weather to destroy it, or otherwise. ( )