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. :-) ( )