Going into this book, I was really apprehensive. I wasn't a fan of the show Star Trek Discovery, and I didn't even stay long enough to get to the "mirror universe" storyline in the first season. However, I had read JJM's previous Discovery novel, "The Enterprise War", and I thoroughly enjoyed it, and I've enjoyed every other of his books that I've read, so I hoped that Miller would write a good book here.
And he DID!
One thing that this book(and really all of JJM's books, but this is the best example) does is it fills in the knowledge for the reader if they haven't watched the show. There were several times, where information that would only be known through the show was explained and it wasn't done through exposition dumps, but rather was written in such a way that it felt natural and fitting in the story. As someone who was a little confused going into the book, this greatly helped me.
Another thing that this book did well was take a "anti-hero" protagonist in Phillipa Georgiou and make her the lead of the book. While just about the entire book is from her perspective, the reader is able to realize just what an evil person she is and that she is not a true "hero", but is interesting to follow.
The plot of the book is just fantastic. It had a few "Guardians of the Galaxy" vibes at the beginning, but also added some classic Star Trek vibes throughout, as well as some excellent Space Opera themes, that usually aren't used in Star Trek, but work very well here.
The most surprising part of this book, for me, is that the middle was the strongest part of the book. Normally, a book's opening or ending are the best, and the middle is usually just filler. That wasn't the case here, as I was on the edge of my seat throughout the middle portion of the book. That isn't to say that the beginning and end were lacking anything in particular, but the middle was just so interesting that I had to keep reading.
I quite enjoyed the cast of characters. Sean Finnigan made me laugh throughout, and he worked as the comic relief of the book. I'm not a fan of the Dax character(in any of it's iterations), but the character served a great purpose here and was actually quite fun to read. Leland was your run of the mill basic Section 31 character, and I was ok with some basic characteristics from him. I do feel that Miller could have used Cornwell and Michael Burnham a little bit more, but I suspect that the editors and show writers wanted to keep them a little more locked down.
One thing that JJM has done in all of his books that I appreciate is add some sort of depth. In Knight Errant, he had depth about Communism and its many forms, while Kenobi and A New Dawn dealt with what one person can accomplish, while Takedown dealt with Cold War themes. This book was chock full of discussions, themes, and references to classic empires, political and military leaders, and conquests. That was unusual in most for a Star Trek book, but I loved it. That's the real strong point of the book.
Overall, this is a solid book. I have never had a transformation of what I expected to get to what I got in quite a while. I enjoyed it even more than JJM's "The Enterprise War", but less than his main Star Wars books and his early Star Trek books. But, don't let that stop you from getting it, because I truly did love it. 9.2 out of 10! Great job John!
By the way, I caught that Lord of the Rings reference. Very sly.
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