I particularly enjoyed the first season of Discovery, so when I saw the two prequel novels in the local library I grabbed them. This, the first, I have mixed feelings about. Oh, don't get me wrong. I liked it. There were a number of appealing things here. I particularly liked how Saru was fleshed out a little more, and I liked the ongoing confrontation between Georgiou and Pike. The debate between them about orders and principles, and how far one should go in the pursuit thereof, is a debate that I never fail to find fascinating whenever I come across it. I'm far more on Georgiou's side here, but the thing is: Pike isn't wrong, exactly. Both captains have valid points, and that's what makes this sort of conflict endlessly interesting to me.

Unfortunately, what is not endlessly interesting to me, and what never has been, is the trope of individuals being tested by a higher power of some description, as happens to Burnham and Spock. I was mildly interested in their relationship, but the testing trope, as I call it, is something I always, always, find irritating and a little tedious, and Mack doesn't change my mind in this particular iteration. That storyline dragged for me, and I was always glad to get back to the rest of the book.

Finally, I didn't for one minute buy that a ship abandoned for nine million years would still be in working order. Hell, I didn't believe it for one nanosecond. That piece of silliness should have been scaled way back long before this went to the printer.