This isn't great. I will say I appreciated that it zipped along at pace, and I very much enjoyed Dr. McCoy and the guest doctor Davis, but it's full of plot holes. (How does the virus spread so instantaneously between species? How do the people of Perry's Planet not see violence, until the end confrontation when Ami miraculously does? How is Scotty's accent so inconsistent?)

The curious thing about it is the prose, though. It seems to change a few chapters in. Close to the beginning, I wondered if I'd stumbled into a children's book by mistake - very simple sentences, and a strong tendency to short and uncomplicated words. By the end of the book the phrasing and vocabulary seemed far more sophisticated. I don't know if there was a change in editor partway through, or if someone else had input on the first few chapters in some way, but the difference caught my attention.