Not as suspenseful as it should be

As with the first book, the authors spend the first quarter of the book filling us in on recent Trek history, both the events of the previous books, the Dominion War, and activities at Starfleet. It could probably have been done in half the pages and combined with more interesting content. After that the book becomes much better. The characterisations are good and the action scenes are well done. The pacing of the story is generally effective. There is still a fair amount of historical material, but most of it is relevant and a lot of it is presented character to character, instead of essentially author to reader. There is even one occasion when a character starts giving historical examples and gets told to stop because they don't have the time. However, the book develops one major fault. A critical element of the plot is that undercover operatives are in action, some on the Enterprise. The authors keep jumping to them, telling us who they are impersonating, what they are doing and what their plans are. It would have been far more suspenseful simply not to tell us, and much more dramatic for us to find out who is a spy at the same time as the Enterprise crew. The book is still quite good, it just could have been much better and how is pretty obvious.

A must read!

I've read other Star Trek TNG books and by a host of other authors. However, in this book and "A Time to Sow" you'll read some of the best TNG trek out there.

I won't say anything here that will spoil your read, other than in this book, the plot tightens up. The action gets more intense. Here, almost every key TNG character is heavily involved with some facet of the plot. In the end, it all comes together like a nicely tailored suit.

It's clear that the authors clearly know the TNG characters as they are written extremely well. Unlike other authors (ahem..Vornholt?) who know very little about the TNG characters.

The "old adversary" will keep you guessing and will probably hit you (as it did me) like a ton of bricks once you put the peices together.

These two books (this and "A Time to Sow") are the best books of the "A Time to....." series. It's a must read.

nice sequel

the book starts out slow but gathers lots of steam. the enterprise is still trying to help the dokaan people terraform a nearby planet when they discover lies and deceit from an old enemy who has grand plans of their own. the book is well written and the reader will not be disappointed in the end. i wish they would put wesley back in the story though because he made for interesting reading in the first 2 books of the series.