It's interesting how some of the Star Trek Novel writers believe that they have this great idea, and it sorta winds up that it's all the same great idea over and over. Take an alien race, and give them 20th Century equivalent technology and 20th Century problems and then have the Enterprise (and in this case the Romulans led by Sela, supposed daughter of Tasha Yar) make a first contact with the aliens, then have Picard and the Enterprise feel bad for them, but try their hardest not to judge the poor young race.

Yes, I get it, the alien race is us (or at least the 20th Century us). But, if you can get by the preaching, it's not a bad book. (And for the record, way back when those writing the Star Trek TV shows predicted that we'd already have had a World War Three by now. And while Earth's had our share of some humdinger wars, we've not yet had any that we've though big enough to call another World War.)

Truthfully, since the main story has been done before, both on the TV shows and other novels, I focused on the funny and interesting subplot concerning Ro Laren (she's still on the Enterprise in this story). The author seemed to have a good handle on the Ro character and all the subtlies that Michelle Forbes managed to portray on the TV show were present, as well as the humor being a good counterpoint to the highly stressful nature of the main plot. All in all a solid three stars Star Trek Novel. ( )