I have been a strong Ward fan. I liked the story he submitted for Strange New Worlds (not the show) Vol.1 but that’s the only thing of his that I have enjoyed. This book unfortunately continued that trend. It had no real energy or stakes to it. Picard confronting the Cardassian who tortured him and a book exploring Bajor in the immediate aftermath of the Occupation? Sign me up. I felt a lot of joy when characters from DS9 were being introduced as it’s really interesting to see where they end up before the pilot. But everything else was just… meh. There was a brief exploration of Picard dealing with the trauma of seeing Madred again but it wasn’t explored enough in detail.

This book could have worked far better under a better writer but it was very disappointing.

4/10