This is a pretty fair to middling Star Trek story, much better than usual for Diane Carey in the she MOSTLY resists the temptation to get overly cute with the language (except for her pathological inablility to use the phrase "he said", and her tendancy to really reach sometimes to avoid it.) This allows her to concentrate on character, plot, and pacing, which are usually her strong suits as a writer. None of the three are as good in this book as she has sometimes been, but none are bad, either. If there's a flaw to this book other than just not quite measuring up to her usual standards (if one discounts her usual silly games with the language) it's that the backstory is rapidly getting old; this is really not a plot that can hold up over six books. It was getting a bit stale in the second of the series, and is truly starting to smell by this point. Fortunately, Carey doesn't emphasise the medical aspects as heavily as they were emphasised in the first two books, which helped. Also, some fans might consider it a flaw that the book is listed as being a "Next Generation" title, but has barely a few cameo appearances by the Next Generation characters: a bit of Bev Crusher, a chapter in which Picard, Riker, Data and Worf get a couple of lines apiece, and that's it. The main characters in the book are a young ensign named Stiles, and Ambassador Spock, which makes it somewhat dubious as a "Next Generation" story.