Very enjoyable Trek book that links several unrelated TOS, TNG, DS9, and even Voyager episodes... making it feel like connected universe.

Finally, Star Trek gets back to exploring, action, friendship and fun. Fast, funny, character based and uplifting. I really can't say much more without giving away too much.

Wonderful to revisit Data, Lal and get Geordi out front. Some surprising guests and above all, back to the roots of Next Generation.

Highly recommend.

This is a very enjoyable read. Lang does a good job of exploring the person that Data has become. Geordi provides a useful mirror in which Data can see himself. Lang seems to have fun visiting places and people who are very familiar to Trekkies. I certainly had fun reading about them. I’m very excited for where this book leaves us positioned to go next.

Fantastic for fans of Data & those who were big fans of Moriarty!

There are precious few Star Trek books that leave me conflicted, but this is one of them. While I enjoyed David Mack's "Cold Equations" trilogy that resurrected Data and established that while he retained the same memories, much like Spock, he was not quite the same person he was before he died, which is fine, he has an emotion chip and has faced tragedies, and thus has had to grapple with emotions. But the book felt a tad uneven, for example, I enjoyed all the diversions into the history and classic characters, and tying in Harry Mudd (especially years before his return on Discovery) was inspired, not to mention bringing back Data's singular antagonist, since Moriarty was created to vex Data, however, I wasn't entirely in love with how Data and Lal have changed since their last appearances. Sure, I don't expect Lal to be exactly the same as she was before her death, but she doesn't, at least to me, feel like Lal, maybe if there had been more to show how she got from point A to B, it would be more believable. In addition, I felt the ending left something to be desired, whether it was authorial intent or not, I really liked Alice, and the idea of one of those androids breaking their programming and escaping was an interesting concept that was entirely wasted, with Alice being sent back to Planet Mudd for seemingly no reason, other than to clean the slate.

That being said, if it wasn't for those two issues, I'd have adored the book completely.

At first I thought this book had bitten off more than it could chew.

We have appearances from story lines in TOS, TNG, and DS9 plus the extended universe.

And they pulled it off brilliantly. Great novel

It's Star Trek, so on one hand yay! always yay! but really? Harry Mudd and Moriarty again? In the same story with resurrected Lal and Data? Really?

Just fantastic. Yeah cheesy pun, but also true. The story is very good and brings in a host of unexpected familiars. I was obviously not the only one to consider Moriarty's fate when the Enterprise D was destroyed.

I'm sure that the disjointed timeline approach is a useful storytelling tool but I generally hate it and the use of it in this was my only qualm with The Light Fantastic.

Enjoyable development of Data and Lal storyline. Moriaty re-surfaces, Geordie gets together with Leah Brahms plus what happened to the despicable Harry Mudd.

I received this in a reddit exchange. Trek books are all over the map in terms of quality; I liked this one quite a bit. It had Geordi, Moriarty, a little bit of Barclay, the hologram doctor from Voyager... characters kept popping up. But what I really liked about it were the themes of parenthood. The main storyline involves Data and his daughter, but several other characters also make observations about it that I found very apt.