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.