I highly recommend reading this before you read Zero Sum Game If you can, I think it would improve it greatly. returnreturnThis one was hard to rank. The middle was very good but the beginning and the end where not. returnreturnI was so mad at George, who usually does such a good job at keeping story lines straight that it felt like he was having Commander Vaugn well and serving when in the previous book in the series had him on his death bad with no explanation.It ended up being OK but one of the issues with the whole book here was the explanation, a number of flash backs that where not clearly communicated to the reader they were flash backs. I'm not sure how to fix it because the jumping with no explanation in Star Trek novels I usually like, having to figure it out just like a scene change on TV, but this took chapters to figure it out. returnreturnWe really have 3-4 different story lines through out. The most interesting is the very elderly Spock leading a Vulcan-Romulan reunification movement inside the empire. We also have Sisko abandonig his wife and daughter because he feels the profits have abondended him and he thinks they need him to abandon his precuil life to go it alone. Returning to Captain a starship on the neutreal zone. We have two different Romulan empires after a quo split the empire. One has joined the Typhon pact while the other has been recognized by Starfleet and its allies as an independent nation. This story line is the other I have an issue with because part of the issue is based on a story that the new Imperile State has access to all of the agriculturally rich worlds of the empire and now the Star Empire's people are starving. This would be a good story if not for the fact that the mere existence of replicators make this a post-scarcity society and it becomes a lazy line for George. returnreturnThe attempt at reuniting these two Romuluan empires is the "4th" story that wraps the others altogether in prefect Star Trek faction. However the story just kind of ends unsatisfactorily, not even making you feel like you have to read the next one to find out what happens.