I had a tough time getting through this only from the perspective that it was like you look in your full closet and then say I have nothing to wear - I have lots of audiobooks I haven't listened to yet, and needed something for while I'm working, so I went with this after doing a fair amount of changing my mind. LOL I was finding it boring, but I know most of that was because I wasn't in the right mood for it. But I kept going because I wanted to know the details on how Starfleet/the Federation/Picard ended up where they ended up in that first episode of the show. And this did that. Picard and Rafi had a great relationship, well, til the end of course... we see how the synths are created (and why they aren't called androids - that was one of those small things that kept driving me nuts on the show), and how he meets and gets along with the absolute candor romulan women. I'm not sure if the idea of the book is canon (the novels never were before), but I'm taking it as such and it was interesting in that regard.