I wonder how Trill could've become a member of the Federation at all. Shouldn't a union like this be founded on basic shared values? So while the story isn't bad, the tone and what we learn about societies in Trek is, as always in the newer books, deeply depressing and downright dystopian. What happened to Star Trek that writers choose to turn further and further away from IDIC and the common good, from the world that once gave hope to so many viewers? Why do they feel that the only way to make a utopia more realistic is to turn it to ashes? So, this is basically normal, non-Trek SciFi - and not bad at that -, but it only shares names and places with what Star Trek once was. Interchangeable with so many other franchises. Could have been the Alliance in Star Wars in it's beginnings as well.