There’s a couple of minor things that stick in my craw about Peter David’s A Rock and a Hard Place, but none of them detract from my enjoyment of the book which actually reads, and feels a lot like n actual episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation.

Despite the art on the cover showing a season two William Riker, the story is set in the third season. There’s some interplay between Worf and Troi that suggests they haven’t interacted a lot since the beginning of season two with The Child.

But overall, it’s fairly enjoyable.

Riker is given a temporary assignment off the Enterprise, helping a group of terraformers, including an old friend. He’s given the assignment because of his youth growing up in Alaska, and the barren world he finds himself on will try him.

But there’s more going on, Starfleet sends in a replacement for Riker aboard the Enterprise while he’s away. Enter Commander Stone, and he seems to have some serious issues. He seems perfectly controlled, but seems to also be a loose cannon, and some of his former commanding officers believe he may be crazy.

Can Picard and the rest of the crew find out Stone’s story or will he put them all at risk?

After an away mission that technically turned out fine, Picard has to figure out how to best handle Stone, just as they receive a distress call… Riker is in trouble.

It’s a fast-paced tale, and everyone feels like the characters we know. And there’s some nice emotional exploration of how Riker and Troi feel about each other, and where they both hope their lives will take them.

It’s tough for the Stone story to play out. You know it has to be tied up before the last page of the book because the character will be gone after that, but there’s a bit of exploration of PTSD. It works fairly well, and the reveals at the end of what caused it are well-told and leaves us to wonder what if it happened to me. Something Riker struggles with as well.

I mean he obviously survives. No matter the danger he finds himself in we know the character survives. But it’s a strong story nonetheless, arguably, the best of the series to date.

David has a nice handle on the characters and he tells a good Trek story, grounding it in the universe we know and love and expanding the characters, even if it’s in a non-canon way.

There’s more to come as I continue to boldly go…