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This post will contain spoilers for Star Trek: Prodigy, seasons 1 and 2, as well as minor spoilers for Voyager, and of course, for this book itself.

Of all Starfleet captains (not considering TOS and TAS' Kirk, as I haven't seen those series yet), I must say that Janeway is my favourite. She embodies Starfleet's values of compassion and camaraderie, faces the challenges of upholding UFP values in unimaginable situations, and looks good while doing it.

The bulk of the beginning of the book was great. The Voyager series didn't spend any time at all establishing Janeway's relationship with her fiancé, so the news of his re-marriage didn't hit particularly hard. The recount of how their relationship developed, as well as Janeway's previous experiences and the background information of Mark, made me feel a lot more for Janeway, as well as for Mark. The existence of Molly also leaves me wishing that she had come on Voyager, as Archer took Porthos on the NX-01 Enterprise, and the writers had given us one or two silly dog episodes (and had her get home safe).

The last couple of chapters did leave some things to be desired. This book was published in 2020, before Janeway (and Hologram Janeway) appeared in Prodigy, so Initially, I thought that maybe its sparse content regarding Janeway's life after returning to the alpha quadrant might have been in an attempt to leave room for future series to further develop her character. This theory was put to rest, however, by the remarks about Chakotay's retirement from Starfleet and regular visits to Earth, which are clearly opposed to the events of season 2, where it is revealed that Chakotay went MIA and spent 10 years on an uninhabited planet with the USS Protostar. This contradiction leaves me wishing that the book had accepted that it would likely become a significant deviation from canon, and elaborate a little more on Janeway's admiralty and retirement.

As a reflection on my resolution to push me towards reading more, I want to note down that I read this one over the course of just 1 day (around 4 hours, really, at 2x speed) as an audiobook while playing Minecraft. 2x speed still felt a little slow, so I think I might be able to get through books at quite a rapid pace. The only problem I can see there is taking regular pauses to let thoughts develop about what I'm reading.

I might well find myself reading more by Una McCormack, who, on top of a variety of Star Trek novels, also seems to have published a variety of Doctor Who-related works.