My reaction to Picard was mixed enough that its tie-in novels are not automatic buys for me. Rios was a character I think I could have liked, but the melodramatic—and highly coincidental—backstory we eventually learn about undermined the good work Santiago Cabrera did with his performance, and so I wasn't enthused about a prequel novel focusing on him. But 1) I do like Jack Jackson Miller, and 2) I heard the Iotians, from my favorite original series episode, were in it.

I wanted to like this, and I was into it at first—Miller has a good handle on what makes the people of the gangster planet fun—but at a certain point the book began to drag, even with its rapid-fire antics. Or perhaps even because of them. Why, exactly, should I care? The novel didn't always succeed in making its case, unfortunately, and it seemed to just pile on complication on top of complication to the point of alienation. It does all come together in the end... but I was never terribly invested in whether it did or not. Plus, I get that it's a tie-in to a series called "Picard," but the number of people Rios meets who had previously met Picard began to pile up to the point of improbability.

That said, the jokes about the holograms were good, I liked what we learned of La Sirena's previous owner, Rios himself is handled well as a character, and many of the original characters are good fun. I liked a lot of the ingredients, but this feels to me like a novel that demands to be blown through... and instead I kind of plodded. I am not normally an audiobook guy, but I would imagine that a sympathetic audiobook reading would do a lot to life the material here, turning it into the rapid-fire caper it so obviously wants to be.