Picard and Crusher have married, but life is never completely sane on a star ship and though the honeymoon was wonderful, life now will take a dramatic turn. The Borg are also back and wrecking havoc. Then they met up with Hugh, who was once a Borg himself and together Picard and Hugh and their ships will take on this new Borg, all the while trying to learn how to work with a new life entity hellbent on keeping the Federation and Borg from fighting. Can Picard save them all and will this really mean the end of the Borg? ( )

Bennett had the unenviable task of bridging the gap between 2007's uneven tNG novels and David Mack's forthcoming Destiny trilogy , and this book does that adequately. Unfortunately, it often feels as if that's all it's doing, tying up some old characters and setting up some new ones, as well as dealing with some lingering Borg continuity issues. It's nice to see Rennan Konya again, but I was very disappointed to see Zelik Leybenzon go, and in such a demeaning fashion; his potential in Q & A has been entirely squandered since.

"Greater Than the Sum" suffers from "middle child syndrome."

The story is set between last year's 20th anniversary set of TNG novels and this year's big Trek publishing event by David Mack, set to hit stores in October. This leaves the usually reliable Christopher L. Bennett with a conundrum of a book that is supposed to set up the next set of novels and try to reconcile some of the inconsistencies of last year's set of stories, especially the rather disappointing wrap-up novel by Peter David. (Which it pains me to say that as I tend to love all of David's Trek universe offerings).

Set a few months after the last Borg attack, "Sum" picks up with...wait for it...another Borg threat coming into Federation territory. The threat is a new alien race that has the ability to create a new kind of warp conduits and holes in space, allowing faster travel. The Enterprise is sent into the fray to try and make contact with the aliens who have this technology and keep it out of Borg hands. With this new technology, the Borg would be even more seemingly unstoppable and able to invade the Federation at will.

Along the way, we have some interesting character developments and it appears a fresh start for the TNG relaunch. Instead of just being "TNG 2.0" it appears the series is finally allowing the characters to be who they are and develop their own stories instead of trying to craft them into molds of the old TNG crew. It's a refreshing development, but given that the DS9 relaunch decided to follow this path from day one, it makes you wonder why it took these books four books to get there.

The book does try hard to explain away some inconsistent characterization and some odd choices in "Before Dishonor," and to put elements in place for the on-going storyline. Bennett pulls together threads from previous Trek novels and the television run in ways that feel realistic and plausible.

And while I enjoyed the novel while reading it, I came away feeling as a bit unsatisfied when the final page was turned. A large part of this is that this story is being used to set up some things for the big three-part Trek novel epic coming soon to a bookstore near me. But I think another part is that while we can identify with the characters we've seen on-screen, there aren't any of the newer characters who jump off the page and into the imagination like Vaughn or Tarrantar for the DS9 relaunch ( )