In a mirror universe she was the ruler of an empire that spanned the stars. Now Philippa Georgiou finds herself a lowly operative for Section 31, Starfleet’s clandestine “black-ops” group. After a test of her abilities results in a riot on a prison world, Georgiou finds herself confined to a cell on a starship, potentially for the rest of her life.

Then a Starfleet vessel encounters a mysterious cloud-like entity that drains the hemoglobin from nearly half the crew. The condition of the bodies is similar to those found on a cargo ship nearly a quarter-century earlier near an isolated region run by a group of alien races known as the Troika. Contact is limited, but the young lieutenant on that mission kept in touch with the human merchant captain from the region who retrieved those bodies. And while that young lieutenant died fighting the Klingons at the Battle of the Binary Stars, her mirror-universe counterpart may be the key to unraveling the mystery of the entity – one that might give the former emperor the means of regaining her empire.

This book is John Jackson Miller’s second contribution to the Star Trek: Discovery series of novels, and it’s a considerable improvement over his first one. Whereas his previous one [book:The Enterprise War|43567971] felt constrained by the need to conform to the elements of the show, with this one there seem to be fewer limits on the story he can tell. Miller takes full advantage of this to tell a fun adventure involving a veritable “who’s who” of Star trek characters from across the franchise. It’s a particular contrast with Dayton Ward’s [book:Drastic Measures|36416809], which failed to make the most of its exploration of franchise’s backstory. By contrast Miller has a grand time mixing together characters from three different shows from the franchise, and he isn’t afraid to adapt them to the needs of the story.

Yet none of this would have worked as well as it did had Miller failed to portray so effectively the character at the center of his tale. His depiction of the mirror-universe Georgiou unerringly captures the mix of wry cunning and cold-blooded deviousness that embodied Michelle Yeoh’s performance on the show. Here we see the early steps of how she went from being an emperor to a Section 31 agent, as well as her growth beyond the ruthless savagery that typify the mirror universe portrayals in the franchise. It’s never less than entertaining, and by the end of the novel I was hoping that this won't be the last we will read of the adventures of "Agent" Georgiou from Miller’s pen. ( )