This is what the back of the book says the narrative is:
Years before they served together on board the U.S.S. Enterprise, Commander William T. Riker and ship's counselor Deanna Troi had a tempestuous love affair on her home planet of Betazed. Now, their passions have cooled and they serve together as friends. Yet the memories of that time linger and Riker and Troi remain Imzadi - a powerful Betazoid term that describes the enduring bond they still share.
During delicate negotiations with an aggressive race called the Sindareen, Deanna Troi mysterious falls ill...and dies. But her death is only the beginning of the adventure for Commander Riker - an adventure that will take him across time, pit him against one of his closest friends, and force him to choose between Starfleet's strictest rule and the one he calls Imzadi.
Sounds pretty decent, but, so far, it's wrong. Yeah, that's the plot of the bookends of the story, but really the main plot takes place during that "tempestuous love affair." Here's a bit more accurate description:
Years before he served on board the U.S.S. Enterprise, Commander William Teabag Riker was a dudebro Starfleet lieutenant stuck serving on Betazed. Within a day of being there, he saw a girl naked at a wedding and immediately began to harass her incessantly, refusing to take no for an answer because he is So Alpha. Unable to get rid of him, Deanna Troi is forced to educate his dumb ass on empathy and mindfulness because every time he's around her all he does is stare at her butt and grin like a moron.
...I actually really love this book. It's great, because for once, I like Deanna Troi. She was such a non-entity on the TV show, inexplicably on the bridge because she had magic powers of uselessness and, as a character, was only created because Roddenberry demanded more tits- and only got half as many as he wanted. The only episode about her that was even good was "Face of the Enemy" which was done even better with Major Kira on DS9 in "Second Skin." But she's given so much more life and intelligence and character in this book...loving it. Also really enjoying the fact that it fleshes out Betazoid culture, since they basically had two major characteristics in TNG: they have magic powers and naked weddings. Way better in this book. This is basically the kind of thing I want to see more of as I undertake my nerd quest deep into Star Trek apocrypha: not fantasy stories, but pushing out the universe of Star Trek. It's something TNG did really terribly and DS9 did pretty well.
Reading about the Enterprise defeating some Borg or something is cool, but I want to know more history, more culture, more personality. Please don't fail me now, random authors who couldn't think of their own universe and just got to publish glorified fanfics.
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