I started figuring out fairly quickly that something was up. I think the first clue I noticed was a reference to Straal in the present tense, then that the story wa apparently set in season two since Tilly was an ensign and not a cadet, but Stamets was acting like a jump every few days was an unprecidented strain when he'd done hundreds within a few minutes (plus, in retrospect, the idea of Discovery jumping around for disaster relief, when they never would've had the time). Once I noticed the book was going out of its way not to identify the Captain, I was sure it was a parallel universe, and not just minor mistakes in the lore.
I was a little perturbed by that; the Discovery novels have been existing in this weird parallel world to the Discovery TV show, and I hoped this might be the first novel to offer a straightforward "this is an extra thing that happened between episodes of the show" story. In general, the practice reminds me of the early years of the Halo expanded universe, before the novels and comics began being referenced much more directly around Halo 3, and the main characters of the games were able to be used more directly in the tie-ins, which had referred to each other but had been steering comfortably wide of the actual games. I realize the one-way connection, with the books being obligated towards the show but not vice-versa is the way of things, but there's something extremely odd about the books also being obligated towards each other.
This book specifically reminds me of CLB's vaguely-dystopian 31st century Federation in one of his DTI books, which may or may not closely reflect the Prime version of that era, depending on what future stories do. We found out what the deal was with Airiam's name, for instance, but it was Parallel-Airiam, so no one can complain if the show says something else later on.
That being said, I enjoyed this version of the Discovery crew and their low-key adventures, where individual plots and characterizations can be allowed to run their courses without having to dance to the tune of some season-long megastory that doesn't entirely hang together. It was more like what I wanted from season two as the Klingon War was winding down.
It took me an embarrassing long time to realize "It's me, you," was really "It's me, Hugh," especially since the same exact pun was used in a recent movie I quite enjoyed.
I honestly expected things to tie in a lot more directly with the Prime Discovery. As the pieces were being laid out, I thought I could see a straight line; Culber decides he can't live with Parallel Stamets and reaches out to his Discovery, with the novel being set eight months after the Battle of the Binaries, explaining how Discovery ended up in the future when it returned from the Mirror Universe (though I just remembered that that doesn't actually fit; Discovery went eight months into the future from a time that was already six months after the battle, plus however many months the bulk of season one took). Then I thought they'd get their refill of spores at the end from the same explosion Prime Discovery rode home, again explaining the time travel, and Culber being so much more lucid with Stamets than he was when he was finally recovered. The actual end, where nothing touches our universe except the doomed-to-be amnesiac Culber and Ephraim's odd recollections of killing Landry, surprised me, but I don't mind. The way I thought the story was headed was super fan-ficcy; going out of its way to fill in every possible gap while simultaneously not going anywhere near anything that could be altered by the canon; the "bottle episode" cast also fit with a bit of a fan-fic trope of only being interested in the existing characters with no guest stars.
Which brings me to another thought; I get a kick out of AU stories for how they can tell us more about the versions of the characters we knew by what's different and the same. It was a bit of a stretch for almost everyone on Parallel Discovery to be from Prime Discovery, but the one that confused me the most was Landry. She was a partisan of Lorca (to the point where between it becoming obvious who Lorca really was and us being introduced to Mirror-Landry, I suspected she was also from the MU); Stamets, Tilly, and Airiam were all part of the spore-drive team, so it makes sense that they'd come over. Burnham came up through the sciences, so it makes sense her first command would be an ambitious but unlikely to succeed science-boondoggle waiting to happen, and Detmer and Saru were likely chosen by Lorca to help draw Burnham into his crew, so assuming he knew her as well as he thought, it's not unreasonable he picked the same two people she'd poach on her own; Culber took the assignment (apparently a step back, career-wise, if he was up for a CMO position on a Connie, to be a deputy doctor on a lower-crewed ship) to be with Stamets (also, appreciated the novel unambiguously stating they were married, something the show inexplicably revealed in a stray comment by Michael calling Stamets a widower and never touched on again); Owo... well, Owo was probably up for an Ops/Nav gig, and Discovery was next on the list, so that makes as much sense as anything. But how did Landry end up there? Was Parallel-Lorca also replaced by a Parallel-Mirror-Lorca and was found out without a convenient war going on that he could use to cover his tracks, so the crew of the Buran was scattered to the winds?
I liked Georgiou commenting that it's entirely possible Prime-Burnham wasn't responsible for the difference that led to the Klingon War, because she couldn't have been; her mutiny was immediately thwarted, and as far as everyone outside the Shenzhou was concerned, everything went exactly as it would've if she hadn't tried to fire first; her next decision was trying to kidnap T'Kuvma; regardless of whether that was because she wanted to make up for her earlier failure, it was after the standoff became a battle, so that couldn't have been it, either.
I liked the in-joke about Captain Garth going crazy and renaming his ship the Ares. Dare I hope for an Improvised Star Trek shout-out, while we're mentioning/dunking upon fan works in the novels? Also appreciated that Captain Burnham didn't leave the Displacement-Activated Spore Hub Drive acronym hanging the way Lorca and Pike did. DASH Drive forever!
