After a six month hiatus following January’s Riker-and-Troi-centric Star Trek: Picard novel, the franchise’s tie-in publishing line returns for eight straight months of new releases!

The first Star Trek: Discovery novel to tie into the events of Season 3, Una McCormack’s Wonderlands fills in the gap between the year’s first and second episodes, chronicling Michael Burnham’s year apart from the Discovery crew in the 32nd century.

Alone in an unfamiliar future — and with no promise that her shipmates aboard Discovery will ever join her — Burnham must adjust to a galaxy where the United Federation of Planets is a shell of its former self, a galaxy where interstellar travel is extremely difficult, and where life for many is difficult.

While we got a hint about her solo adventures in the opening montage of “People of Earth,” the story of Wonderlands significantly expands on her life as a courier-for-hire in the post-Burn Alpha Quadrant.

Una McCormack excels at strong character work, and so she made a great fit for a book whose mission is to explore Michael Burnham’s experiences further.

Burnham is a richly realized complicated woman, and Wonderlands successfully lays the groundwork for the character’s journey in the middle of Season 3 — where she finds herself questioning a future in Starfleet — while reconciling the season-ending Captain Burnham with the Red-Angel-suit-wearing Burnham who flew out of the 23rd century in Season 2.

The book does an excellent job of exploring Michael’s conflicted feelings about the success of her mission, and the sorry nature of the future she finds herself in — along with serving as a great vehicle for expanding on the character of Cleveland “Book” Booker, further developing the connection and attraction between two characters which latter blossoms to romance.

Book’s good intentions, balanced with the harsh realities of life in the 32nd century, get more room to breathe in Wonderlands than they do in Discovery’s third season, and the novels does well by the character.

McCormack also gives a significant role in the novel for Aditya Sahil, the lonely, loyal Federation liaison officer Burnham meets in the final scene of “That Hope is You, Part 1.” Sahil and Book serve as opposing forces on Burnham throughout the novel to great effect — as Book pushes Burnham to accept the reality of a galaxy without a Federation, Sahil pulls Burnham back towards making it her mission to restore all that has been lost.

In what has become a recurring theme for the Burnham character, who has frequently found herself trapped between two opposing ideologies throughout Discovery, she charts her own course; adapting to the new reality and using it to try and find ways to re-ignite what made the Federation great.

Wonderlands and McCormack’s inaugural Picard novel The Last Best Hope share a similar difficult mission: provide backstory that aligns closely with what we saw on screen without venturing too far afield so as to be potentially contradicted by a future episode. As a result, you should go into this book expecting a deeply studied character piece, and not a big “Where Are They Now?” story, detailing the fates of our familiar Star Trek names and races.

McCormack, for example, cannot tell us what happened to the Klingons by this time period, because the show hasn’t covered the fate of the Empire yet, a big question which only the show will be able to address due to its impact on the Star Trek landscape.

But the sight of several Cardassian characters in Discovery Season 3 does allow McCormack to include a member of the alien race she’s explored the most in previous works; Ileana Pa’Dan is a courier, like Burnham and Book, who crosses paths with the pair at various points during the story.

It’s refreshing to have a Cardassian play a big role in a story again, and here’s hoping that Discovery promotes a Cardassian character into the foreground next season, because that race works quite well in the difficult 32nd century environment!

With the caveat I mentioned above about the limitations McCormack had in crafting the world of 3188, the adversaries she develops are well realized and an interesting concept for this new Star Trek time period. I won’t go into much more detail here to avoid spoilers, but the book asks a number of interesting questions about the balance between technological superiority and moral superiority — and the ways in which one can often obscure the other.

Overall, Star Trek: Discovery — Wonderlands is another great character piece from Una McCormack, and like her previous Discovery tale (the Tilly-centric A Way to the Stars), it will definitely enhance your appreciation of the show’s ongoing story.

With several months to go until the series returns for Season 4, Wonderlands serves as a great waypoint on the road back to Discovery.