John Jackson Miller brings us the third Star Trek: Picard tie-in novel this month, as Rogue Elements is one of the most fun Trek novels released in the last decade — and my favorite Picard book so far.

Focusing on Captain Cristóbal Rios’ year leading up to his first meeting with Jean-Luc Picard in “The End is the Beginning,” Rogue Elements uses a lot of elements from the Star Trek: Picard show, but manages to keep things a bit lighter than the television series.

In his acknowledgments, Miller indicates the lighter tone was an intentional choice, because he began writing the novel in the early days of the still-ongoing COVID-19 pandemic — and he thought a more fun approach to the story might resonate better with readers in this challenging time.

And boy, was he right: Rogue Elements hit at just the correct time to buoy my spirits, and to provide a nice escape from a lot of the world’s weighty issues.

The novel also gives us something that the show hasn’t yet, really: these characters can have more fun without detracting from the more serious themes that Star Trek: Picard is trying to explore. While there was some of that humor in “Stardust City Rag” — and the Season 2 trailer hints at some more capers for La Sirena’s crew — this book is a good guide for how it can be done.

Since Rogue Elements has been out for a few weeks, I’m going to get a bit more spoilery than I usually do in my book reviews — so consider this your warning!

The new novel explores how Rios came to captain La Sirena, in a story that involves the Iotians from “A Piece of the Action,” Kivas Fajo from “The Most Toys,” and a delightful tie in to the events of Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country that gives this book a sweeping scale.

As I was reading Rogue Elements, I could not shake the feeling that I was watching the Star Trek equivalent of a James Bond movie. Obviously, a lot of the details are different —  Rios is a lone operator, and not an intergalactic super-spy — but in the sense that the novel involved cool locales, a few interesting villains, plenty of quips, and a few casual romantic encounters, the story felt like it had a lot of the elements that make a Bond movie fun.

I wasn’t sure when I read the dust jacket if I was going to like that the gangster Iotians were included in the story. As you may recall from “A Piece of the Action,” the residents of Sigma Iotia II are a planet of mimics who reorganize their entire society around 1920s Chicago gang culture after a Federation researcher accidentally leaves a book about that period of Earth history on the planet.

It’s a funny, out-there episode, but would 1920s Chicago gangsters really work in a 24th century Star Trek: Picard setting?

Hell yes they do. John Jackson Miller does a really nice job of maintaining the parts of Iotian society that was fun about “A Piece of the Action” — including a lot of the ridiculous gangster stereotypes — but also exploring the society in more detail and the how and why of the way that they operate.

There have been a few different interpretations on what happened to the Iotians after their encounter with the Enterprise — such as how IDW’s Star Trek: Year Five comic posits that they reorganized their society to mimic Starfleet after the events of the TOS episode — but Miller chooses to keep the Chicago gang culture intact, and pushes deeper to ask questions about what it means for their society to operate that way while spaceborne.

But that’s not all! In addition to Rios’s partnership with the Iotians — they agree to sell him La Sirena, but he has a significant debt to pay off — we also get a return from a fan-favorite character from The Next Generation: dastardly Kivas Fajo, now a reformed humanitarian?

The collector who tried to abduct Data (“They all try to collect Data!”) is back, now with a large organization that helps supernova-era Romulan refugees sell their valuables to earn money they can use for starting new lives. But as with Fajo’s TNG appearance, there’s a dark side beneath his charitable exterior which slowly gets revealed through the novel.

I thought the Fajo character was well handled, as the curtain gets pulled back for Rios throughout the book and the malice of the Zibalian collector is slowly revealed — and it’s a funny coincidence that Rogue Elements was published the same week Star Trek: Lower Decks revisited ‘collector culture’ with “Kayshon, His Eyes Open.”

And it wouldn’t be a Rios book without two things: his holograms, and several appearances by Raffi Musiker, who we know had a previous working relationship with Rios in the pre-Picard time period. The story behind the creation of the holograms gets told here, and it’s very appropriate for the character and what we know about him.

We also see how, despite his distaste for them that’s obvious in the show, he realizes he needs them too much, slowly accepting them as his “crew.” In addition, Raffi (along with Jean-Luc Picard, in a clever way) plays a minor supporting role in the book that helps tie it more closely to the events if Picard Season 1.

The big heist, which involves a 24th century equivalent of Banksy — and ties into the events of The Undiscovered Country — is a fun page turner, and in addition to having a James Bond feel, the story also adopts a bit of a Dan Brown feel to it as well with the way in which a story about the hunt for artworks becomes exciting.

The pay off at the end is a satisfying one that I won’t spoil any further, and there are also a couple of other fun twists and reveals that I won’t include here because I really liked not knowing them in advance.

Overall, if you like the characters of Star Trek: Picard, but were hoping it were a bit more fun, then John Jackson Miller’s Rogue Elements is the book for you. You’re going to enjoy a delightfully gripping story with a charismatic lead in Cristobal Rios, a cast of fun and interesting supporting characters, and a lot of hijinks and side missions that ultimately feed back into the main plot and enhance the overall story.

This is probably my favorite book that Miller has written for Star Trek, and it gets my complete endorsement.

Star Trek: Picard — Rogue Elements is in stores now.