What do you think?
Rate this book
Star Trek: Picard #6
To Defy Fate
A thrilling new adventure based on the acclaimed TV series Star Picard!
2401: Just weeks after defeating a devastating joint attack by rogue Changelings and remnants of the Borg Collective, Starfleet and the Federation face a long period of recovery that requires replacing lost personnel and ships. While touring the U.S.S. Titan-A, which is just beginning an extensive repair-and-refit process that will take nearly a year to complete, newly promoted Captain Seven of Nine and her first officer, Commander Raffi Musiker, experience a bizarre temporal event which renders them both unconscious and sends Seven into a deep coma.
In the aftermath of this inexplicable attack, Admirals Jean-Luc Picard and Beverly Crusher are surprised by the appearance of Crusher’s son, Wesley. Now a Traveler capable of traversing through all of space and time, he warns them that forces he cannot identify are working to disrupt time for unknown and potentially catastrophic reasons. Reality as they know it is in jeopardy and, despite their initial best efforts, the effects are not contained but instead continue to escalate.
Picard, Crusher, and Musiker join Wesley in hunting through time to stop whoever or whatever seems hellbent on rewriting history. But what is their unknown adversary’s ultimate objective? Left unchecked, their efforts might well erase from existence those Picard and his friends hold most dear. What could justify attempting to defy fate itself?
2401: Just weeks after defeating a devastating joint attack by rogue Changelings and remnants of the Borg Collective, Starfleet and the Federation face a long period of recovery that requires replacing lost personnel and ships. While touring the U.S.S. Titan-A, which is just beginning an extensive repair-and-refit process that will take nearly a year to complete, newly promoted Captain Seven of Nine and her first officer, Commander Raffi Musiker, experience a bizarre temporal event which renders them both unconscious and sends Seven into a deep coma.
In the aftermath of this inexplicable attack, Admirals Jean-Luc Picard and Beverly Crusher are surprised by the appearance of Crusher’s son, Wesley. Now a Traveler capable of traversing through all of space and time, he warns them that forces he cannot identify are working to disrupt time for unknown and potentially catastrophic reasons. Reality as they know it is in jeopardy and, despite their initial best efforts, the effects are not contained but instead continue to escalate.
Picard, Crusher, and Musiker join Wesley in hunting through time to stop whoever or whatever seems hellbent on rewriting history. But what is their unknown adversary’s ultimate objective? Left unchecked, their efforts might well erase from existence those Picard and his friends hold most dear. What could justify attempting to defy fate itself?
16 pages, Audible Audio
First published April 28, 2026
82 people are currently reading
112 people want to read
About the author
Dayton Ward
106 books320 followersDayton is a software developer, having become a slave to Corporate America after spending eleven years in the U.S. Marine Corps. When asked, he’ll tell you that he left home and joined the military soon after high school because he’d grown tired of people telling him what to do all the time.
Ask him sometime how well that worked out.
In addition to the numerous credits he shares with friend and co-writer Kevin Dilmore, he is the author of the Star Trek novels In the Name of Honor and Open Secrets, the science fiction novels The Last World War and The Genesis Protocol, and short stories which have appeared in the first three Star Trek: Strange New Worlds anthologies, the Yard Dog Press anthology Houston, We’ve Got Bubbas, Kansas City Voices Magazine and the Star Trek: New Frontier anthology No Limits. Though he currently lives in Kansas City with wife Michi and daughters Addison and Erin, Dayton is a Florida native and still maintains a torrid long-distance romance with his beloved Tampa Bay Buccaneers.
Ask him sometime how well that worked out.
In addition to the numerous credits he shares with friend and co-writer Kevin Dilmore, he is the author of the Star Trek novels In the Name of Honor and Open Secrets, the science fiction novels The Last World War and The Genesis Protocol, and short stories which have appeared in the first three Star Trek: Strange New Worlds anthologies, the Yard Dog Press anthology Houston, We’ve Got Bubbas, Kansas City Voices Magazine and the Star Trek: New Frontier anthology No Limits. Though he currently lives in Kansas City with wife Michi and daughters Addison and Erin, Dayton is a Florida native and still maintains a torrid long-distance romance with his beloved Tampa Bay Buccaneers.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews
April 13, 2026
A beautiful book that pays homage to the litverse and The Picard series. Well done Mr. Ward!
May 2, 2026
Dayton Ward deliver his first hardcover book, and it is a timey-wimey good time!
This book takes place in that year long blip of time during the denoumont of the Picard Finale "The Last Generation" and features a significant portion of the Picard cast. Wesley Cursher shows up when some temporal issue occurs, and our characters split into groups to try and solve the problems that have been created.
Through and through, this is a Wesley Crusher book. Even in the Litverse, we never really got to see a ton from the Travelers' perspective, so it was really intriguing getting to see how the time-travelers live. We do get some connections to the Department of Temporal Investigations, which I enjoyed.
This book also has some fantastic thematic elements, which to go into specifics would spoil some things. Suffice it to say that this book serves as an excellent bookend to the first Picard novel "The Last Best Hope" by Una McCormack. That book explores similar themes and issues from a very straightforward, serious perspective, but this book deals with it from a more fun, timey-wimey perspective.
We do get to revisit some important moments in history of the Star Trek universe, due to the nature of the story. It was fun to see those events from a new perspective.
There were some subplots I didn't love. Guinan shows up in this book, and unfortuantely, I thought her story was really unnecessary and didn't add much to the story. And sadly, I felt the same way about Seven of Nine. (I was also frustrated that the book seemingly reverses the decisions made in Picard Season 3 while also following them).
I thought the climax of the book was good, but not amazing. I think some retooling of it would have really beefed it up.
[Do want to add some clarity to some reviews I've seen. I've seen reviews discussing connections to the Litverse of books, but outside of a few VERY MINOR connections, I really didn't catch much, so you absolutely do not need to be well versed in the books to enjoy this one].
Overall, I did really enjoy this book, and especially loved the themes and the fun nature of the story. However, it's not a favorite Trek book of mine, nor is it my favorite Dayton Ward book (that remains From History's Shadow). But still very much worth your time if you're a fan of Trek, Picard, and the books. I'll give this one an 8 out of 10!
This book takes place in that year long blip of time during the denoumont of the Picard Finale "The Last Generation" and features a significant portion of the Picard cast. Wesley Cursher shows up when some temporal issue occurs, and our characters split into groups to try and solve the problems that have been created.
Through and through, this is a Wesley Crusher book. Even in the Litverse, we never really got to see a ton from the Travelers' perspective, so it was really intriguing getting to see how the time-travelers live. We do get some connections to the Department of Temporal Investigations, which I enjoyed.
This book also has some fantastic thematic elements, which to go into specifics would spoil some things. Suffice it to say that this book serves as an excellent bookend to the first Picard novel "The Last Best Hope" by Una McCormack. That book explores similar themes and issues from a very straightforward, serious perspective, but this book deals with it from a more fun, timey-wimey perspective.
We do get to revisit some important moments in history of the Star Trek universe, due to the nature of the story. It was fun to see those events from a new perspective.
There were some subplots I didn't love. Guinan shows up in this book, and unfortuantely, I thought her story was really unnecessary and didn't add much to the story. And sadly, I felt the same way about Seven of Nine. (I was also frustrated that the book seemingly reverses the decisions made in Picard Season 3 while also following them).
I thought the climax of the book was good, but not amazing. I think some retooling of it would have really beefed it up.
[Do want to add some clarity to some reviews I've seen. I've seen reviews discussing connections to the Litverse of books, but outside of a few VERY MINOR connections, I really didn't catch much, so you absolutely do not need to be well versed in the books to enjoy this one].
Overall, I did really enjoy this book, and especially loved the themes and the fun nature of the story. However, it's not a favorite Trek book of mine, nor is it my favorite Dayton Ward book (that remains From History's Shadow). But still very much worth your time if you're a fan of Trek, Picard, and the books. I'll give this one an 8 out of 10!
May 4, 2026
Production of ST novels seems to have slowed down considerably, so it's a very good thing that this was excellent.
If I've guessed it correctly, then this story squeezes in right between seasons 2 & 3, but perhaps don't take my word for it.
In any case, Wes shows up to help figure out who and what is screwing with the timeline, after Rafi and Seven and Guinan experience some temporal shenanigans.
"Oh, no!" - I immediately thought, here is another book that is going to try to up the scale of mayhem again, again, (again, again... ad infinitum). Thankfully, it wasn't at all that asinine. In fact, it's really a classic ST time travel story in many ways.
We actually do find out who is messing around with the timeline pretty early and then we spend quite a lot of time with them, so we also get fed a lot of their motivations. I guess the biggest mystery then, is just how far the culprit is prepared to go to achieve their desired outcome.
As with any good ST time travel story, this one tries to acknowledge all of the methods that have been discovered over the last six and a half decades of writing. And on top of that, this one does include some of the far future information that we've been given from the more recent iterations of the franchise. Excellence on both accounts.
It's a great addition to the PIC portion of the universe.
If I've guessed it correctly, then this story squeezes in right between seasons 2 & 3, but perhaps don't take my word for it.
In any case, Wes shows up to help figure out who and what is screwing with the timeline, after Rafi and Seven and Guinan experience some temporal shenanigans.
"Oh, no!" - I immediately thought, here is another book that is going to try to up the scale of mayhem again, again, (again, again... ad infinitum). Thankfully, it wasn't at all that asinine. In fact, it's really a classic ST time travel story in many ways.
We actually do find out who is messing around with the timeline pretty early and then we spend quite a lot of time with them, so we also get fed a lot of their motivations. I guess the biggest mystery then, is just how far the culprit is prepared to go to achieve their desired outcome.
As with any good ST time travel story, this one tries to acknowledge all of the methods that have been discovered over the last six and a half decades of writing. And on top of that, this one does include some of the far future information that we've been given from the more recent iterations of the franchise. Excellence on both accounts.
It's a great addition to the PIC portion of the universe.
May 7, 2026
I stayed up all night to finish this. The time travel portion isn't exactly original...but it's part of a larger effort to tie in and address many dangling threads from all 3 seasons of Picard...and it somehow manages to do it all with uncanny, addictive brilliance. By rights this should be a house of cards fanwank that explodes under its own weight...instead, it's a massive gift to all TNG and Picard fans...it even manages to incorporate Discovery and the Kelvin timeline. This is ridiculously epic.
April 30, 2026
A really fun read for this Trekkie. Nice to have Wesley back in the action and actually spending time with his mother. This time travel/multi-verse adventure is the perfect read to add to your Star Trek 60th Anniversary celebration.
May 2, 2026
The thing with Star Trek novels is that they generally go one of two ways. The poor ones are overwritten, drowning in technical jargon and making references to stories and episodes that no one remembers. The great ones are filled with technical jargon, making references to stories that are remembered fondly and haven't been made mention of in far too long. Dayton Ward's latest is one of the good ones.
With references to Discovery, to Gary Seven and the Temporal Cold War, to the Metrons, even to the Abramsverse and the now sadly deceased expanded universe of novels, it would have been all too easy for this story to be drowned in that nostalgia. Instead it took each of them and used them to form a narrative that was impossibly high stakes, easily readable, and an excellent denouement to one of the best Star Trek series ever made. If it's meant to be the last of the Picard tie ins, which I hope it's not because someone still owes me a proper Captain Seven of Nine story, then I'm grateful that it was such a fun read. Can't recommend highly enough.
With references to Discovery, to Gary Seven and the Temporal Cold War, to the Metrons, even to the Abramsverse and the now sadly deceased expanded universe of novels, it would have been all too easy for this story to be drowned in that nostalgia. Instead it took each of them and used them to form a narrative that was impossibly high stakes, easily readable, and an excellent denouement to one of the best Star Trek series ever made. If it's meant to be the last of the Picard tie ins, which I hope it's not because someone still owes me a proper Captain Seven of Nine story, then I'm grateful that it was such a fun read. Can't recommend highly enough.
Review of advance copy
An entire book about time travel (which even references the Kelvin timeline) that features characters from all three seasons of Picard (plus one from Discovery), and yet there is not so much as even a single passing mention of Agnes Jurati. I understand if the showrunners haven't decided what to do with her and her new Borg faction post-Picard, but this basically pretending she never existed is seriously bizarre. (!) If it wasn't for The Last Starship comic series I would seriously think she was being retconned.
I have loved the Borg since I was a little autistic kid watching Trek in the '90s and was so excited for this fresh new direction for them. Star Trek has a long history of making enemies into friends, so it was a natural progression, and one with tons of creative potential. So where is it?
Also, the plot itself was a kitchen sink mess, and Seven is barely in it despite being on the cover. But that little shit Jack Crusher is in it even less, so there was one saving grace.
(Got to read this early thanks to a friend who owns a bookstore.)
I have loved the Borg since I was a little autistic kid watching Trek in the '90s and was so excited for this fresh new direction for them. Star Trek has a long history of making enemies into friends, so it was a natural progression, and one with tons of creative potential. So where is it?
Also, the plot itself was a kitchen sink mess, and Seven is barely in it despite being on the cover. But that little shit Jack Crusher is in it even less, so there was one saving grace.
(Got to read this early thanks to a friend who owns a bookstore.)
May 4, 2026
Shortly after the Changeling/Borg incursion that almost devastated the Federation, Captain Seven of Nine and Commander Raffi Musiker witness a temporal event aboard Seven's new command, the 'U.S.S. Titan', knocking them both into a coma. Admiral Picard and Dr Crusher rush to their friends' aid, only to find that they are reunited with Wesley, now an Aegis Traveler, who tells them that someone is trying to change history.
A very readable novel, considering that the timeline keeps changing throughout, this is well structured by Ward and ties all of the various iterations of 'Star Trek' together. The motivations of the antagonist are sympathetic and the characters are true to their television counterparts.
A very readable novel, considering that the timeline keeps changing throughout, this is well structured by Ward and ties all of the various iterations of 'Star Trek' together. The motivations of the antagonist are sympathetic and the characters are true to their television counterparts.
May 1, 2026
I wanted to enjoy this, but I couldn't quite work out what it was supposed to be.
On the one hand, you have an interesting view into Wesley, but on the other, all the fluff of old TNG-era visits.
Picard felt like he was there just for the name, and unlike the Dark Veil it didn't work here.
So not overly impressed, unfortunately. There also seemed to be a fair bit of overlap with the Voyager episode Relativity, which is one of my favourites.
On the one hand, you have an interesting view into Wesley, but on the other, all the fluff of old TNG-era visits.
Picard felt like he was there just for the name, and unlike the Dark Veil it didn't work here.
So not overly impressed, unfortunately. There also seemed to be a fair bit of overlap with the Voyager episode Relativity, which is one of my favourites.
May 6, 2026
It was ironic that I read this book a short time after I had read the first 2 books in the Department of Temporal Investigations, as it reminded me of those books except for the characters. This story was very good.
I hope that one of these Star Trek authors takes up writing about Star Fleet Academy. I believe that they would all do justice to those characters.......
I hope that one of these Star Trek authors takes up writing about Star Fleet Academy. I believe that they would all do justice to those characters.......
May 7, 2026
Someone's messing with the timelines..(god dammit Barry Allen!)
We must find out who's messing with the time lines..(Barry?)
Oh no it's a pissed off Romulin..(99% of the time it's a pissed off Romulin tbh)
We must fix the timelines.
Fixed em.
Job done.
Five stars because Wesley Crusher's in it.
Love, Wesley Crusher's number one (and probably only) fan.
We must find out who's messing with the time lines..(Barry?)
Oh no it's a pissed off Romulin..(99% of the time it's a pissed off Romulin tbh)
We must fix the timelines.
Fixed em.
Job done.
Five stars because Wesley Crusher's in it.
Love, Wesley Crusher's number one (and probably only) fan.
May 8, 2026
This is kind of in the vein of “All Good Things…” or “Shattered”. It gives us the opportunity to revisit some pivotal points from the past. Ward does a good job weaving together 60 years of Trek history, with elements from almost every series. It feels like wall to wall fan service which is generally very entertaining.
April 27, 2026
Arguably the most fun I’ve had with a Star Trek book in a while. It’s a fun compact multiverse adventure that doesn’t overstay its welcome, nor does it trash what came before like with a lot of NuTrek. This feels like a solid continuation of Picard season 3. Just fantastic all around
May 4, 2026
I have to say that Star trek novelists often have a better handle on what Star Trek is than the show runners. This was a homage to all the series, characters, etc. And as one who actually didn't mind Wesley Crusher's character in TNG...I loved this and was happy to see him featured.
Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews