Devil's Heart - "My Precious"

The Devil's Heart is a Star Trek: The Next Generation novel, set sometime after Picard gets borgified. Preface for this review, I took like almost a 3 month break from reading this book in the middle so some details are hazy...

Premise

The book opens with the Enterprise answering a distress call from T'Sara, a Vulcan archeologist that Picard is obsessed with. However, when they arrive at the planet, T'Sara and her entire crew are found to have been brutally murdered. The cause for the murder is unclear, until Picard and his crew begin to find clues that T'Sara may have fought a highly sought after relic of intense power, the Devil's Heart.

Spoiler Plot Summary

Leaving the planet for Vulcan investigators, the Enterprise has more questions than answers; until they come across a Ferengi vessel dead in the water. Picard finds the mythical gem clutched in the hands of the ship's dead captain. Once in possession of the Heart, Picard joins a long line of Gem-Bearer's, whose history he learns in intense dreams and visions projected by the Heart. Many chapters are spent reflecting on the journey of the gem, which has played a role in the legends of many alien races, including Klingons, Romulans, and three races of aliens that were once one, who had been saved from destruction by the gem opening three gates for each faction to colonize new worlds. I enjoyed this departure from the Enterprise story, and I think creativity like this is a prime example of the potential for story telling that can only be executed in Trek books, when compared to the show.

In fact, we get more storylines, including the crew of a Romulan ship, a starbase captain and her queer-coded fortune teller scoundrel friend (the same race as Guinan I think?), some Iconians trying to join the Federation (one of the 3 races), the un-Di-Wahns trying to unify their race (2 out of 3), and a young boy who is the last of the Ikkabar (3 out of 3).  To note is that these races have been discussed at length in the TNG episode "Contagion".This book is longer than the average Trek novel, but this is a lot of ground to cover in one book. I think the only storyline I really could care less about was the lost alien boy, who's chapter POVs were few and far between, and unlike the rest of these characters, didn't play a role in the final fate of the Heart.

Speaking of, much like the One Ring, the Heart corrupts (because of course), and even though Picard sees the grizzly fates of every past Gem-Bearer, he is resistant to giving up the Heart, much to the chagrin of his senior officers. Crusher, Troi, and Riker are the crew who get the most page time, and I enjoyed the inclusion of Crusher and Picard's relationship, and how the death of her husband affected it. As Picard gets more and more obsessive, the Enterprise has to dodge enemies trying to take the stone for themselves, even causing their allies to turn on them. The starbase I mentioned gets blown up by Romulans, only for their bird-of-prey to be sabotaged for a member of their own crew (I'm still confused who he is; I think he's implied to be a descendent of the Romulan gem-bearer, and thus knew the danger of its power).

The finale of the book, we learn that the gem is a "seed" of the Guardian of Forever, who was introduced in TOS, but most recently was featured on an episode of Discovery. Picard comes to view the gem as sentient, a piece of the Guardian, and its journey should be helped and not stopped, ending the centuries of bloodshed the Heart has brought to its bearers. Through a vision, Picard finds the gem's destination, apparently a wormhole brought about every 5,000 year. O'Brien transports the gem into the wormhole, and everybody who was about to blast the Enterprise to pieces backs off, knowing that its journey is complete.

Final Thoughts

Overall, I think if some of the less rewarding plotlines had been dropped (maybe even the lesbians on the starbase, as much as it pains me to say), this book would have been much more readable. There were many times I forgot who was who, especially adding in the lore of 3 different races. I think spending more time on this and less time on alien races we get to see all the time, would have been interesting. I rated it 3.5 stars because it's truly crazy to me how solid the writing of this book was, like how come in 2025 I read a book that's like not a spinoff of a Star Trek tv show and the writing is noticeably worse than this? Let's throwback to the 90's and get our shit together.