Honestly, Destiny is a microcosm of the problems of the post-DS9 Trek novelverse:
-Another big Federation spanning crisis within five years of the Dominion War, a conflict that already kicked the shit out of the Alpha Quadrant
-The Borg not being dead, therefore plaguing the novels with the same curse as the shows, where their overwhelming force reduces them to an existential threat that must be eliminated for the sake of the franchise's own survival
-David Mack being let off the chain and just killing fucktons of people and planets for the sake of drama
-Early TNG sanctimoniousness in a lot of characters, despite literally all these people except the Voyager crew surviving a brutal ass war five years earlier that should've knocked some sense into them
-Key plot points revolving around super powerful aliens who are apparently too stupid to do shit rando-aliens did in a fucking one-off TNG episode, despite their superior tech, because they are massive assholes (which is at least consistent with how most alien races are portrayed in Trek)
Like, if you look at the criticisms of DS9 and Picard as being grimdark, they don't have shit on Destiny in terms of the death toll and long term repercussions that (should) result. Seriously, the fact that the Borg were hitting the Federation almost exclusively in Destiny means that, on top of the massive refugee crisis caused by the destruction of multiple planets that would stress an already weakened Federation, literally everybody who wants a piece of the Federation's territory would come in and kick the ass of whatever tatters of a border defense they have left. And that's assuming balkanization wouldn't kick in before that (it sure as fuck would after, as the worlds that can muster resources to defend themselves would horde that shit) due to the cumulative damage done by all the other multi-part novels.
And it's not like they can just go "We're rescinding the ban on Genesis tech to repair these busted up planets," because they did a fucking storyline that was apparently "Genesis caused super bad shit that's kicking in nearly a hundred years later."
The fact that the Federation survives a nightmare scenario that should break any interstellar nation speaks to the blind optimism that the writers apparently believe is part and parcel of Trek.
Compared to shit like that, one gory death, the Federation tossing their hands up and saying "fuck it" to helping out a race of douchebags that had to be tricked into siding with good, blowing up the Romulan sun & apparently balkanizing the Empire + creating a refugee crisis that generates racism on border worlds, and some of the wonky or dumb writing decisions of Picard are small time. At least Michael Chabon and company comprehend that narrative brutality must be applied on a small scale for maximum effect, haven't engaged in Mass Effect 3 levels of scorched earthing the setting, and don't leave me asking "How the fuck does the Federation still exist?"