Dr. Soong wasn't really dead, he just went into hiding. When he heard about Data's sacrifice, he tracked down B-4, pulled Data's memory files into his own body, which can pass for human and a bunch of other stuff. But that's the gist of it.

I agree, and that's why I liked the way they brought him back in the books. B-4 was treated like his own sentient entity and not some tool to be used to bring Data back to life.

What Milo left out was that Soong did die. Or his body did. But right after the death scene from TNG, he crawled into a machine that transferred his mind, piece-by-piece (to supposedly maintain continuity of experience) into a new, improved android body. It had more capabilities and looked more like a young Soong than Data or Lore did.

So later when Data is able to take over Soong's new android body, it's because Soong chose to sacrifice himself for his son. It was beautiful really. And if they would use that kind of scenario in TV, it would like Spiner play Data without having to wear all that make-up. It would also allow him to look older because Soong's new android body was able to modify its appearance as he wished. If Data wanted to age along with all his friends (like in the TNG finale), that would totally be possible.

The only flaw in my opinion is that they didn't find a reason to put Data back on the Enterprise. Yes, it did make sense that he wouldn't want to go right back to where he was before he "died" and that he was kind of a different person now with different goals. But c'mon. That means we still are left without Data stories. There were one or two follow-up novels about Data, and they were great. But meanwhile there were four times as many TNG novels that are already missing much of the TNG cast. It would've been great to have Data back there.