Any of these DS9 books any good?

Discussion in 'Trek Literature' started by Tain, Mar 5, 2014.

  1. Tain

    Tain Ensign

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    I'm in a nostalgic mood for early DS9. Been 20 years since I started watching it, mid-season 2. Gun to your head, whats the best one of these? Besides 34th Rule :rommie: That's my favorite DS9 book, have read it so much i wore out the binding.

    Emissary
    The Siege
    Bloodletter
    The Big Game
    Fallen Heroes
    Betrayal
    Warchild
    Antimatter
    Proud Helios
    Valhalla
    Devil in the Sky
    The Laertian Gamble
    Station Rage
    The Long Night
    Objective: Bajor
    Invasion! #3: Time's Enemy
    The Heart of the Warrior
    Saratoga
    The Tempest
    Wrath of the Prophets
    Trial by Error
    Vengeance
    The 34th Rule
    Rebels #1: The Conquered
    Rebels #2: The Courageous
    Rebels #3: The Liberated
     
  2. ICW

    ICW Commander Red Shirt

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    I thought The Big Game was pretty fun.

    I've heard The Laertian Gamble is so bad it's good.
     
  3. Thrawn

    Thrawn Rear Admiral Premium Member

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    The Siege, Fallen Heroes, Station Rage, Invasion 3 (don't need to read the other Invasion novels either - this is a side-story).

    Those are all a blast. Station Rage is maybe a controversial choice, it's sort of Sisko vs. an ancient Cardassian as told in the style of Greek myth or something, a very weird book, but epic as hell.
     
  4. Greg Cox

    Greg Cox Admiral Premium Member

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    Fallen Heroes is probably the best of the bunch, and that includes mine.
     
  5. KRAD

    KRAD Keith R.A. DeCandido Admiral

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    I'd say the best of the bunch are:

    The Siege
    The Big Game
    Fallen Heroes
    Devil in the Sky
    Invasion! #3: Time's Enemy
    The 34th Rule
     
  6. ronny

    ronny Fleet Captain Fleet Captain

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    Good list but I'd replace Devil in the Sky with Bloodletter but then I probably like K.W. Jeter than most people here. My favorite of the bunch is Fallen Heroes.
     
  7. Christopher

    Christopher Writer Admiral

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    The Siege: Good, and surprisingly authentic for a first novel -- although a couple of its details were later contradicted.

    Fallen Heroes: Really impressive. Has a couple of glaring inconsistencies with the show, notably assuming a 28-hour station day instead of 26 (not a minor detail, since timing is central to the story). But it's still one hell of a powerful tale.

    Valhalla, Betrayal: These two actually go together as sort of a loose duology in this order, although Valhalla was postponed and had an anachronistic reference to the Defiant tacked on even though it's clearly meant to be in the first or early second season. These books aren't standouts, but the two-part arc about Cardassian politics is kind of interesting.

    Objective: Bajor: This one's fairly interesting, although it's really a story about the guest aliens with the DS9 cast in a supporting role.

    Invasion! #3: Time's Enemy: This is one of my favorites. And it's arguably the most standalone of the four Invasion! novels, so you don't need to read the others.

    The 34th Rule: This is the only other one that really stands out in my memory. It's a little hard to fit into the chronology of the fourth season because it takes so long, but it's a strong story and it's referenced in the DS9 relaunch.
     
  8. Dukhat

    Dukhat Admiral Admiral

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    I'm pretty sure I've read all those books at one time or another, and while I can't really tell you which one on your list is the absolute best, I can tell you which ones to avoid: The Rebels trilogy. Those books are god-awful, and they read almost like the author hadn't actually watched a single episode of DS9 before writing them (which can't have been the case, since the author was Daffydd ab Hugh, who had previously written "Fallen Heroes", a terrific DS9 book. Curiously, the writing styles of his good book and this trilogy seemed quite different too. Hmmm...).
     
  9. zarkon

    zarkon Captain Captain

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    Objective: Bajor & The 34th Rule are brilliant
    Station Rage & The Long Night are pretty fun too, though not on the same level
    Antimatter creeped me out when I was younger. lotsa bugs
    I would probably avoid The Laertian Gamble and Rebels
     
  10. PKS8304

    PKS8304 Lieutenant Commander Red Shirt

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    Hi, I read all these in High School. I have Invasion #3 in a set. I know several I liked while I was reading them but the only book off that list I still own is Objective: Bajor. Great read!
     
  11. Mr Light

    Mr Light Admiral Admiral

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    It's been a loooooooooooong time but I remember liking Fallen Heroes and Station Rage. And, of course, 34th Rule and Stitch in Time.
     
  12. Sho

    Sho Fleet Captain Fleet Captain

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    Time's Enemy is one of my favorite Trek novels, despite not liking the other Invasion! books much. It has some of the best-written character scenes I've ever read in TrekLit, particularly for Bashir and Dax. The moments in that book ended up shaping how I think of those characters.
     
  13. DS9forever

    DS9forever Commodore Commodore

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    I like Heart of the Warrior as it features the Changeling infiltration storyline of DS9 season four, as well as the Maquis storyline. Oddly, the main storyline with Worf, Odo and Kira in the Dominion seems the weakest. The Changelings in the novel have names, although the novel was released before the Female Changeling specifically said she didn't have a name in "Behind the Lines" so I guess you can't complain about that.

    Saratoga by Michael Jan Friedman is pretty good as well; some people found it too similar to Friedman's TNG novel Reunion although I find the characters in Saratoga more realistic.
     
  14. tomswift2002

    tomswift2002 Commodore Commodore

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    Don't forget, Fallen Heroes also had a door on the turbolift in Ops.

    Valhalla, if you were wondering what happened to "Pup" from The Forsaken, is the sequel to the episode. And, from what I recall of both Valhalla & Betrayal occur between In The Hands Of The Prophets and the Circle Trilogy.

    Warchild also takes place just before Valhalla and is the first book of the three-part arc the was being told in Warchild-Valhalla-Betrayal. The Revanche party first appears in Warchild and then reappears in Valhalla.

    Heart Of the Warrior is also good, although I remember that after I read the book I saw the episode that featured the crew reusing the hijacked Dominion ship in a story that was very similar to this book.

    I just read The Long Night recently and I found that it was a very interesting story; the weakest part of this story is probably the Prologue.

    But, avoid The Laertian Gamble, unless you want to keep having a new Chapter start after every three sentences.
     
  15. Garrovick

    Garrovick Commander Red Shirt

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    Yes, I always wondered how The Laertian Gamble made it through editing like that - 70-some odd chapters in a 270 page book? That's nuts - and a number of those chapters were less than a page long. Although, even without that flaw I didn't like it very much - I kind of got the feeling that the author was going for a Douglas Adams-esque feel but it didn't work.

    I really liked Devil In The Sky - I remember thinking that it would have made a great two-part episode in the early seasons of the show.
     
  16. Reanok

    Reanok Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

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    I really like Time's enemy it's areally exciting story.It has great character development for Julian Bashir& Jadzia Dax in this novel. I also like Fallen heroes and Devil in the sky.Emissary is another book I like this novel a lot. it's been awhile since I've read this list of ds9 books.Some books stories were better written others were okay Laertian gamble is better tan Warped that novel is least favorite of all ds9 novels..
     
  17. Greg Cox

    Greg Cox Admiral Premium Member

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    Thanks! That was my very first Trek novel (co-written with John Betancourt, of course.)
     
  18. Christopher

    Christopher Writer Admiral

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    There's no "right" or "wrong" chapter length -- it's at the discretion of the author. It's not a "flaw," it's a choice. I've read plenty of books with dozens of very short chapters, and plenty of books with only a few extremely long chapters. Authors who use short chapters often do so in order to create a sense of a faster pace.

    http://www.goodreads.com/list/show/7820.Books_with_short_chapters

    And for your information, the author of The Laertian Gamble, Robert Sheckley, began his career as an acclaimed writer of absurdist and comedic science fiction before Douglas Adams even started grade school. Sheckley was the person Adams based his style on, not the other way around.
     
    Last edited: Mar 6, 2014
  19. Greg Cox

    Greg Cox Admiral Premium Member

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    Basically, The Laertian Gamble happened because John Ordover, who was editing the Trek books at the time, is the world's biggest Sheckley fan and couldn't resist giving one of his all-time favorite writers a shot at writing a Star Trek novel. It was an experiment that perhaps didn't pan out as well as everyone hoped.
     
  20. tomswift2002

    tomswift2002 Commodore Commodore

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