Nice cover; DS9.1 looks fantastic. I love (what appears to be) the Vanguardesque terrestrial enclosure.
such a great cover. This just gets a fire lit under my ass to finally get caught up on the 24th century stuff. I own all the books, but still to this day, i've only read everything up to Destiny. I still need to get through the Post-Destiny, Typhon Pact stuff. so i'll be starting tonight with "A Singular Destiny"
There are some weak points, but eventually you get to Plagues Of Night / Raise The Dawn, which is just phenomenal.
In general I like the design. Namely that Starfleet would be nostalgic enough to build an entirely new facility, but harken back to a Cardassian design when they could just as easily build one of their normal designs. It's kind of hard to make out what that green is, but yeah I suppose an arboretum would be reasonable. And the rim of that window appears to be bright like it's a force field. I can't tell if it's the angle, but the central core underneath looks to be slightly off kilter, as though it's farther back than that dome underneath. But wouldn't that be all one structure? I guess the only thing I'm a little confused by is the vertical rings. Not that they exactly made a lot of sense on the original station (shouldn't they have pointed outwards?). Seem like they'd be a hazard to navigation. Or simply block the view. I thought I remembered reading that there would be docks all up and down those rings, but would they be stacked up more on the vertical part? Or is a ship supposed to turn perpendicular to the horizontal plane of the station to link in? Like towards the top? Also, is it me or is that ring above the terrestrial enclosure not actually attached to the rest of the station? After the Mirandas were seemingly retired to make way for the Merians, it appears the Excelsiors could be the oldest class still in operation. Total speculation though obviously.
I'm pretty sure it was stated that O'Brien and Nog had a big hand in the design of the thing, so the deliberate visual reference may be their doing rather than Starfleet-at-large's. .
As stated at the source link, it's probably not the final render. The first releases of Trek novel covers are often drafts rather than final art.
The nebula in the background makes me think of Babylon 5, which always seemed to have a nebula or something colourful in the background of its stations, ships, battles and planets. [Edit: or a computer game world like Homeworld 2] Also the station seems not only to be a callback to old DS9, but also the artists' drawings in 'Far Beyond the Stars'
I like it! Not a bad cover. I'm really looking forward to reading these as I'm tired and disappointed in the TOS books we have gotten so far this year. I hope next year that Pocket schedules a lot less TOS. Although I have high hopes that Leisner's Shocks of Adversity, which arrived yesterday but have not started yet. Kevin
New article on Startrek.com about the novel and the station: http://www.startrek.com/article/first-look-the-next-generation-deep-space-nine-mini-series