You know, the jump in the Voyager storyline was three years and it was filled with a single book. But the way that Kirsten did it was totally believable and made you feel like you hadn't been robbed of the stories of those three years and that no one missed anything. The years that were skipped over were essentially boring, sparse story time. If something similar could be done with Deep Space Nine, I'd be very happy. Otherwise I'll always feel like we were robbed of 5 years story time.
^The only problem with that is that RBoE made it clear that there were quite a few major events in the years between the Typhon Pact and The Soul Key. Although, I honestly wouldn't be that upset if the gaps were simply filled in through dialogue and exposition in later books.
Yes - it's got rather good ! It also depends on whether you want new proper Trek in your life or not...
Nope, because it's never too late to start again. I stopped reading back about twelve or thirteen years ago and just started again after my wife gave me my Kindle this past Christmas. Since then I've completed the DS9 relaunch and have a good start on the Voyager/TNG relaunch. I'm up through about the sixth book of the A Time To... series and have really enjoyed everything I've read so far. I'm salivating for Destiny and am hoping to make it through, or at least to, that series by year's end. Back before I'd stopped reading, back in the last millennium, I'd gotten burned out on a lot of the crisis of the week, single episode, stand-alone novels. Even thirteen years ago, I’d pretty much given up except for the special hard-covers and any specials or series. Even at that point I’d pretty much stopped reading the stand-alones. I’m sure I missed some gems during that time but it just seemed like they (S&S) were just shoveling the novels out at the time and I just couldn’t keep up and I wondered about the quality of this "shovelware". Anyway, most everything published as part of the relaunches have been great reads and I fell in love with Vanguard, Mirror Universe and Myriad Universes. I’m looking forward to starting the first Titan novel in a month or two. So, all of this was to say, I know from experience that, regardless of your reasons for stopping reading TrekLit, you can start reading again at any time and, yes, you can fall in love all over again. Enjoy. -Byron
I hear you. I stopped reading during the 90s too - for exactly the reasons you described. And I've been a reader off and on since the early 80s. 10 years ago is when I started reading again. That's when things got good. There've been good years and bad years since, but mostly good. (Bad years aren't really bad, just a lot of series I don't read as much.) For a long while they were doing 2 books a month. Talk about shovelware! And its impossible to keep up. There was a period (about 5 years ago?) where I was really into Star Wars books and fell a few years behind on Trek, during the NJO series. But I got sick of Star Wars (too much negativity and dark side crap, Betrayal is where I gave up). But I've since caught up. I've even caught up on most of what I skipped back in the 90s! Lots of great books out there. And since there's no televised Trek anymore, the books are all we have to get our "fix." Happy reading!
I used to read Trek books all the time. My parents actually just brought me all of my books from their house, and there were about 4 giant Rubbermaid bins full of them! The only Trek books that I've been keeping up with have been the New Frontier novels, and even then, I'm still behind. I bought "Treason" when it first came out, and I still haven't read it. When they were originally released, I tried to read the DS9 relaunch, but I had a really hard time. I think I read the first 4 novels (Avatar 1 & 2, Section 31, and Gateways), but I just didn't care about anything that was going on. The new characters like Elias Vaughn, who everybody seems to love, just didn't do anything for me, so I stopped reading. I had heard bad things about the VOY relaunch, so I never even bothered with those. I had heard mediocre things about the "A Time To..." series, and I was so disheartened after watching "Nemesis," that I pretty much decided not to bother with the TNG relaunch either. I dunno...my favorite Trek novels have always been some of the bigger standalone stories featuring the TOS crew, like "Sarek" and "Federation." I guess I just don't have a lot of interest in the "expanded universe" of Star Trek, and since that's about all there is anymore, I find myself not wanting to read TrekLit.
If nothing else, I'd recommend the last three books of A Time to... If that doesn't pique your interest in other aspects of the relaunch, I can't imagine that anything will, and they aren't -highly- "expanded universe", nor do you need to have read the earlier books in the series to appreciate them.
If my recollections are in any way reliable, you'll end up finding ways to make time to read them much faster.
Some of my favorite things from the novelverse (in no order): The Borg War and the buildup to it Elias Vaughn Prynn Tenmei Taran'atar Ro on DS9 Andorian relationships/reproduction crisis Breen subspecies Neural parasites Picard-Crusher marriage Geordi getting lucky Ascendants (though more from what I hope how badass they are instead of what we have seen thus far) Post-Nemesis Romulan politics Trip's resurrection (initially at least) The Typhon Pact (more in theory than in execution thus far) Vanguard The Lost Era Luna and Vesta class ships Kristen Beyer's take on Voyager