Anyone interested in sharing their favorite standalone novel in series (TOS, TNG, VOY, etc) There are lots of great trilogies (destiny) and miniseries (vanguard) out there but what about those that are standalone? To start, mine are: TNG: immortal coil TOS: prime directive
Though it's been un-continuitied by so much, I thought Federation really was impactful as a book. After that, The Captain's Daughter, though I may like that more because my mom brought it home for me on a sick day when I was really young and it's a fond memory.
100% standalones only (not including some of my favourites like Final Frontier or Dreadnought which because part of a loose duology later with Best Destiny and Battle Stations) A few have been left quite far out of continuity by later Trek canon and/or the novelverse (case in point: Federation, which was totally contradicted by First Contact, and The Final Reflection, which is about very different Klingons to the ones in TNG, DS9 and ENT) TOS: Crossroad The Final Reflection Prime Directive The Time Trap Ishmael The Pandora Principle Federation (TNG crossover) TNG: Dark Mirror Q-Squared The Devil's Heart DS9: Fallen Heroes A Stitch in Time The 34th Rule VOY: The Escape Echoes Battle Lines ENT: Rosetta
The Neverending Sacrifice. It a really unexpected novel, and I ended up enjoying it immensely. I also enjoyed the really tragic short story 'A Gutted World'.
TOS : The Final Reflection TNG : Q-Squared DS9 : 34th rule NF : Once Burned Also, "Federation" doesn't truly belong to any one era but deserves to be on any "best of" list for me. "Where Sea Meet Sky" is a great pike book, and the six book "Errand of Vengance/Errand of Fury" is my favourite mini-series.
TOS Uhura's song ,Wounded sky ,Spock's world.Corona A choice of Catastrophies TNG Imzadi Battle of betazed Brinkmanship . Ds9 Emmissary&Unity Favorite son Ds9 .The millenum trilogy. ENT Rosetta & The xindi novel by J.M.Dillard The Good that men do also The Rise of the federation book1. Voy Children of the storm.
^The Vulcan Academy Murders isn't entirely a standalone, though, since it has a direct sequel, The IDIC Epidemic. Or is that too strict a definition a "standalone?"
the ones I enjoyed Strangers from the Sky Vendetta Best Destiny Enterprise: The First Adventure The Vulcan Academy Murders Vendetta
Same here. I've read about 100 or so (have about 90 of them, in a box somewhere) since the early 80s and this is the only one for which I recall the title instantly and remember in any great detail (and I read it when it was first published). One of my biggest disappointments about Klingons on-screen after this book came out is how different (and inferior, to me) they have been compared to those in this book.
Off the top of my head and in no particular order: Federation Final Frontier (It had a sequel, but I count it as a stand alone because that's how it was originally published) Prime Directive Imzadi
TOS: I can't decide between The Pandora Principle, Final Frontier or Prime Directive? DS9: The Never Ending Sacrifice TLE: Serpents Among the Ruins And one that doesn't really fit anywhere: DTI: Watching the Clock
I think it would be too strict if The Vulcan Academy Murders wasn't originally written with a sequel in mind. If it was, then I'd say it's fair.
A couple older novels that haven't been mentioned here: TOS: The Entropy Effect by Vonda McIntyre (the first Pocket original novel, published in 1981) TNG: War Drums by John Vornholt I also remember really liking Chain of Attack by Gene DeWeese, although it's technically not a standalone since it had a sequel, The Final Nexus (which I did not enjoy as much), and also a very loose connection (a couple references in the text) to the earlier novel The Abode of Life.
It would be more fitting to say that Chain of Attack was a loose sequel to The Abode of Life, in that it began with the Enterprise returning to investigate the same space warp phenomenon that they'd fallen through in that novel and discovered it was part of a much larger network of "gates" (essentially wormholes). The references to TAoL are vague enough that you could read the book without realizing it was a sequel, but it essentially was, in that its events were directly precipitated by, and occurred soon after, the events of TAoL. Although a thought just occurred to me that somehow has never occurred to me in the past 26 years since CoA came out: perhaps the book wasn't conceived as a TAoL sequel, but the references were added in because the two books dealt with similar ideas.
There's only one STAR TREK novel I've read cover to cover and that is "TNG: Foreign Foes," which is so bad, with its cliches and homages, that it's surprisingly charming! And it took two authors, which is the most amusing bit: Dave Galanter and Greg Brodeur. Hmmm ... the only other book in this vein I've (mostly) read is "TOS: Spock, Messiah." Both of these I found in the Cheap Bin and unexpectedly, too! I enjoy Classic literature and Shakespeare. This, in fact, is what I spend the most time reading - when I have the time, that is ...