Or, you're simply not letting yourself enjoy new characters. Lots of fans rejected the idea of Saavik. And probably would have felt the same about Xon had "Phase II" gone ahead. Had the novels been ongoing series and movies, new characters would come and go. (Guinan and Ro Laren were pretty popular late additions to TNG.) And regulars would leave.
I think this is where we differ. You read Trek novels, I read novels that happen to be set in the Star Trek universe.
I don't think Pocket cares why we buy them or what we do with them as long as they get our $7.99. But I'm a Star Trek fan and end up buying all of the MMPB's. I even have The Eternal Tide, even though I have no plans on ever reading it.
Sure, but do you also resist allowing yourself to grow to like new canonical characters? As for the books, I had no intention of liking Bonifay in the "Challenger" books, but wow, what an amazing, quirky character he turned out to be. Chen in the recent TNG books, too. And the aliens in "Ex Machina".
The last Trek Lit book I spent money on was The Eternal Tide. I enjoyed reading it, and I'm glad I bought it.
One of my favorite characters in Trek Lit is Miranda Kadohata, and I hope to see more of her (maybe a writer on here can shed some light on that?) I definitely think that the newer characters can be as interesting as the TV characters,
I'm hoping that when we get some flashback stories, set in the seven years of the TV series, we might get some Miranda stories inserting her into behind the scenes of aired adventures.
I'd like to see Kadohata return too. And it would also be nice if Faur got some kind of character development... as it is now, she seems pretty much a cipher. Generally speaking, I'm all for lit-only characters. I like to see the universe expanded beyond just the TV shows. IMHO Vanguard is one of the best series in recent memory, and it was (almost) all lit-only characters!