I have a few question about them. I am currently trying to read the DS9 relaunch books (just read Saction 31 Abyss) I am trying to stay in order but don't really feel like reading all 7 gateway books. 1. Do I need to read the other gateway books to know whats going on in the DS9 books? 2. If I skip gateway #4 and 7 and proceed to the DS9 book Mission Gamma will I miss anything important?
IIRC, you can just read the DS9 book and its conclusion in What Lay Beyond (book 7), and get a complete story. I would recommend reading the TNG and NF books as well, just to get a wider view of the story, as unfolding in the AQ at the 24th century.. .. and as for skipping the DS9 book altogether - why would you want to miss out on a KRAD novel?
You can make sense out of Twilight without having read the Gateways stories, but I would recommend reading the DS9 Gateways stories if you can lay hands on copies. Just like Abyss, the characters experience growth and change, and it is not necessary to read the other books in the crossover to understand what is happening.
Well, I didn't read them all, but the DS9 and NF ones are good. And if you read novel, you really should read the story in What Lay Beyond, it's the end of the story begun in the novel, so IMO not reading it would be like stopping 5 or 6 chapters from the end of the novel.
No to question 1, hell yes to question 2. The Gateways books are only very tenuously connected to each other; they're independent tales of how the various crews react to a single quadrant-spanning crisis, and each of them can stand apart from the rest. But the DS9 installments of Gateways are integral parts of the DS9 post-finale narrative. They're DS9 books first, Gateways second.
I'm about a third though Twilight at the mo, and although it's great, I'm annoyed that I didn't know to read the Gateways book beforehand It keeps rubbing it in with references! I hate missing out!
I would recommend reading at least the TNG portions of Gateways (Doors into Chaos and "The Other Side") as well as the DS9. The TNG installments are really the core of the Gateways story, dealing with the root causes of the crisis while the other 24th-century ones deal with various side effects (and the 23rd-century ones are more a prologue). So some things that are resolved offscreen in the DS9 portions are a bit clearer if you read their "onscreen" resolution in the TNG portions. Still, if you're only interested in the DS9 storyline, you can follow it just fine without any of the non-DS9 Gateways books.
I agree. The DS9 book was the best of the lot, IMO, but the TNG book set the main stage. I'm trying to remember, does Troi get her own mini-command in Doors? The USS Marco Polo, maybe? Or am I mis-remembering things?
^that is correct. the NF one is all kinds of awesome, but it's an NF book first, Gateways second and if you haven't read at least the eXcalibur trilogy before hand you're going to miss some of what they're talking about.