OK then, maybe I have something to look forward to. I'm half way through the VOY numbered books and was thinking the only good one of what was left was going to be the Greg Cox novel.
Keith - if it makes you feel any better, I had a few days without net access between my last book and starting Gateways, so I re-read the IKS Gorkon series. I enjoyed it even more on a re-read than I did the first time, and I thought it was a great read last year when I picked it up.
Finally read the first ever Star Trek book, "Star Trek 1" by James Blish. Review is here. Overall, was nice to remind myself of the original series episodes but some of them just didn't translate to written form.
Well, if you didn't like The Murdered Sun, you might not like the rest of Golden's output either. But I still think her books were among the best of the during-the-series VGR novels.
Thanks! I feel better now. And Christopher deserves all the credit for introducing Choudhury..... Thank you! I was just rereading those books last year in prep for writing The Klingon Art of War (as well as reading some other folks' Klingon books like The Final Reflection and Kahless), and I'm pleased with the work I did with Klag and the gang...
Well, Dave Mack created the character for Destiny, though she appeared first in Greater Than the Sum and I developed much of her personality (including her spiritual/intellectual side).
If you want to call creating a third (and by far worst) version of the characters "damage control" .... Still Christopher's worst novel IMO.
I didn't "create a third version," I tried to take what had been established about the characters in the previous books and reconcile it all. Although I was most strongly informed by Keith's portrayals of the characters.
To be fully honest, I avoided the series originally because I thought any focus on Klingons was bound to be insufferably cheesy and stereotype-dependent. I'm glad I was wrong. I found that what I enjoy about the books I have been reading (note that I'm about a decade behind but making progress) is that I like books that make me feel like I'm reading a TV episode, and the Gorkon books were a pleasant step outside of that comfort zone, while still retaining the 'feel' of the episodes. It felt like those novels would have comfortably fit in with any of the TNG or DS9 story arcs. I will eventually get to your more recent novels, but I'm still a few hundred books off, which is a nice feeling because I know I have years of literary entertainment ahead of me. I haven't even touched the majority of the TOS #'d novels, or Voyager, and I've put down over a hundred in the last year.
Finished No Time Like The Past this morning. Normally I avoid both TOS and Voyager novels, but this one had me intrigued, and I loved it. Captured the feel of the original series very well. Seven has always been one of my favourite characters from Voyager (the other being the Doctor), though in general I didn't like the show much, so having the character in a different context was entertaining. Now I've finished rewatching Enterprise, I'm going to make a start on the Rise of The Federation novels.
Maybe you weren't planning to create a third version, but at least to me they felt like that. If everyone thought Peter David's versions of the characters were off/bad, I don't get why his version of the characters weren't simply ignored. Even if you tried to stay close to Keith's version, your's felt like a bad hybrid IMO and I personally enjoyed both Keith's and PAD's characters more than your "reconciled" ones.
At the time I plotted and wrote GTTS, Before Dishonor hadn't come out yet. I had the copyedited manuscript mailed to me for reference. I didn't know what "everyone thought," or would think later on -- and of course there are plenty of people who like the book, since there's nothing that "everyone" in Trek fandom ever agrees on. Indeed, I was hired for the express purpose of resolving the loose threads from Before Dishonor. That was the assignment as Margaret Clark presented it to me -- to tie those threads off in order to clear the board for Destiny. Far from being asked to ignore the novel, I was asked to write its direct sequel. But since that book was part of a sequence, I took the previous two books into account as well, and I did my best to treat them all as a cohesive whole.
I'm on the second Gateways book ("Chainmail", by Diane Carey), and I have to admit I'm having a hard time with it. It's totally throwing me for a loop. I'm not the most sophisticated member of the TrekLit audience, but I'm no dumbass either, and I'm having a very difficult time following it. I'm only about 20% in so I'm giving it a chance - with each new chapter, I expect familiar characters and settings and I'm not getting them. The author presents this sci-fi world that I have no reference to, but is supposed to be set in a fictional world that I am familiar with, and uses terms native to this setting that I seem expected to understand already - but I don't. It's like visiting your hometown and every familiar landmark is missing.. It's possible that maybe my imagination has become faulty by reading novels in the same familiar setting for the last couple years, and I need to branch out a little more. I'm going to finish this one, although I think I'm going to be just as confused in the end as I am now, and put it on a re-read list for sometime in the future.
Well that would explain it - the New Earth books launch Challenger. Without reading those, you're basically watching a mid-season episode of a show without seeing the pilot.
Good to know, thank you. I guess I should research better before buying. Since I'm early in, maybe I should skip this one, finish the series, read the New Earth books and come back to it. The Gateways books don't seem to dependent on one another.
^Right. Most Trek novel crossovers are designed so that the individual installments are more closely linked to their own series than to the rest of the crossover, so you only need to read the ones you're interested in. It's only since Destiny that the crossovers have been more interlinked.