What does "pure TNG" mean? Ah, but by your logic re: "pure TNG," I don't think Paths of Disharmony is "pure" Typhon Pact. It only featured the Tholians in a short role at the very end; most of it was a standard TNG adventure set on Andor.
^Good point. The events of Paths of Disharmony are catalyzed by the Tholians, but it's not a novel about the Tholians. It's the odd one out in the first group of five TP-titled works (four novels and my e-book), because the idea behind the other four was to do a Worlds of DS9-style spotlight on each of the Typhon Pact members they featured, and thereby reveal more about these previously minor races -- the Gorn, the Breen, the Tzenkethi, the Kinshaya. (RBoE focused on the Romulans as well as the Tzenkethi, but we already knew them pretty well.) But PoD is not a spotlight on the Tholians in the same way; it's a spotlight on the Andorians, with the eventual discovery that the Tholians are manipulating things behind the scenes. So it's not really a Typhon Pact story in the same way the others are. It's a Federation-centric story about events that are triggered by the Typhon Pact.
Like I said earlier, and like Christopher has said in the past, the Typhon Pact isn't a 'series' of ST novels or even a 'story arc' in the traditional sense; it's a 'status quo' state of being for the ST novelverse. However, it's not an all-pervasive status quo, as there are clearly other things happening in the novelverse outside of the machinations of the Pact and its member worlds.
An actual TNG novel I think, not one that just uses the name and has the Enterprise-(D or E) and crew show briefly. case in point despite Double or Nothing being labeled as a TNG novel and having Riker and Picard in it it was really a New Frontier novel. Just like how Indistinguishable from Magic seems more like a novel staring the U.S.S. Challenger and its crew, heck if not for the ending this would seem like the first book in a new novel series.
And what does that mean? Is "The Inner Light" somehow not a true TNG story because it only briefly features the Enterprise crew and has Patrick Stewart playing a different character most of the episode? Is "Soldiers of the Empire" not a true DSN episode because most of it focuses on the crew of the I.K.S. Rotarran? Is "Far Beyond the Stars" not a true DSN episode because it's mostly about Benny Russell? Is "Lower Decks" not a true TNG episode because it focuses on lower-ranking characters? Is "In A Mirror, Darkly" not a true ENT episode for focusing on the Mirror Universe counterparts? Is "Living Witness" not a true VOY episode for focusing on a backup copy of the EMH in the far future? I just don't see how a novel about Geordi is somehow not a "legitimate" TNG novel just because it doesn't fit into someone else's idea about what a TNG novel ought to be about.
By that logic, every Titan novel is a TNG novel as well. It would also make IFM as much a TOS novel as a TNG one. When I read a Star Trek novel, I want to read about the people I've been watching on TV all these years. Not one here and one there. So shoot me... Heck, they've fractured DS9 so much that David George had to go through all kinds of gymnastics to get them back together for a 20th anniversary novel.
Well, when the U.S.S. Challenger gets its own series, I'll buy the idea that it's not a TNG novel. But Geordi is its main character, and he hasn't been spun off into any other series. So I rather think the title is right: The Next Generation: Indistinguishable from Magic. DSN the TV series itself "fractured" its cast, because DSN has a more realistic take on how its characters' careers would unfold than TNG.
Doesn't it also feature Guinan, Ogawa, Rasmussen, Bok, and Sela in fairly major roles? I haven't read it yet myself, but I remember a lot of talk about them when it came out, and they are all TNG characters. I've never understood when people are mad that books set after the series don't have the TV casts in them. They have to know going in that as long as the book is after the finale it's going to follow on where that left off and introduce new characters to replace those who left. If you want to read a story about the show cast go pick up an old book set during the show. As for people who are tired of the Typhon Pact getting so much attention. I think it makes sense that a lot of the big events going on in the current 24th Century stories would involve the TP, they are the first major rival the UFP has had since the Dominion. Complaining about the TP getting a lot of attention in the post-Destiny Trek novels is like complaining about Russia getting a lot of attention in Cold War novels.
But you've already had the Dominon war on TV, the Borg massacre and the Romulan war in the books. After a while, it gets repetitive. Just like captains banging members of the crew... Picard and Crusher, Riker and Troi, Janeway and Chakotay... And I'm not saying that growth in series is a bad thing. What's bad is the fact that we no longer get books set during the various 24th century series, there's no mix. I've been begging for new books set during the various TV series for years now.
But there's been no Typhon Pact war. The TP arc is about cold war, not actual war. There's a world of difference between a war story and a cold war story.
There's been a lot of people killing a lot of other people. Or did I misinterpret Zero Sum Game, Plagues of Night and Raise the Dawn? Death and destruction being the center of the 24th century books has gotten tiresome. I can see and hear and read about people killing other people on the 24-hour news channels and the Internet. TrekLit needs to take a step back from it.
I think it's unreasonable to expect Treklit not to be influenced by current events to some extent; all literature is influenced by the era in which it is produced. But even as you conflate war stories with cold war stories and complain about there being too much violence, you're ignoring the numerous pieces of Treklit published in the past few years that aren't about such things -- basically, the entire TOS, TTN, VOY, and DTI lines.
I'd say it's one of the strengths of Trek as a franchise that it has remained capable of reaching beyond pure escapism; that sets it apart among the large franchises of its league. That said, I can see wanting some variety within each series as well. But then it looks like Cold Equations will probably bring that for TNG, so why fret?