What's a good numbered ds9 novel? I've read all the relaunch stuff, but I miss the crew that was int he series.
There are many. I enjoyed the early numbered DS9 novels much more than I did the early seasons of the show. The Siege by Peter David was the first original DS9 novel, and as such isn't totally compatible with the series (Odo's mass remains constant whatever his size, which is perfectly logical and sensible), but it's excellent. IIRC, Bloodletter featured some concepts from the series bible that never made it into the show proper, like ships needing engine modifications at the station before being able to travel safely through the wormhole. It also seemed to envision a much larger DS9 where ships could land in hangers for this engine mod. Fallen Heroes is violent and very memorable. As the author said in Voyages of Imagination, he wanted the back cover blurb to simply read.... Spoiler: .... Everybody dies!
Best ones for me: #15 Objective: Bajor by John Peel -Really fun book, has great aliens with a rather interesting and fundamental problem. #23 The 34th Rule by David R George & Armin Shimerman -Brilliant book focusing on quark and how Ferengi tick, with a superb payoff at the end. The Millennium trilogy by Judith and Garfield Reeves-Stevens -Three great books with an epic feel A Stitch in Time is brilliant but isn't set during the series(set before & after focusing on garak, no ds9 crew) - just mentioning it in case you haven't read it. The Siege, The Long Night, Antimatter & Saratoga are all fairly fun, though not on the level of the above books.
L. A. Graf's Time's Enemy isn't strictly speaking among the numbered ones, but set during the series' run and IMHO has some of the strongest DS9 character scenes put on paper.
Actually the books of the Invasion! crossover did have series numbers within their respective series, although they were only printed on the spines, not the front covers. First Strike is TOS #79, The Soldiers of Fear is TNG #41, Time's Enemy is DS9 #16, and The Final Fury is VGR #9.
I really dug the Invasion books, but the foruth one left me cold. Daffyb ab hugh (sp?) really made a lot of continutity\tech goofs in his novels, from Balance of Power to the trilogy Rebels. It really takes me out of it when so much was wrong.
Personally I actually didn't care for the Invasion arc, but the Bashir/Dax stuff in Time's Enemy is just golden.
Time's Enemy is the best of the Invasion! miniseries, and it's peripheral to the others so it can somewhat stand on its own as a solo novel. (Basically it's a story about the ancient enemy of the civilization featured in the other three books.)
That's odd, since Species 8472 wouldn't have been aware of our universe prior to the Borg incursion of the 2370s.
The "ancient enemy" was pretty much the only thing I didn't like about Time's Enemy - it really didn't interest me at all. The Jadzia/Bashir stuff was fantastic though.
I haven't read all the numbered books yet, but here are a few that I think are good 6 Betrayal 7 Warchild 8 AntiMatter 10 Valhalla (features the return of the "Pup" program from Season 2) 13 Station Rage (good for Hallowe'en) 14 The Long Night (just read this recently and it kept me on the edge of my seat, except for the Prologue) 17 The Heart Of The Warrior (aka The Trojan Starship) 20 Wrath of the Prophets (funny how Ro doesn't remember this one later)
^It's worth noting that Valhalla is actually meant to come before Betrayal (it was delayed), and the two of them form sort of a loose duology about a particular faction in Cardassian politics. So they should ideally be read in reverse order. There was a passing reference to the Defiant slipped into Valhalla, but it doesn't fit the rest of the book, which is clearly meant to be in the first or second season. (The "Pup" was actually from the first-season episode "The Forsaken.")
My favorites were The Siege, Fallen Heroes, Invasion: Time's Enemy, and Station Rage. Station Rage in particular is really unique; kind of Deep Space Nine as epic myth.
With Warchild I'm kind of surprised that the Nekor or her sister have not made reappearances in the DS9 novels.