Boy that sounds generic. In not necessarily a bad way - these are supposed to be a return to Trek's roots after all - but man. Not thinking outside the box on this one, huh.
I´m not sure if more off-screen Star Trek is something for me. I´m reading New Frontier and Vanguard and want to know about how the story continues and all. I´ll wait and see.
I don't think he's criticizing their writing ability so much as the idea; in any case, I think people may be forgetting that Seekers is intended to be more episodic, as opposed to an ongoing story arc like Vanguard--as you've pointed out before, David. --Sran
I don't mean to judge the novel ahead of time; I'll definitely read it. I'm just saying, that sounds like the back cover of every numbered novel that was ever published. Lots of those were good too.
I mean, at the end of the day, it seems to me that modern TrekLit can be divided into "familiar paradigm" novels and "original paradigm" novels. Familiar paradigm novels are the ones that are aiming to tell the kinds of stories Star Trek has its television roots in -- stories like, the ship comes across a planet with a dark secret and the captain must save the day. They treat them as primary texts to be emulated and added to. The original paradigm novels are the ones that try to be more complicated, that treat the TV shows as primary texts to be built upon rather than emulated -- things like, what happened to Bajor after the Dominion Was defeated?, or, what if Picard found himself having to invade and occupy an independent planet because it had weapons of mass destruction?, or, what kinds of upheavals did Cardassia go through that we didn't see?, etc. Neither one is inherently better than the other. An author can do really wonderful work in either the familiar paradigm or in the original paradigm. Peter David's Vendetta, Q-in-Law, and Q-Squared are all familiar paradigm novels, and they're great. And conversely, Peter David's Before Dishonor, or J.M. Dillard's Resistance, or Michael A. Martin's Titan: Fallen Gods, were all original paradigm novels that didn't work so well. Star Trek: Seekers is definitely a familiar paradigm series. It's emulating the canon rather than reacting to it. It's the kind of premise that's not going to interest everyone, but that doesn't mean it's good or bad; it's just a matter of what you're looking for from a Star Trek novel. Are you looking for something that's like the TV show, or are you looking for something that reacts to the TV show?