I disagree. Spock is more important to the franchise than Kirk is. Of course, now the main continuity can't use either of 'em (beyond 2387). Figures.
Bringing Kirk back to the main continuity isn't a great idea. It could be done well though and I'd still really like it to happen. Sorry ! I think Spock has gone for the duration of the JJverse movies, but I'd not be surprised if we got (a) Spock back at some point. After all, Spock Prime and JJSpock have melded if I recall correctly...
But that makes the Shatnerverse books rather superfluous, doesn't it? Wouldn't it make more sense to just have the Shatnerverse Kirk cross universes and come into the mainstream TrekLit universe? I'd prefer to have new Shatnerverse books that deal with things in the mainstream continuity, even if they weren't actually written by William Shatner and the Reeves-Stevenses. You could have the cover have some kind of blurb like "STAR TREK - As envisioned by William Shatner!" or something to clue people in and still get his name on the cover.
IMO the Sharnerverse was close enough to the mainline continuity that it can be seen as part of it if one so chooses. They just never ever talk about him in the other books. "The first rule of the Shatnerverse is..."
Although I love "The Return" (and totally prefer it to what happened with the borg in treklit), I think quite a bit of what it does is incompatible with modern continuity, like the provenance of v'ger
I really liked the amount of non-humanoid borg in The Return, but it was a silly book: one that pandered to the idea that Kirk was the greatest man who ever lived in this fictional universe, who was the centre of what everything in Trek should be about. I don't really think Shatner was such a part of the composition of books - I don't know, does anyone know how much he played a part? was it like Stewart in the TNG movies and was actually creatively involved? - but it feels like the Reeves-Stevens certainly were making this a book about Shatner's view of his character. Sometimes - usually - people die in dismal ways. Let's not mythologise our fictional heroes, for once, but let them die, in cold and barren manner.
hey the man says it himself "I got a magnificent performance out of me, because I respected me so much!"
Why in the world do we need Kirk back in the 24th century? If not for the Nexus, he would've most likely been dead by the TNG era anyway. And it's not like there's any dearth of 23rd-century fiction featuring the character. You could perhaps make a (tenuous) case for that where the first two trilogies are concerned, but the Totality trilogy is incompatible with the main novel continuity in a number of respects: Bajor hasn't yet joined the Federation as of 2378, Titan's Romulan-aid mission lasts over a year, and Admiral Janeway is alive during the time frame when she was dead in the main novel continuity. I think that initially the idea was to approach it as you suggest, to leave it ambiguous whether they could fit or not, but by the time of Totality the decision had been made just to let each series go its own way. And as zarkon says, The Return's version of the Borg and V'Ger has been retroactively contradicted by the main novelverse. For that matter, the Shatnerverse version of the Mirror Universe's origin is incompatible with "In a Mirror, Darkly." The Shatnerverse version is that the MU began to form after First Contact, growing out of a human-Vulcan military alliance formed to defend against the Borg threat which Cochrane had learned of. IaMD established that history had already diverged much earlier than that -- the Empire had existed in some form for centuries, most classic literature other than Shakespeare was different, and Cochrane and his people slaughtered the Vulcans who made first contact.
I'll bet it looks exactly the same when it comes out. They seem to be using this pic by Wiley Coyote... http://trekmodeler.deviantart.com/art/Enterprise-E-in-flight-209000814
I also question the format. If you're going to bring Kirk back into the 24th-century novel continuity, is an eBook novella really the best place to do that? The destruction of the Borg and the resurrection of Data merited entire trilogies; the return of Kirk, a character who is far more of a cultural touchstone than Data and the Borg combined, merits a footnote by comparison? From a marketing standpoint, returning Kirk in The Stuff of Dreams makes no sense at all.
Funny you should say that. Compare the Enterprise image on the cover to this image on deviantart. The image is of a model someone made for the old game Bridge Commander. Looks like exactly the same image with some contrast/colour changes... EDIT: D'oh, never noticed Tosk's post! Looks like the port nacelle was cut off as its not quite as detailed as the rest of the ship.