New Frontier book series and New Earth. Anyone else like them?

Ive only read the first two books of the New Earth series of Star Trek and I really like them since it involves Kirk and gang.

As for New Frontier anyone know where I can find the first 3 or 4 books?

 

I found the New Earth series to be a fun romp, especially when it ends up with a cobbled-together starship run by a crew of misfits.

As to the first three NF books (and the remaining NE books, if you're having any trouble at all), I'd suggest Alibris. It's an online network of independent new and used book dealers (and if by any chance you're an Amtrak Guest Rewards member, they're in the Points for Shopping virtual mall).

Oh, and as I say to newbies on the Fountain Pen Network board, and the PIPORG-L list server,

Welcome to the squirrel-cage, and look out for the nuts.

 

New Frontier is amazing. New Earth, not so much. As I recall it was the same story over and over again until the last one with the cobbled-together ship.

 

Lots of New Frontier fans here. There are lot of threads open if you search. The books are easy enough to find in Amazon Marketplace.

 

I would suggest Amazon as well. They usually have used books for sale. For New Frontier the first 4 books act as a single story so I'd get all 4 (they were sold as a time as a single omnibus and you may be able to find a used copy of that).

Yeah, I loved New Frontier myself. The series drops off just a bit after "Stone and Anvil", the 14th book--they're still good but they lost a bit of the magic at that point. But up to that point they're a lot of fun.

I read New Earth about 2 or 3 years ago. Some of the books were better than others. I'd recommend reading the entire series. There is one post-New Earth novel that was part of the "Gateway" series of novels as well that involves a ship you'll see in the final book called "Challenger" I liked the two Challenger books (the New Earth book and the Gateways book). The commander and even some of his crew reminds me a little bit of Captain Calhoun and his crew from New Frontier.

 

I wanted to like New Earth. I liked the basic idea -- long-term colonization mission -- but the execution didn't live up to it. It becomes very "samey" in the middle books -- colony is under attack, Enterprise can save the colony but only with great difficulty, colonists are recalcitrant, eventually everyone works together and the day is saved.

I recommend reading books 1, 2, and 6 and skipping the rest. This gives you the mission out to the colony world, the initial colony set-up, and the Enterprise's departure.

It would be interesting to revisit New Earth in later time periods. What does the colony look like in the 2290s? The 2330s? The 2360s? If there were an active original ebook fiction line, I could imagine a mini-series along the lines of Mere Anarchy that carries the story of the colony into the TNG-era and beyond.

 

That's probably it in a nutshell. The middle books are variations on a similar theme.

I also liked that it was a post TMP series. One thing to note is the books themselves list the time period in the early 2270s but that's since been 'retconned' to later in the 2270's (I want to say 2278) because we now know TMP likely took place around 2272, or maybe 2273 and this series is depicted to be closer in time frame to TWOK (including the TWOK uniforms and Chekov being made first officer of the Reliant).

 

That wasn't really the reason for the ambiguity. Regardless of when TMP was set, the books are clearly written to take place several years after it, much closer to TWOK. But the historian's notes at the front of the books claimed they were "shortly after" TMP, which didn't fit the actual narratives. So the ST Timeliners' choice to set them later in the 2270s was simply a matter of ignoring the historian's notes in favor of the actual texts.

 

Right, that's what I meant . I was a bit clumsy with my wording (I was making a bit of an assumption that TMP is generally accepted to have occurred in or around 2272 and using the years instead of 'soon after' TMP). But yeah, it was the historians note that placed it soon after TMP when it was pretty clearly later. The year itself was not stated in the book if I recall correctly, Memory Alpha places it around 2278 I believe, which makes more sense if TMP is around 2272 (give or take a year).

 

I just checked Memory Beta and they have them taking place between 2279 to 2280, which is probably even better considering that places it a year closer to TWOK and seems more consistent. The main New Earth article overview article in Memory Alpha also lists the start time as 2279 (the individual books on Memory Alpha still have earlier dates of 2272 to 2273--I guess they were never updated).

 

Seeing what became of New Earth would be fantastic. Hopefully something more than a smouldering Borg ruin in 2381.

 

Smouldering Borg ruin, definitely. Unless they finally figured out that being a bunch of squabbling isolationist libertarians who gave anyone who tried to help them a hard time doesn’t work for every situation.

 

All of the books are available as ebooks if you're willing to go that route. I only checked Google Play and Amazon, but I'm assuming since they are there they're probably available from other e-book stores too.
The Wildstorm graphic novel is not available digitally, but the IDW miniseries is.
The four books appear to only be available as the omnibus, at least the two stores I checked.
As for my opinion on the series, I loved it for the first about 7 or 8 books, but once you reach the Excalibur trilogy things start to kind of go down hill a bit, except Stone and Anvil, which is one of the best. Once you hit the time jump after that one, things go down hill even more. They never really get outright bad, just meh.
Overall it's probably my least favorite series of all of the original novel series and relaunches.

 

I definitely liked the NF books I read, the earliest ones, because I really like Peter David's writing. It's surprising I'm not further along in the NF books, but I read a lot of different books at a slow pace. As others have said, you should be able to find books you are looking for on Amazon. If they are really obscure and hard to find, you might try ebay. But NF and many other Star Trek novels usually are pretty easy to find through Amazon (sometimes the pricing is a surprise).

 

I also love the New Frontier series.I liked the premise of New Earth but also thought it got a little wonky at times.I would be interested in seeing a follow-up as well. If you are into e-books, New Earth is currently on sale from Amazon for .99¢ each for a few more days.

 

I’d argue that the ebook trilogy a couple years back went beyond outright bad through did the editor even read this territory and into JFC WTF, but I’ve posted about that at least a couple of times around here already.

 

^ Yeah, agreed.

 

I struggled through New Earth. Colonists wanted to get away from the Federation but needed Starfleet to protect them but struggled to say thank you for all the help provided.

My other memory of it is how in the first book Kirk gave one look which all his bridge officers were able to intuit into a series of different orders and actions and got what he wanted done. Now that is efficiency.

 

New Earth was among the first written Trek I got into, and I remember enjoying it a lot, despite not being much of a TOS fan. Wagon Train to the Stars (book 1) and Challenger (book 6) are ones I frequently re-read, and of the middle ones I remember liking Rough Trails (book 3) for its focus on the 'secondary' cast. I too would be very interested to learn what became of the planet and its people, which as far as I know was never mentioned again after Chainmail.

New Frontier, I enjoyed in general but the quality of the series had its ups and downs. It's more of a 'fun romp' series that is very different in tone to the others. I remember Once Burned and Cold Wars as my favorites here, though my reaction to the novels set after Stone and Anvil has lead me to regard the latter as the conclusion to the series.