I finished The Last Best Hope last night, and now I'm conflicted about what to read next. I need some suggestions, and I didn't want to start a new thread, so I figured asking here would be okay (if it's not, forgive me. Let me know, and I'll go make that separate thread). I need something hopeful, but I also I need to get caught up on post-The Fall novels, or Christopher's TMP-era books, so I can read The Higher Frontier.
The most recent stories I've read in the 24th century Litverse book lines are: Takedown, The Light Fantastic, The Missing, Absent Enemies, and the Prometheus trilogy. I had started Armageddon's Arrow back when that came out, but just couldn't get into it - so far, the only one of Dayton's books I haven't absolutely devoured within a day or two.
After TLBH, I need a dose of hope right now. Titan's normally been good for that, so should I start with Sight Unseen? Or the next DS9 Relaunch book (Sacraments of Fire, I think)? Or try and get back into Armageddon's Arrow? Basically I want to get caught up on everything chronologically up to the Prey trilogy before I get into that.
Or, I drop back to the TMP era, with Ex Machina. I really want to read The Higher Frontier, but I want to read Christopher's previous books TOS/TMP books first. I know I don't need to, but I want to. I also need to finish up Vanguard, and What Judgments Come is next on that list. And apart from the Legacies trilogy, The Face of the Unknown and The Antares Maelstrom, I really haven't read any TOS book published after Cast No Shadow, so From History's Shadow and all the other stuff that more recent books are building on, I still need to get to. For the Discovery books, the next one on my list is The Enterprise War.
Apart from Trek, there's The Squire's Crystal, the next Bernice Summerfield book on my list, or Sophie Aldred's Doctor Who: At Childhood's End. Outside of tie-ins entirely, I've got the most recent Rivers of London novel on deck, Neil Gaiman's The Ocean at the End of the Lane, or maybe something by Brandon Sanderson so my best friend can finally be happy that I've read his current favorite author. Real hard SF is off the table right now, and I know all this is pretty light, but having come off a long stretch of Russian literature, political science, and Octavia Butler, I need something lighter in my literary diet right now.
So with all that in mind, what Trek book would you suggest for me next?