Here are mine in no particular order:
Star Trek: No Time Like the Past by Greg Cox. I absolutely love this novel. It is a fun adventure and Seven works so well with the TOS crew. I had never seen any of the episodes re-visited in this novel but that didn't hamper my enjoyment one bit. This is a novel I can re-read multiple times and enjoy.
Star Trek: Vanguard - Reap the Whirlwind by David Mack. A thrilling book with amazing action sequences, great character work, and phenomenal villains in the Shedai. In fact, I found the rest of the series somewhat disappointing on my initial read because I thought the Shedai were being set up to be the big bads of the series but they barely feature after this novel. Still, I love the Shedai here and just how tense the novel is.
Star Trek: Titan - Sight Unseen by James Swallow. The first half of the book is a really good horror novel so that made me happy. I liked the new additions to the Titan crew, including Kyzak. I enjoyed the bait and switch where it looked like Swallow had introduced Kyzak just to redshirt him but then kills off a regular Titan character. The ending was very much in keeping with Trek themes of understanding, finding common ground, and seeking out new life.
Star Trek: DS9 - Fearful Symmetry/Soul Key by Olivia Woods. Maybe it is a cheat to combine two books as one but it's my list and I can do what I want. I loved these books when I first read them. I thought they did a great job of setting up what felt like a new phase in the DS9 relaunch era before the time jump ruined everything. Ghemor made for a fascinating villain and I wanted to see what she accomplished as The Fire for the Ascendants. I enjoyed seeing the Mirror Universe again.
Star Trek: Titan - Over a Torrent Sea by Christopher L. Bennett. I think of this book as a cozy Star Trek read, similar to a cozy mystery. It's a book I like to read on a rainy day. After all the death and destruction in Destiny OaTS felt like a nice palate cleanser. It focuses on an interesting and well developed world that I would love to visit. The character work is superb. It fits the mission statement of seeking out new life to a T. I just adore it.
Star Trek - Articles of the Federation by KRAD. I never knew I needed a West Wing style Star Trek book in my life until I read this novel and now I wish I had more ST books like this in my life. I didn't think originally I would like this novel all that much but I quickly became engrossed in the going-on in the Bacco administration and couldn't put it down. I was very disappointed to learn that there weren't any true follow-ups to the novel but I was glad that the characters introduced here continued to play a large role in the LitVerse.
Star Trek: Typhon Pact - Plagues of Night/Raise the Dawn by DRGIII. These are seriously some of my absolute favorite Trek novels ever written. I was not a happy camper when I found out about the time jump in the DS9 novels and the fact that several plots had yet to be resolved. I also wasn't happy with some of the changes made to certain characters. That said, these two novels really sold me on the time jump and some of the new characters, even if I didn't like the resolution to some plots later on (the Ascendants plot really fizzles out in a way that drew my ire). I loved the political machinations of the Typhon Pact here. There was some nice tension in the novels and I was never really sure how things would play out. The space battle that ends Plagues of NIght and begins Raise the Dawn is superbly written and extremely suspenseful. Blowing up DS9 was huge and something I didn't see happening.
Star Trek: TNG - Armageddon's Arrow by Dayton Ward. This felt like a breath of fresh air after all the darkness and death involved in Destiny, Cold Equations, Typhon Pact, and The Fall. (Not that any of those were bad, per se, but it did feel like the Trek writers were trying to emulate the grimdark of Warhammer 40K for a bit). This was a novel about exploration again with reltaively small stakes. It felt like the old Enterprise crew and the new characters were really gelling and felt like the crew of the Enterprise. I enjoyed the plot about the time traveling ship. I thought that Chen, Taurik, and Konya were used quite well which was nice since I like all three characters. Quite frankly, I enjoyed all of Ward's TNG novels following this one.
Star Trek: Corp of Engineers - Have Tech, Will Travel by KRAD, Golden, Smith, Ward, and Dilmore. I'm not saying this is my favorite CoE novel but it is up there. I'm including it more because of how much it took me by surprise. I thought a series focused on engineers would be boring and have lots of technobabble. That first story quickly disabused me of those notions. I fell in love with the da Vinci and her crew. The format of a new novella a month meant that it was easy to pull off long term plots like Soloman coming to grips with the death of his mate and being a single individual. It also meant that the crew could go on a wide variety of missions from the wacky to the serious.
Star Trek: Enterprise - Rise of the Federation: A Choice of Futures by Christopher L. Bennett. I'm a huge Enterprise fan and I was initially excited to see the series continue on in book format. However, the Romulan War books left me cold. I was a bit wary about this book even though I generally enjoy Christopher's novels simply because the last books had left a sour taste in my mouth. Christopher quickly won me over with this novel which respected the characters and the events of the series while continuing their stories in logical, fun ways. Christopher even made palatable the decision to make Trip a Section 31 agent, a plot point that I hated in the Romulan War novels. I love the RoTF novels and am extremely sad that we probably won't get another one. Hopefully we might get a stand-alone ENT novel set during the series itself written by Christopher. It would be the next best thing.
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