Hey, I was just wondering if people think I'd like Star Trek: New Frontier..
Ultimately, as some have said, the only way to know if you'll like it is to try it yourself.
I've not read Peter David before, but I like KRA DeCandido's IKS Gorkon/Star Trek Klingon Empire and I also like the Deep Space Nine relaunch..
I like both of those series but I'm not crazy about New Frontier.
I have a question though, is NF in a serial format like DS9-Relaunch, with developing character arcs, and realistic characters?
Will two out of three do? Well, more like one and a half. There are no realistic characters to be found in New Frontier. Even the characters who originally appeared on air aren't really portrayed as they appeared on TV. They're often larger than life, have deep dark soap opera secrets, turn into gods, or are simply a million times smarter, cooler, and tougher than anyone else. And pretty much all of them talk in sarcastic wisecracks all the time. As for development, there are changes in their status, but not so much in their personalities.
The books also rely too much on humour that isn't always funny. For instance, the allegedly riotous punning and hijinks over an alien character named Pheytus. If you see Phey as rhyming with prey, fey, they, grey, whey, etc, it'll take a minute to realize that his name is funny because it sounds just like fetus. But then, I don't really get why that would be funny, either. Some of the books also read like sloppy first drafts, like the one in which something is described as being essentially a small space station but is called a Dyson sphere. Or the way PAD latches on to a particular odd word and uses it to death over the course of a novel or two. Overmuch, for instance: I've read thousands of books in my life, and I'd bet that 90% of the times I've encountered that word, I've been reading a PAD Trek novel. You can argue, at least, that he has a distinctive style.
But, again, no one can decide whether you'll like New Frontier but yourself.
